A/N: The song played by "Dingoes Ate My Baby" is an actual DAMB (well, Four Star Mary) song, used without permission because I am a horrible person.

The "Lies My Parents Told Me" tie-in will come back up again, but if you want a clue -- remember who William wants to call when his mother is sick.

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I bloody well knew you blamed me!

No reason to feel guilty for hatin' me ever since...

You say demons are evil, and yet you don't have a problem around...

Oh, God.

Xander, the Vampire. The Vampire Xander.

"Buffy?" Xander asked, his eyebrows rising. "You okay?"

Not one word of this bullshit while we're there... he's bloody well been through enough.

"Sure... sure, I'm fine." Buffy forced her mouth to do the smiling thing. "It's just... well... apparently that demon venomy stuff made me forget this world and think the other one was real. I'm... all amnesia-y and still adjusting. The other world was really different."

"Oh, really?" She had Willow by the curiousity now. "How so?"

"Well... Giles and Mom weren't married, for one thing. So when I woke up, major wiggins."

"Don't feel bad, Buff," Xander laughed, sliding his arm around her waist. "It still gives me the wiggins. Those are the sort of mental pictures from which six-figure therapy bills are made."

"I can't imagine Giles having sex," Willow's nose wrinkled. "Do you think he polishes his glasses while he does it?"

"Oh, sure, yeah," Xander laughed. "The pillow talk's gotta be great, too. 'Oh! Oh! Oh, this is bloody superb! Jolly good, Joyce, bloody splendid!'"

"Faster, my crumpet!" Willow giggled.

"Guys!" Buffy screeched. "That's my mom!"

"Sorry, Buff." Xander gave her a playful squeeze. "We feel it's our sacred duty as your friends to deepen your mental scars."

"Well, he is related to Will," Willow grinned wickedly. "And from what Tara tells me..."

"Okay, stop that, stop that right now," Xander groaned. "Bad enough I live with the guy and have to hear the noises, I so don't want them explained..."

"Yeah, 'cause you and Anya have taken that vow of celibacy..."

"Uh-huh. Just like you and Oz. Little furry monks, the both of you."

"Hey, at least we never hoodooed a whole house with our monkey-lovins, unlike certain Slayers I could name and their G.I. Joes..."

Buffy very carefully kept her eyeballs inside her skull and her feet doing the walking. This was normal... so very, very normal, so much more normal than... well... normality. Walking into the Bronze, flanked by Xander and Willow, all playful teasing and camraderie... this was Old School Xander and Willow, Xander and Willow the way they should be.

Until she'd seen them like this, Buffy hadn't really realized how wrong things had been before, how utterly uncomfortable they'd all been with each other, the constant tension, the looks over each other's heads, the brittle fragility of the Them.

And how could this be so right... when Xander was a vampire, and the more steps she took between them, the more utterly convinced she was that Willow had become a werewolf?

And Xander was so... well... Xandery...

Suddenly, Willow's words returned to her mind: It's horrible! That's me as a vampire? I'm so evil and… skanky. And I think I'm kinda gay.

And her own... Willow, just remember, a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person it was.

And Angel's... Well, actually...

She'd glared at him then, and he'd mumbled something like "That's a good point"...

She suddenly, violently wished she'd let Angel finish his sentence, thinking of the all-too-human Willow she'd come to know later, Willow of the black eyes, Willow of the power trips, Willow of the most definite gayness...

"Amnesia, huh?" Xander steered her towards a table. "So, any chance your evil twin's gonna show up, wreak havoc, get pregnant with a kid that magically ages twelve years after the birth?"

"Oooh, after she gets kidnapped by by the evil witch who's secretly in love with her. Oh, and the baby has to be her brother's, only she doesn't know he's her brother 'cause their parents had a forbidden love..."

"Hey, she gets pregnant by her brother, you'll learn all about evil witches," Tara said playfully, raising her drink towards Buffy. "You're feeling better?"

Buffy slid onto the stool next to her, reminding herself that it was not actually possible to pass out from weirdness. "I'm not 100%, but..."

"Buffy's awake!" Anya beamed, setting a beer in front of Xander and screwing the top from her own. "I'm pleased, both for the improvement in your health and my sex life."

To Buffy's amazement, Xander didn't flinch; he just gave Anya a fond kiss on the cheek. "Patrol goes a lot faster with you around, Buff. Hey Red, tell her what we figured out, though."

"We switched up the patrolling teams a little while you were out of it, Buffy. Did some strength-specific rearranging, y'know, for more well-rounded groups."

Oh wow, how long had it been since she'd seen Willow's look-at-me-I'm-glowing-with-my-own-nerddom face?

"We'll never admit it, but it was Jonathan and Andrew's idea," Xander stage-whispered. "This D&D thing about a balanced party."

"Huh?" Buffy said sagely.

"Y'know. In a party, you don't want, say, all warriors. You want a warrior, a mage, a cleric, a rogue... cover whatever gets thrown at you."

"I meant, um... who's Andrew?"

"Tucker's brother," the others said in unison. Apparently, they got asked this a lot.

The soundsystem cut off mid-song, and Willow began clapping frantically... the others joining in.

"What's going on?" Buffy asked.

"Dingoes coming out," Xander whispered.

Of course. Of course. Oz hadn't left...

Buffy's heart skipped a happy beat. She was gonna get to see Oz!

And suddenly, there he was, walking out on stage, hair a violent shade of grape, shrugging into his guitar, starting the rather painful feedback loop that began this song, and oh, she had liked this one...

Buffy's face split into a grin as the feedback ended and Oz began to strum, his head bobbing ever so slightly to the music, his eyes meeting Willow's in the crowd, that little nod and smile...

Oz! She'd missed Oz. There was just something so right about having him up there, his little movements becoming more pronounced as the drums kicked in, that blissed-out, bizarrely serene look on his face.

Feelin'...
I've been lost for years...

Huh. Devon's voice had changed...

No. No it hadn't. She knew that voice. I died, so many years ago...

Oh, my God.

You can never understand me,
Unless you've seen those tears...

She ripped her eyes away from Oz, sliding them over to Spike at the microphone.

But you never get to sleep when I'm away
I don't mind the deeper that you lay...

Oh, wow. Just... wow. And... wow.

Spike was playing a bass.

No, no. Wrong verb. Utterly wrong verb.

Spike was fucking a bass. Only way to describe it. There was something primal in the way he played, something completely and utterly Spike in the way he played, something that took William and melted him away, leaving only the raw, demonic grace of Spike, Spike's hips grinding into the guitar, those beautiful fingers dancing over the strings, pressure and grace and precision and delicacy and rhythm, and God, there were so many sick fantasies suddenly popping into her brain at once that she could barely think around them, and...

And Xander stood, holding his hand out to Anya, leading her out towards the dance floor.

She'd been wrong. There was something different about Xander. For one thing, he looked younger, slimmer, more like High School Xander than Construction Guy Xander, and that wasn't all, there was...

Confidence. Maybe that was it. The way Xander was whirling Anya in his arms, confident in his own strength and grace, confident in her desire for him, a crooked little smile on his face, somehow all adorable Xander but infused with something, something that reminded her of Spike and Angel both at once with a funny little heart-tug...

For that matter, when had Xander ever touched her with the kind of casual ease with which he'd led her into the Bronze? He'd wrapped his arm around her like it belonged there, none of his normal bounce-and-wobble-and-worry, and she'd just accepted it, because he'd accepted it...

Buffy realized something that made her heart stop.

This Xander... she probably would have dated.

Oh, God. She really was a vampire groupie.

Buffy looked at Xander, at Willow, at Spike... no, at William, with the potential of the Spike-he-could-become... and felt her brain dancing on the edge of a revelation she really, really didn't want.

Xander and Anya swirled closer to each other, Anya's head tipped back to look up at him, a teasing smile of invitation on her face as Xander took her by the hips and pulled her closer...

Before he stiffened, his eyes flashing amber, at something over Buffy's shoulder.

"Buffy," Riley said softly, and Buffy whirled.

Oh, God. He was here. Really here, and... reaching for her face, smoothing his thumb over her cheekbone.

"Glad to see you're feeling better," Riley smiled.

"Yeah! I'm... I'm all of the good. How are you?"

God, did her voice sound that... chirpy... outside of her head?

"Better now that I know you're okay." Riley took her hand, the slightest hint of reproach in his voice; he was her boyfriend after all, she probably should have called him...

"You, uh, wanna dance?"

He eyed her, searching for injuries. "You up for that?"

She leaped up and pulled him onto the floor in response, letting her hips move to the music, ignoring the twinges from her still-sore ribs...

And soaking up information.

Everyone had gone tense. Xander and Anya had left the dance floor, whispering to each other as they took their seats; Willow was hunched over defensively, shredding a paper napkin, biting her lip; Oz was painfully close to actually making a facial expression; Spike was no longer flowing to the beat, every part of him preturnaturally still except his fingers, and Tara -- wow, who knew one of Tara's looks could kill?

She knew this tension, knew this ice crawling up her spine; this was the Scoobies whenever she'd let Spike get too close, those hooded, fraternizing-with-the-enemy looks...

For Riley. Not Spike, but Riley...?

"You, uh, you wanna get out of here?" Riley whispered into her ear. "All the daggers being glared at me are starting to break the skin."

"Um..." She really didn't, but... "Okay..."

Tension visibly left Riley as they hit the night air, a sigh of relief escaping him.

"That was... kinda intense," Buffy tried.

Riley chuckled angrily. "They're never going to accept me as your boyfriend, are they?"

"Well, they... you uh, you know how they are..."

"Oh, I know how they are." Another angry chuckle; she'd forgotten Riley's tendency to wrap his rage in laughter. "You think they're ever going to figure out that I am not the Initiative?"

"Well, you know..." Except that she didn't, and that was making this a really hard conversation to be in...

"Nobody's sorrier than me for what happened to Will," Riley sighed. "But I wasn't a part of it. I didn't have anything to do with it. And it worked out in the end. So why can't they forgive me? Even after I rescued Oz... it was like it didn't matter..."

"Well, the Initiative's... kinda scary..."

"Why do you do it, Buffy?"

"Do... what?"

"Surround yourself with HST's. You're the Vampire Slayer, for God's sake... and yet here you are, with your... creature of the night harem."

Buffy sighed. "Riley, maybe now would be a good time to mention that the, um, demon venom I was exposed to gave me total amnesia, huh?"

"What?"

"The demon venom. It made me, um, hallucinate this whole other world-thing and forget this one. So what you're talking about? Me, with the no clue."

"But... you were talking about the Initiative..."

"Well... it was in the other world. Just... different. What happened to Will?"

"Demon-induced amnesia, huh? That happened to Graham once."

"Yeah, great. What happened to Will?"

Riley sighed heavily, sitting down on a packing crate. "After we captured Hostile 17..."

Buffy blinked. "Sp... Will was still Hostile 17?"

"Hostile 17 -- Alexander Harris," Riley clarified. "We weren't going to hurt him, Buffy, we were merely going to implant a behavior modification chip in his brain. A very simple device, to keep him from harming humans..."

"With blinding pain in his head?"

"Uh... well, I don't know about blinding..."

"Go ahead."

"Anyway. We'd captured Hostile..." Riley looked at her face. "We'd captured Xander. And Will, he just... came out of nowhere, totally surprised Beta Team, he was like... and okay, I wasn't on the team, I want you to know that, this is all what Graham told me, but... he was like a... beserker. Just... crazy. Like... well, what Graham told me, it was creepy, it was like he was... happy. Grinning like crazy, all these guns pointed at him, it was like... like he was enjoying it."

Buffy suppressed the smile that was threatening to spread across her face.

"Anyway," Riley continued, "He broke Forrest's arm, got him to drop H... Harris, he was kicking guns out of the guys' hands, it was just... and then he did some kind of... well, Buffy, I have to guess it was a spell or a charm or an artifact or something, you know I don't really know about that stuff. Whatever it was, Beta team suddenly couldn't see Harris anymore. They radioed for backup, and Alpha team came in... with new orders from Walsh."

"To take Will," Buffy whispered.

"The thing is, Buffy, Walsh had been watching you for a while. Most of your... uh, people... were easily classified. You, the Slayer. Xander, the vampire. Willow and Oz, the werewolves. Y'know. Will was the X-factor. He seemed human... but she thought no human could fight like that. Walsh wanted to... study him."

Buffy's eyes narrowed. "You mean, she wanted to cut him into chunks and sew him into Adam."

Riley deflated. "Pretty much. Yeah."

"What did they do to him, Riley?"

"I -- I don't know. And Buffy? I don't think you want to."

The silence stretched out between them.

"Riley?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Do you... do you know when Xander got turned? I... I don't think I can ask him."

Another chuckle. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you wouldn't want to."

"What happened?"

Riley ran his palms down his thighs, searching for the words. "They'd all gone bowling. Funny, huh? I mean, bowling. Big group thing. Oz, Willow, Xander, this girl Xander was dating named Cordelia... and Will and his girlfriend Faith."

Buffy's jaw dropped, and Riley smiled a little. "Not to, uh, 'give you a wiggins', but Faith was actually a vampire slayer too. You guys were pretty close."

"You've..." Buffy fought to keep the tremor out of her voice. "You've got... past-tense action there."

"There was a vampire attack on the bowling alley," Riley said simply, looking up at the stars, avoiding her eyes. "Cordelia died, Faith died, Xander got turned. In all the... the chaos, Oz wolfed out. He bit Willow. Lots of other kids died. It was... it was a mess. Willow hasn't done magic since."

"Wha... why? Why would... can werewolves not do magic?"

"Uh..." Riley dragged the word out, a hesitant look on his face. "Willow... she... she'd done a spell. A... de-lusting spell. On her and Xander. It backfired... really badly. Drew the vampires to them. If Oz hadn't grabbed her, Willow probably would have been turned too. Besides, the ah, the effect the spell had on the people around them... it sort of... um. Sort of made everyone there... easy pickings... er. Preoccupied."

Bowling. De-lusting spell... oh, my God.

"He saved them," Buffy laughed incredulously. "He accidentally saved them..."

"Huh? Buffy, who are you talking about?"

"Spike. I mean, Will. It's... a delusion thing. Not... not important."

"He didn't save them, Buffy. That was... that was kind of the thing. Back then, Will and Faith were the only ones who really had the strength to fight... and, uh. They were. Um. Also preoccupied. In a bathroom. By the time they realized what was going on, it was too late for Xander and Willow, and then Faith died in the fight... Will's always blamed himself, and, uh... you've always kind of blamed him, too."

"But... I mean... it was Willow's fault, right? She did that spell..."

"Didn't matter to Will. I mean, think about it, Buffy. He lost his girlfriend and watched his best friend get turned into a vampire."

"But... I mean... I'm the Slayer, why wasn't I there? Why... why doesn't he blame me?"

"I don't know, Buffy," Riley shrugged. "Maybe... maybe he does."