Part 7
Desperate men

"You won't believe me, but I sorta missed this," Buffy said, bruised and tired after their fight was over. She couldn't really tell who had eventually won, all she could remember is both of them falling off their feet at some point, too spent to carry on.

"You won't believe me, but I missed it too," Angel smiled with his lips bloody from a punch she had thrown. They had forgotten all about the gholas... Connor and Joy had been overpowered at some point and only thanks to Joy and a lightning spell they managed to come out of the fight alive.

"But you know we're going to have to tell the others we ran into some other demons right?" Buffy asked or ratter stated.

"Can you imagine what they'd say if they'd found out what happened?" Angel smiled.

"The eye rolling would never stop," Buffy chuckled.

"Why were they always like that?" he turned his head to look at her. He hadn't hit her in the face during the fight intentionally. She, on the other hand didn't seem to have held back at all, he noted as he touched a nasty bruise right under his left eye.

"I don't know. Maybe we were a little over-dramatic, but it wasn't like we could help it. That's what our relationship was: super-angst, bad things, sewer talks like this one and a lot of making out to cover for the rest," she smiled.

"Yeah, that was the best part," he teased her. They both knew their relationship had meant much more than that.

"Better than slaying. Though Giles always thought it was a distraction," she remembered.

"You used to tell Giles what we did in the graveyard?" that would explain why the watcher had given him odd looks before he had turned evil. He was embarrassed just at the thought.
"Well, yeah, he was my watcher after all," she said acting very serious. "Kidding!"

"If my heart would be beating I'd be having a heart attack about now," he said relieved that it had only been a joke.

"Why I like my men dead. No heart problems," she said but quickly understood that even if it had been a joke, Angel wasn't comfortable with it. There was a moment of silence.

"You know, I'm not really all that happy in my 'little life'," Angel finally said what he had wanted to tell her that morning at the house. "My son hates me. Whatever kind of love I have for Cordelia I can't do anything about it, cause she doesn't remember..." he laughed dryly before adding: "A funny thing happened before I was dumped on the ocean floor. I was supposed to meet Cordelia. She had something to tell me. And I don't know what. I was hoping she'd tell me she loves me. That's the amazing relationship I had so far."

"But you love her," she tried not to hold a grudge against that feeling. She had no right after all. "That's...You know what? I hope she loves you back," she suddenly said surprising Angel. "Maybe we weren't meant to be, but that doesn't mean you have to spend an eternity alone. Maybe there's a way to get around your curse and we just couldn't find it. I wish we would've, but we didn't. And we moved on so... we shouldn't feel any resentment. None what so ever."

"So how come we do?" Angel asked amused that she was trying to rationalize everything.

"We're just weird like that," she said laying her head on his shoulder, tired. They would've both fallen asleep if Joy and Connor hadn't come crashing towards them. The two teenagers were both exhausted and smudged with green gooey demon blood from head to toe. There had been more than twenty demons and they hadn't had the strength to fight them all. Joy had made the small lightning spell hoping that the demons would turn from them and run towards Buffy and Angel. She hadn't even cared if her fraud would have been discovered. She had just wanted those things to die already!

"Where are the gholas?" was the first thing Joy asked.

"Gholas?" the slayer held back a yawn and then with her eyes only half opened said: "Oh, the gholas!" she tapped Angel on the shoulder.

"Hmm?" the vampire couldn't remember any demons.

"You know, the gholas! The ones that ran right pass us?" Buffy reminded him.

"Oh, the gholas!" Angel remembered now.

"And why didn't you stop them?" Connor couldn't believe them.

"Well...we...ran into some...some vampires," Buffy eventually said.

"Don't see any dust," Connor said angrily.

"You'll definitely find the dust in the sewers," Buffy noted sarcastically.

"Whatever. Let's just go back to the house. We'll try again tomorrow. I think I'm beginning to stink," Joy said frustrated and started walking towards a manhole. Connor gave Buffy and Angel a suspicious look before following her. The vampire and the slayer stood up, only now fully feeling the aftermath of their fight, but the tiredness that came with it was welcomed.

"I feel like a teenager that's been caught doing something wrong," Buffy whispered to Angel as they followed the two kids out into the streets of Sunnydale.

"Technically we did," Angel chuckled. "And maybe we shouldn't be so happy about it. We did a very bad thing."

"Yeah...," she laughed. "Ever thought we'd wind up here someday?"

"Here where?" he asked.

"When our kids would be busting our ass for slacking off from slaying?" she stopped realizing what she had just said. "Wow, wasn't that weird?"

"The words are just twisting in your mouth," Angel assured her.

"I haven't been this tired since...," she didn't say it because it had been when she had first slept with Spike. Right then she didn't feel like remembering it either. She usually didn't because it always brought up strange feelings inside her: desire, disgust, a primal instinct that screamed whenever the recollection would take over. Instincts made her be who she was, the slayer, but there were others beyond those that made her a hero, instincts she feared and she was frightened that one day they would unleash themselves and turn her into a monster. Joy, far away from them, by Connor's side, would have agreed.

After they arrived at the house, all dirty and beaten, everyone figured they found what they had been after.

"Yeah, we did," Connor said shooting Buffy and Angel an irritated look. He wasn't happy that they'd be staying in Sunnydale for another day. Sure, it had its good sides, but he was looking forward to returning home, in his bed, with Cordelia, where he belonged. Joy was only half upset, on one side Buffy and Angel had sorted out their differences the old fashioned way, but on the other side she had gotten her ass kicked by a bunch of demons because she and Connor hadn't had any back up. Jacques would've said it was her own fault. She shook her head before asking Dawn for some clean clothes.

Later that night, she sneaked out of the house. Leaving her room hadn't been a problem, Cordelia was sound asleep and the upper level of the Summers house was drown in silence. The lower level was a whole different story...Connor was supposedly sleeping, but actually he was just pretending so he wouldn't be invited out of courtesy to the kitchen where Angel, Buffy, Xander and Willow, supplied with coffee, were chatting since they had gotten back from the hunt. They were sharing stories, good and bad. While Joy headed for the door, the echoes of Buffy's Dracula story made their way to her ears. She stopped for a moment to smile. It felt right. All of them there in that house. As silent as she tried to be as she opened the door, Connor's keen senses picked up on her presence, but he didn't make a move to stop her. He figured she was going to try and find her brother on her own since his father didn't turn out to be much help. So he kept his eyes closed, opening them only after Joy was gone. After turning and twisting for part of the night on the couch, he would eventually climb upstairs and settle down next to Cordelia. He would sleep soundly for the rest of the night, forgetting all about the noises downstairs and how strangely familiar Joy smelled.

Joy didn't fear the night, even in Sunnydale. She'd fought a lot of demons in her short life and none could take her by surprise.

"A pretty girl like you, alone on such a beautiful night?" Jacques startled her. She tried to hit him with her fist, but her hand ended up on the other side of him. The cajun smiled. "Sometimes I's good to not be real, eh, chere?"

"Speak for yourself," she said as she resumed walking down the street.

"And where you goin'?" he asked as he followed her steps.

"I'm going to find my dad and make him sane...saner," she said determined.

"You kiddin', right? Joycie, you got no right tellin' these people what the future looks like. Might be bad, but it all they got," Jacques warned her.

"I'm here to change the future, Jacques. It doesn't matter how I do it. Doesn't matter if they know. And if they do, it won't be the future anymore," she stopped to look at him. The mystic nervously moved his hands through his hair. That meant he was frustrated. The whole situation seemed to reduce him to this state.

"Still not right," he refused to give in.

"Might not be right, but somehow my father knows. Might be that he's insane, might be that he's possessed or that I'm just too weak to lie to him. I want this to be over as soon as you do and I can't just maneuver them around like sheep. My mother is in love with my father and Angel is in love with Cordelia and you expect me to change that over night without telling anyone anything. I won't tell them all, don't you worry. I only have to tell him. He's the only one who'll understand," Joy's hope was imprinted in her words and Jacques refused to take that hope away from her. All he did was mutter:

"I hope you're right," and he disappeared. She wondered where she could find Spike. He was living in Xander's apartment, but would he go back under the circumstances? Thinking of her father and the way he acted, she was sure he wouldn't return to Xander's place. He'd go somewhere else, familiar, a place that would give him the solitude he needed to gather his stray thoughts. But where would he go? Where? An hour later, she found herself in front of the answer: Spike's old crypt. It had taken her a while to find the graveyard, after all, all she could remember was the gigantic wasteland her mother had pointed out different locations on and she wasn't sure they were a 100% correct. Eventually she tracked it down. It had become a sort of ruin, a monument of time passing by, just like Sunnydale would become one day. She hadn't been absolutely sure he would be there, but knowing him so well, she suspected he was. And her knowledge hadn't failed her. She found him, between the torn furniture and broken things, trembling in a corner under the pressure of his insanity. He was talking to himself, to someone else when she approached him, she couldn't really tell. She knew of the evil that once haunted her father, but she also knew she couldn't defeat it. That was a battle that he and his mother would have to fight and she had no place in it.

When he first saw her, he thought she was a figment of his overactive imagination. Smelling like Buffy, dressed in Dawn's blue shirt - the one that matched her eyes so perfectly - and jeans, stinking of blood and strange desires, calling herself Joy, with white hair and the eyes of a mother he knew. He thought she had been a dream, because surprisingly he knew who she was, or at least sensed it. That's the reason he had flipped back at the house. He had thought she was another of *his* tricks, some kind of image of the future, of what would happen if he would give in to *his* desires...but then something awkward had happened, like he had been torn out of the present and pushed into a monstrous future he didn't want to live in. There had been blood - too much blood - and death and desires turned to ashes and the smoke of burnt flesh. Flesh that should have lived. Flesh too young to die, to burn. And the impact of that vision had sent him tumbling into his old insanity. It frightened him that something besides *him*, the creature in the basement, could cause him to snap like that.

As she neared him, and kneeled besides him, he realized, touching her cheek, that she was real. As real as him. As real as his Buffy. And this girl, he knew she belonged in his world.

"Who are you?" he asked, saner now, much calmer, like someone on death row who accepted his punishment serenely. He was confused by the origin of this girl. Sure she was familiar and felt like she was in some way his, but how?

"My name is Joy. Joyce actually," she was hesitant. That strange serene gaze that held hers so firmly reminded her so much of her father...he was unchanged, time could not alter the appearance of a vampire. He seemed the same person who had helped her climb on her first bike, the same who made her a very flattened cake for her 6th birthday when her mother had been detained in England, the same who had cheered her up after her horrible first day of highschool, the same who threatened to beat the hell out of her date if he didn't have her home by 11 and the same who, after his mother changed, had comforted her, telling her everything would be okay. She felt like crying, collapsing in his arms and telling him everything she had on her soul, but she could not. She would've just frightened him even more.

"Joyce," he repeated not daring to near her.

"Joyce Summers," she completed and she was surprised that he wasn't shocked.

"I suppose I knew. Your blood was screaming out to me," he explained pointing to her persona, to the blood that flowed within her. "Smells just like hers. You smell like her." There was a moment of silence. She knew what he wanted to know.

"I am yours, you know," she said and he laughed.

"Don't be ridiculous, girl. I'm a vampire! And stop me if this is new to you, vampires can't have children," he smirked still amused.

"Why do you think my blood is screaming out to you? It's not just hers, it's yours too!" she let out in frustration and then whispered: "She used to say there's too much of yours."

"It's not funny," he didn't believe her. She sighed exasperated and then an idea came to her. She began taking off her blouse. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" the vampire pulled even further away from her.

"Relax, I'm just going to prove to you that I'm telling the truth," she assured him as she put her blue shirt aside and turned her back towards him. At first he didn't understand what she wanted him to see, but slowly he began noticing, under the thin material of the shirt she wore, a tattoo on her right shoulder blade, stretching from under her neck down her back, far beyond the silky garment she wore. As he concentrated, the tattoo began taking the shape of words. Joy pulled down a strap of her shirt so he could see it all.

"When the sun will shine
I won't be there to see your face
But when the moon will rise
I will be there for your embrace
From dusk till dawn
I will be watching over you
A haunted soul, a hidden face
A shadow that will always follow
Hoping, begging, for one moment without sorrow.
The day you were born,
The universe stopped
My tears fell, my soul cried,
The world changed.
I felt alive,
Yet dead," Spike read out loud and realization dawned on him. "I wrote that."

"You did. The day you first saw me," Joy smiled as she took her shirt back on. "I got it tattooed when I was 14. I wanted to always have a part of you with me."

"Didn't have to," the vampire looked up at her. "Just take a look in the mirror, there's little bits of me in there," he tapped on her forehead.
"God, I missed you!" Joy couldn't hold back her emotions anymore and fell into her father's arms. "I missed you so much."
"You've been gone for that long?" Spike asked, but Joy's sudden hesitation told him more than words could. "I'm not alive in the future anymore, am I?" his daughter would not answer. Even if she had come there determined to tell him everything he had to know in order for him to leave Sunnydale, now faced with actually having to tell him, she wasn't sure she was doing the right thing anymore. "Because if I am, you don't have to lie about it. I can take it like a man, even if I might not seem in my right mind about now," he stopped hoping she would speak now. Joy could not. "Well...let's see, what could've happened?" he began thinking. "Your mother shoved a stake through my chest while I was sleeping or we had an argument about someone you dated and hating as much as she does to not be right, she decapitated me in a fit of anger or..." Joy began chuckling. "Well, are you gonna tell me or am I gonna spend the rest of the night guessing what apocalyptic demon did away with me? I gotta tell you there's quite a few of 'em." Joy looked at him and knew he wouldn't freak out.

"It was more of an accident," she finally spoke. "You were trying to help her out, but she was frightened...she didn't know who you were. She didn't know," she whispered the recollection of her father's death still so raw and painful inside her. "She was a slayer. Barely 15."

"Figures a slayer would end my days. It's how do you say? Poetic."

"Ironical ratter," Joy thought. "I...I eventually managed to forgive her. It wasn't really her fault, but mom she..."

"Danced on my grave?" Spike suggested with a smile.

"Killed her," Joy completed her phrase ignoring his joke. "Butchered would be more accurate."

"Buffy? Buffy would never do that," Spike was outraged.

"Not the one you know now. Then she went after the other slayers. One by one. One slaughter after the next," she looked at her hands, it hurt her more to say everything out loud.

"Why would she...Buffy's a hero, she'd never kill anything human, especially children," Spike couldn't believe her. He didn't want to either.

"As I said, she's not exactly the same anymore," Joy insisted.

"What changed her?" Spike asked.

"You did," the girl said and stopped him from drawing the wrong conclusions. "She was growing older every year...She became obsessed by youth, she couldn't bare to see herself age. She didn't want you to see her grow old. You're absolutely identical to my father," she stated making the vampire realize where she was heading.

"I made her a vampire," the words seemed to choke him as he spoke them.

"Eventually. You would've never turned her," Joy said. "But you were forced to do it. After her 32nd birthday she started using magic to look younger. At first Willow supplied her occasionally thinking there was nothing wrong in it, but slowly she realized that using it every day would alter my mother's body so after two years she cut her off. She was desperate and eventually stole the potion from Remy's reserves. She kept using it, knowing that it harmed her. She wanted to be beautiful for you. After a couple of years it started loosing its effect and she used to suddenly grow old. She used to lock herself in her room whenever it happened. Sometimes I didn't see her for days. She turned to black magic. The dangerous type, but she kept searching and searching for another answer. She didn't know the magic was draining the life out of her...She turned to Willow only when it was too late...Willow made one last powerful youth spell and you turned her. I was 15 at the time. She got what she wanted: eternal youth. And she did it for you."

"Did she?" Spike was skeptical of the idea. But the truth was he couldn't picture Buffy
growing old. Maybe because slayers were always meant to die young. "I turned her into a monster? How could I? I'd rather love an old woman than turn her," he was disgusted with himself.

"But she would've hated herself," Joy pointed out. "She didn't become a monster. Not then anyway. She was a little more irritated than usual and would sometimes flip out over little things. And the poor vampires that would face her...She tried to not feed on human blood. The only one of human origin she drank was yours. The rest was pig's blood. Willow did a spell that kept her soul somehow attached to her. Angel's curse had that happiness clause and you didn't want her to go through that African shaman's trials, so Willow had to make one herself. What she didn't realize then was that because of that spell the soul was hanging on to one thread inside her. That thread was you. The moment you died the soul vanished. Willow tried to use Angel's curse on her, but she knew she would try that so she put her own soul in an orb and hid it somewhere. Me and Jacques tried to find it. Willow tried too, but it seemed like it disappeared off the face of the earth. My mother's willing to go so far as to destroy the world. When there was no choice left, I took the decision to come here, to set things right."

"You should've gone back to the moment I turned her."

"Like I could've stopped you," Joy shook her head. She remembered the way her mother had looked before she was turned, she had been almost a skeleton.

"What are you here to change?" Spike asked a little confused.

"The whole world. I'm here to bring my mother and Angel back together," Spike was stung by the remark.

"My own daughter..." he stopped mid-sentence suddenly realizing what her words implied. "But if Buffy and I won't be together, what'll happen to you?"

"Don't worry, I'll get suspended from time, cast away between dimensions. Traveling from one world to another without a real home. The ultimate rogue," she lied easily. It's a pretty lie, she thought to herself.

"Oh," Spike let out. He was silent for a moment pondering on the great sacrifice his daughter was willing to make just so the world and her parents would live. He was touched that someone could care so deeply for him. He looked at her and saw the sadness in her eyes - Buffy's eyes - and letting go of the painful subject they were discussing, he asked: "So did we live in Sunnydale? I should at least know what I'll be missing out on."

"No," Joy was relieved that he had given up on the subject. "Sunnydale got destroyed after one of those big end-of-the-world-type battles. The hellmouth opened a little too much that time."

"So it's..."

"Ashes. A lot of people died then. Anya died and... in some ways Dawn did too. Giles lost an eye and an arm. I got this," she touched her white hair. "And this of course," she pointed towards the lighting like symbol across her face."

"Nibblet died?" Spike was saddened by the thought. Dawn was too young to die.

"Technically. Her spirit was crushed. It was too much for her. She lived a few more years... she was so miserable and sad. I think that battle woke something up inside her. That energy she was born from. She turned her eyes black...she became powerful. So powerful she scared even mom and Willow. But she knew that if she held on to the power she'd wind up doing horrible things so she let it consume her. She became light again. Pure uncharted energy. She disappeared," Joy said and Spike thought it was a good way to go.

"And who's...uhm...Jacques and that R something guy?" he remembered the names she had mentioned.

"Well...we lived in New Orleans. When Sunnydale turned to ashes the world was going to the next level, all metal, all high-tech cities. You either went digital or got stuck in the dark ages. New Orleans was one of the few cities that combined both. Mostly because there were a lot of mystics living there. Mom wanted to keep it real for me so we moved there. I was brought up in the old ways. I do occasionally ride the wind on a techboard like all kids my age, but I'm old school. Remy is a mystic from New Orleans, a neighbor of ours. When Willow visited us, right after we moved, I wasn't born yet. Somehow she got in the middle of a ritual Remy was making and they both got possessed and...well they had a baby. Jacques."

"Wow, there's something that doesn't happen every day," Spike was surprised.

"I know. Spirits should start using..." she stopped herself, she didn't really want to discuss that with her father. "Anyway he became a mystic too. He's the one who got me here. We're best friends. He lives with his father. Willow travels around a lot. People don't exactly like her. She got filthy rich off a book she wrote. The subject was taboo, so she got a whole lot of money and whole lot of hate."

"Must've been some book," Spike noted. "What happened to Xander?"

"He...didn't really take Anya's death well. He's something of an alcoholic," she said and Spike didn't comment on it. He felt sorry for the boy, but couldn't really bring himself to feel real compassion for him. "You should go to Xander's," she added after a while, feeling the sunrise nearing.

"Yeah, I don't want to spend my day here. This place's bound to collapse on a sleeping vampire. And sun bathing isn't in my program," he said, but couldn't stand up. "I'll just stay a little more. You should go though. If the slayer finds you gone she'll start suspecting god knows what."

"Yeah, like I'd be hiding things from her or something," she stood up smiling. She headed for the exit, when Spike asked:

"Did she ever love me?"

"Every moment," she said and left the vampire to his thoughts. It was up to him now. If he would help her or let her and the world die so he could live his dreams.

"I felt alive, yet dead," he muttered as she disappeared. He was alone and felt numb and lifeless, more dead than he'd ever been. His life was sealed.

Returning to the Summers home, Joy realized her absence had been noticed as Buffy, half asleep asked her where she had been. Joy had lied - she had been out hoping to find her brother. She had failed to do so. Buffy, too sleepy to be suspicious, believed her and warned her that the streets of Sunnydale weren't friendly, then went back to sleep. And of course there had been another unpleasant surprise, Connor was sleeping in her place. Frustrated she had gone downstairs to find that Xander had taken over the couch. What was she supposed to do? The only thing she could. She knocked on Willow's door and asked her if she could spare a pillow and if she could sleep on the floor there. Though barely awake, Willow agreed before crashing back down in her bed. This is how Joy spent her second night in Sunnydale. The morning would bring only trouble.

The morning had been as the one before, loud with protests from Dawn and sizzles of cooking and voices talking, but this time there was also a lot of coffee. Everyone, except Connor, Dawn and Cordy had had a long night, including Joy. Her red glasses could not hide her puffy eyes. She could've slept some more, but the floor wasn't looking so good. She decided to wait for everyone to leave before going back to sleep so she could curl up in a bed. Apparently they had believed Connor was the one who had left the previous night so they didn't bother to leave an empty bed for her, not even the couch. As Willow was telling Joy this, someone rang at the door. Buffy answered and was surprised to see who the person standing on her doorstep was.

"Hi, Buffy," the man said calmly.

"Wesley!" she let out. "You look...different," she let him pass inside and guided him to the kitchen where everyone was gathered.

"Wesley?" Willow asked surprised by his new look. "Never figured you for the roughed type."

"So what's going on?" the slayer asked the ex-watcher as she resumed making breakfast for Dawn.

"I'm here to warn you about...," he trailed off as he saw Joy standing behind Cordelia at the table. Their eyes locked and Joy immediately realized he knew something. "The girl," he finished. "She's not..." Joy's eyes suddenly glowed and Jacques appeared behind her extending his hand towards Wesley. "Who the hell are you?" he asked Jacques angrily. The mystic just smiled and a light shot from his hands hitting Wesley directly. The ex-watcher fell to the floor. No one in the room except Joy had any idea of what had happened.
End Part 7