Crossing into unchipped country (20/?) by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: At the start, around AtS 5.09 or 5.10
Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas.
Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305yahoo.co.uk
Buffy looks frantically from one Spike to the other, and although she can spot some differences they are no help at all. They are both looking kinda beat up, and if their wounds and contusions aren't each other's mirror that information gets her exactly nowhere. What's the point of knowing that the one duster is in tatters on the left and the other on the right? She didn't ask and she just can't tell. She assumed it was her Spike with her in the bottle, but how will she ever know?. What would she say? Um, gee, my Spike, did I have sex with you just now or was it your evil twin? The zinging in her fingertips and the sparking in many other places is not very helpful. Both Spikes make her tingle just as much.
They grin at her confusion in unison and cross their arms. The Spike with the most damaged duster looks a little glummer than the other so he must be hers. She hates herself for thinking that. Like having a soul and loving her would necessarily make a guy glum. No, what's she saying? He was wearing an undamaged duster this morning, now they're both ripped. The unsouled Spike is looking glum. Now what would he have to be unhappy about? Because he didn't have sex with her just now or…of course. Dru. Dru's being held by the Gatekeepers somewhere.
She turns around and sees two other prison bottles. Behind that is a bottle rack, stretching to the sides and upwards into infinity. Full of people or creatures that didn't get out, she presumes. They'd better get moving.
"What's the plan? Is there a plan?"
One of the Spike's frowns at her and grabs her arm possessively. "Of course. Let's get out of here."
The second Spike comes up and pets her arm soothingly. "Make nice to the lady, you oaf," he snarls to his look-alike. "C'mon, darlin', we gotta go."
Buffy looks from the one to the other in confusion. Are they trying to pull a stunt on her? Are they in it together or something? No, they growl at each other, which is totally weird as they're in human face, and they don't let go of her arm. They're both tugging at her, and while she's more than woman enough to get loose and doesn't feel threatened, she is getting annoyed. Two bulky men -- at least from her perspective— towering over her, eyes flashing dark blue in anger, sculpted lips pouting, free fists clenching. It would be ridiculous if she wasn't so apprehensive and antsy.
"Well? Who's who?" she snaps at the two gorgeous creatures posturing against each other. "Decide already!"
"If you can't tell, Slayer, too bad for you. Why don't you try picking one of us, eh?"
Buffy opens her mouth to indicate the utter pointlessness of that exercise when a tornado suddenly appears above the Spike who said this. It wraps around him and lifts him up with dizzying speed. Another Gatekeeper's arm, only a hundred times bigger. She hopes she and Spike two didn't kill a baby Gatekeeper. What with the gravelly voice and the bloodlust it seemed pretty adult, but then you never know with demons.
Another thick arm reaches out of nowhere and knocks the air out of her . She twists around to hold out her arm to the remaining Spike but he too is being airlifted out. To where? A worse place than the bottle prison? The trip through the pearly nothingness is very disorienting. She has no idea what is up or down or in what directions she's traveling and her stomach makes her pay for this uncertainty.
She's dropped down unceremoniously into the enormous amphitheater again. This time the stacked tiers aren't empty, they're literally black with spectators. Row upon row of frog faced yellow eyed monsters, filling the air with their fetid breath and subsonic rumbling voices. Great. The scary thing is, the black guys in the farthest rows she can see don't seem to be any smaller than the guys in the first row. That means they're really, really big. She cranes her neck all the way up to see of she can get a peep of the big Gatekeeper with the tornado sized tentacle but it's just brightness and nothingness that threaten to make her dizzy again. She lost her last meal, and had none to replace it with, so she decides there will be no more vomiting for now. Hopefully she'll be able to fight well enough on her empty belly.
At a guess, the demons are gonna play Caesar, and she and the Spikes are the gladiators who're gonna do the greet and die, thumbs down thingy. She's seen plenty of films about the subject, thank you. Arena confrontations never end well.
She makes a full circle to check out possible exits or helpful surfaces but there is nothing but smooth white stuff. Not stone, not sand, just stuff, neither hot nor cold, not smooth or rough. Huh. The Spikes behind her are doing the same thing, turning with her, taking care to stay in a triangle so that none of their backs is exposed at any time. They'd make a good team, if you could get around the weirdness of two identical guys.
Suddenly she notices a change during her umpteenth slow circuit of the arena. A patch of tan and red and pink mars the uniform blackness of the first rows. Buffy recognizes the yellow stained beard of old Ethan and the other Ethans standing next to him. It's still weirder than seeing two Spikes, because they are two strongly separate personalities.
"Look!" Buffy whispers to the Spikes. "Three Ethan Raynes. And I know rollerboy Ethan blames me for his imprisonment."
"Crafty bugger followed us and stole the device," Spike remarks. "Bastard got there before me."
Buffy throws him a disbelieving look. "I know. Were you actually planning to go back for it after you found Dru?"
"'Course I did. Wouldn't want to waste a brilliant opportunity, now would I?"
"What are you talking about? That the guy changed Rupert into a Fyarl?" the real Spike interjects.
The other Spike guffaws. "Heh. Like the way that Ethan bloke thinks. How did it end?"
"I helped him out," Spike says curtly, sounding a bit ashamed.
"Of course you did!" the other exclaims in disgust. "You would, Miss Goody Two Shoes." He elbows her Spike in the side, and he retaliates without a second thought with a fist in the nose. Buffy gapes. Do all guys turn twelve in her presence? Jeez.
The awful thing is that she can see her own past actions played out in Technicolor. She grits her teeth.
"Spike, I apologize for all those times I punched you in the nose."
Spike throws her an unreadable look. "Apology accepted."
"Silence!" a loud human voice calls out. "This court is now in session."
No need to all rise, she guesses. Nor swearing on the Bible, presumably.
A big hulking black Gatekeeper next to the Ethans stands up. It sings out like a synagogue cantor in a language Buffy doesn't understand. She checks with the Spikes, but they shake their heads.
One of the middle-aged Ethans stands up and directs his words to the captives. "Hereby stand accused Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer and William the Bloody, vampire, for willfully murdering a Gatekeeper. Another William the Bloody, vampire, for interfering with prison regulations."
Murdering? "Hey! The creep was trying to eat my soul! I have the right to defend myself against that!" Buffy calls out hotly.
The spokesman Ethan remains silent, clearly not intending to translate this for her. Buffy steps backwards, making the triangle with the Spikes smaller. She's not so sure her idea of fighting herself out of this predicament will work. Who can fight a Gatekeeper as big as an office building?
Gatekeepers stand up one by one and add their voices to the meeting. They can really sing, most of them, but she remembers the evil glee with which the one in Iowa smashed Spike into bloody pulp, and isn't inclined to give them points for musicality.
At last a Gatekeeper who's seated way up in the audience, which means he's the biggest so far, stands up. In a voice that makes her teeth rattle and shake he gives a very long incomprehensible summation. Suddenly all Gatekeepers rise and sing out one long painful note. Buffy claps her hands to her ears but it doesn't help enough, she feels like a bomb has exploded under her skull. Spike, no, the other Spike, leans in and gives her neck a long cool lick. She slaps him off in annoyance before she realizes he was licking the blood from her ear.
"You lick it off," she says to the other Spike. "Not him."
Her Spike turns his head and they stare into each other's eyes for what seems like a long time.
"You sure you're asking the right person, Slayer?" he says.
Shit. No, she isn't. She was for a second but he's kicked that security right from under her feet with his simple question. She turns her head around to the other Spike who smirks at her and licks his lips. Back to hers, who does the same. They're conspiring against her! This isn't funny.
She opens her mouth to speak when a notable hush falls over the Ethans and the crowd. They all look upwards and Buffy automatically follows their gaze. Far, far away in the scintillating white glare a black speck is visible, growing bigger quickly. Buffy tries to guess at the distance, but as the speck grows and grows and still hasn't landed she realizes it must be incredibly big. If a tentacle or Gatekeeper this big is descending, it's not going to pick them up, it's going to squash them.
"Guys!" she says sternly. "We have to get out of here now!"
"Up there, with the Magicians we'd be safe!" one of the Spikes says and points upwards.
They turn and run to the opposite end of the arena. They'll need to build up speed to make it up that high, must be four or five stories easily. They turn. Buffy's running flat out and makes her jump. Another loud sustained note sings out over the arena, in a lower key this time. Three tentacles flash out of nothing to suspend the three of them in the air.
"Bugger, bugger, bugger." the two Spikes say as one.
Buffy says nothing; she's too winded and angry. Her hands shake. She's not in the mood to die, there's tons of stuff she wants to do with Spike, but there's never been a moment that felt more like a Glory repeat. There's no Buffybot or Troll's hammer to help her out now. Maybe if Willow was here she could set fire to the whole lot of them?
"Incende!" she calls out on the off-chance, but just like there's no Bible swearing, Latin is not a power language here.
The tentacles turn them to face the opposite side of the arena, still suspended high above the floor. Three impossibly neat well-dressed men with harshly angled briefcases stand on the first row and hold up a piece of paper.
"Cease and desist the execution," the tallest of them intones. He has an impressive voice. "I'm an associate with the firm of Wolfram&Hart, known as the Pantheon of Lesser Gods, 2nd level of Hell. We represent Ms. Buffy Summers and Mr. William the Bloody, dimension 2356. The condemned must be available to be material witnesses against Gatekeeper Idaho 2351, who is accused of incitement to worship and the consumption of fifty-eight human souls, for which it failed to obtain the Gatekeeper Council's permission, and which is illegal under the Portal Charter of 4312 B.C."
"Go lawyers go!" a Spike guffaws.
Buffy doesn't quite know what to think. These are Angel's lawyers? Are they gonna save her ass or will she be beholden to them in some mystical kind of way she wouldn't like?
"Spike? You know these guys?"
"Not these fellows specifically, no. I reckon they're some of Charlie's flunkies. They'll save our sorry arses, all right."
There is conferencing among the lower-tier Gatekeepers, making Buffy think not of singing, but of a didgeridoo contest. She twists her head to take a peek at the Ethans, who're furiously conferring amongst themselves. When she turns back one of the Spikes is looking at her and giving her an encouraging smile. He's the one. She smiles back. If he thinks everything will be okay she'll quit worrying which is doing her no good anyway up here in the air. She tries to follow the tentacle up to a body, but it's like Jack's beanstalk, if you want to see where it ends you'd have to climb it. Now that she thinks of it, that doesn't seem too bad a plan.
"Spike!" she hisses. "We'll climb up and kill them all. Let's go down fighting."
He raises his eyebrows and looks doubtful, which is not what she expected. "We got a beef with all of them then? They sound more like customs officials than evil demons, love. And aren't you forgetting your duties towards Dawn? She needs you home and alive."
Well, well, who died and grew up? That'll take some getting used to.
The conferencing comes to an end and a sequence is sung by the largest of the group of humming Gatekeepers. The lawyer seems to understand what it being said. He rises up and flourishes more papers.
"Unacceptable! No crime was committed because the Gatekeeper in question was engaged in illegal activities wholly separate from keeping gate. Miss Summers had the right to defend herself. We do not concur with the removal of her limbs."
Buffy is very, very grateful that her limbs will not be removed. She did forcibly remove some limbs from the errant gatekeeper, but sheesh, it's not like they don't have limbs to spare! They can grow them back. There was no mention of Spike. Angel hasn't authorized the sacrifice of Spike, she devoutly hopes. She's a bit hazy on what happened with the ring of Amara, but she can't imagine they're friends.
More humming and tootling. Buffy's getting bored. She tries to wiggle her foot sideways. If she stretches out real far she can just touch Spike's jeaned leg with her big toe. Spike gives her a slow, sexy smile and extends his big scuffed boot so that her toe and his boot can play footsie together. Come to think of it, did he even remove the boots during their lovemaking aka grunting sex fest? Probably not. She wonders if she would have cared when she could have seen him not remove his boots. It's one of these deep philosophical questions that never will be answered.
The spokes-Gatekeeper carols another offer to the trio of lawyers. The lawyer stands up and gives a minimalist bow in the direction of the big guys.
"Release of Ms. Summers and Mr.The Bloody, dimension 2356, following a to be negotiated apology is acceptable."
"Noo! It's not acceptable! I want my pound of flesh!" Ethan Senior screams shrilly. "It's not fair! I brought them to your attention! I'm owed my vengeance!"
The Gatekeeper honcho sings him a question. Ethan subsides and hunches back into his wheel chair, rubbing his chin and looking at Buffy from under his bristly old man eyebrows. The Ethan Buffy met in Kakistos' Hall bends over and whispers a suggestion in his ear. The old man's face brightens.
"The Mediator is offering me the opportunity to dictate the terms of the apology. How about this, Miss Buffy Summers? You can only take one Spike with you. The Gatekeepers know who's who because they are attuned to the differences between dimensions. Can you?" he asks, rubbing his hands.
Buffy refuses to answer this.
"Are these terms acceptable to you, Miss Summers, Mr. The Bloody?" the lawyer asks.
"Yes!" her Spike says quickly before she can react.
Buffy can't believe he's okaying this. He wants her to publicly demonstrate her ability to differentiate him from his evil twin? That's just great. She has many abilities, but this may very well not be one of them.
"Are you insane? That's ridiculous! We're not gonna accept those terms!"
The lawyer, however, has other ideas about who's boss. "Okay, Mr. Spike."
He nods to the oldest Ethan. "Agreed."
Buffy is dropped from the arm holding her up without any warning at all. She's picking herself up and pulling her dress over her ass again when a steady buzzing noise attracts her attention away from her grooming. Thirty feet or so above her the Spikes are being spun around rapidly, circling each other all the while, like the fastest merry-go-round in the world. They're not gonna make it easy for her, so much is clear.
How dare Spike agree to this ridiculous and humiliating idea of making her choose! Is he out of his mind? Is this his petty revenge for her inability to recognize him in Cleveland? Duh, she answers herself. Of course it is. Great, just great. She'll pick the wrong one, given her track record so far. Although she's leaning towards the opinion she's had sex with the right Spike, she's not a hundred percent sure of this. She bases this on his behavior since then, and on the certainty that her Spike would never allow the other Spike to get quality time with her in a private bottle. Not with his jealousy and opinion of the other Spike's character.
Buffy has to think this through and come out with the right Spike in tow, or her life will be empty and meaningless forever. Given: she'll pick the wrong one. Therefore, she should just go for the one her guts tell her it's not. She's really really sick of this, she's groveled, begged, been silent and humble and supportive, but now that's just not the real Buffy. From deep inside she feels that upwelling of anger her that she knows as the Slayer's Wrath. She can rely on that anger, it has helped her out of many a tight spot so far. It's righteous anger, not to be confused with feeling sick and miserable and beating on your boyfriend to make the feeling go away.
The two Spikes are sown like black seeds on the floor of the arena. They are so similar in the way they roll over, get up and shrug their dusters in place. How could anyone know who's who? She can't. And she's not going to.
The two vampires stand next to each other, in the same arms-crossed pose and smirk at her. Buffy folds her own arms over her chest and advances on the Spikes.
"Listen up, guys. Not gonna play this silly game. I'm a woman, and the Slayer. I love one of you. I know I can't pick out the right guy just by looking at you, because let's face it, you look exactly the same. I know my limitations. I'm not perfect and never will be. Now, Spike that I love, you can either accept that and make yourself known, or you can throw away your chance to be my lover, boyfriend, or any other designation of your choice."
There. She's had her say and she'll stand by it. She gazes at the two Spikes and at first it seems her speech has had anything but the desired effect. They both look at her with admiration. She knew it. Spike loves the mighty Slayer, not the crow-eating wimp. The risk is that the other one is kind of built on the same principles, but she's betting he'll stand by Dru.
TBC