"I found something!" Dawn exclaimed, pushing herself off the floor. She brought the book over to the table and everyone huddled around her. "It says here that by saying this below incantation and using an Orb of Galadria, you can erase someone's memory completely."
"That sounds about right," Xander commented.
"How do we stop it?" Giles asked.
"It says you have to burn it using the lard of a Fornam demon." Dawn's face contorted into an appalled look. "Ew!"
"What's a Fornam?" Xander asked Giles.
"Let me guess, another thing to look up," Anya asked, with a hint of boredom.
"I'm afraid so. The sooner we find it, the sooner this is over with." Giles rubbed Anya's back with his right hand.
"If that's even how we lost our memories." Everyone turned their attention to Anya. "Your book said there were a bunch of ways to lose your memory and so far, over the span of two hours, we found one. Now we're gonna look for a demon, that we'll have to go find out there, get it's fat and burn an orb that we don't even have, and if we do, we don't know what it looks like. I'm ready to just go with the memory loss and continue from where we are now." Anya looked at Giles. "And you and I can rekindle our, adult, relationship."
"Bloody hell," Spike said under his breath.
"Anya's got a point," Xander said. "This is an awful lot of work to do just to get back some memories."
"Twenty one years of memories," Willow said, standing up in opposition. "That's a lot of years to not remember."
"But we won't remember the bad things that happened. I mean with this memory loss luck, whose to say the past has been especially kind to us," Xander defended.
"And whose to say this is the only thing that happened to go all… wonky."
In the back room Buffy was curled up on the half couch with the book. Her left hand was holding up her head while her right hand turned the pages. So far she read about meeting some souled vampire called Angel, the Harvest and a few random things. Right now she was reading about the Master's rising. Her face went blank when she reached an unnerving sentence. Buffy drowned after the Master drank from her.
"I was dead?" Buffy's heart started racing and her body temperature rose. "How… how could I forget something like that?" Memories started flowing back. She saw herself in a white dress. Some guy with fruit punch mouth bit her and she fell into some water. Her eyes open and she sees Xander and Angel smiling. She fights the Master and tosses him through the window on the roof of the school. She placed her hands over her face, trying to make the thoughts stop. She didn't want to remember this. Any of it.
"Buffy?"
She jumped a little in her seat when she heard her name. "Hi Randy." She brushed her hair back with her right hand.
"You all right pet?"
"Not really. No."
Spike walked towards her. He sat down next to her and cradled her in his arms. Buffy rested her head against his chest. He was so comfortable. Her thoughts of her life, which she didn't remember, ceased when she realized he didn't have a heart beat. How strange. But fitting since he doesn't need blood to live. Well, pumping blood anyway.
"What's wrong Buffy?" It was still a bit awkward to hear herself called that. "Do you mind if I call you Buffy?"
"No. It is my real name. I guess."
"Which your little sis is happy about."
Buffy let out a little laugh. Joan's better than Umad.
Spike let her be quiet for a minute before repeating his question. "Do you want to tell me what's wrong? 'Cause you don't have to if you don't want to."
"I was reading a scary book."
"My father's diary? Somehow expected that."
"No, it's nothing about him. It's all about me. Me killing vampires, me fighting demons, and apparently, me dying."
"What?" Spike asked, moving his head back so he can look her in the face instead of the top of her head.
"Yeah. It says here that I drowned." Spike's eyes wandered as he tried to register this new information. "But Xander gave me CPR and brought me back."
"Well, that's good."
"I thought so." Buffy moved away from Spike. He removed his grasp of her and just looked at her. "I just, want to see what else happened."
"All right. I'll just, leave you alone." Spike stood up.
"Randy, wait." Spike stopped. Buffy rose from the chair and gave him a kiss. He stood there in bewilderment. "I just felt like doing that." She pursed her lips and sat back down.
"Not complainin'," Spike said with a laugh. He waved before turning to leave the room.
"I would like my memory back as well," Giles stated.
"I wou-would too," Tara stuttered.
"I third that," Dawn established.
"Why don't we look through the records of our items. If there's no Orb of Galadria, then that wasn't what caused this," Anya suggested.
"Good idea darling." Giles stood and offered his hand to Anya. She took it and let him lead her to the counter. "Now we need to find the list." They looked through all the drawers.
"I guess will continue the memory loss treasure hunt," Xander said.
"Guess so," Dawn agreed.
"Can we at least get some sort of food. My stomach is growling like a bear. How 'bout you Randy?" Spike was off in a Buffy daze. He received bits and pieces of his memories whenever he was around her. They were only about a half-second long, but it gave him something to feel like he wasn't completely void of living in this world.
Buffy kept reading in the training room. She flipped a couple pages, not wanting to read about her occasional defiance and killing random vampires. She stopped at a page with a weird symbol in the top corner. She read it. It spoke of a Spike who came to the school on parent teacher night. "Spike," Buffy said, remembering that name. She flipped back and found where it spoke of Nikki Wood's murder. She was slain by the vampire Spike. He's killed one other Slayer before while he was in China. "He killed two Slayers?" She went all the way to the beginning. She glanced through, looking for the Chinese Slayer. As she was about to turn the page with a depiction of Spike, he entered the room. She stopped. "What?" Buffy asked sincerely, placing the book on the couch before standing.
Spike walked straight to her and placed both his hands on her face. He kissed her deeply. Buffy wrapped her fingers around his forearms as he continued to kiss her. After he slipped her his tongue for the second time he pulled away. "I just felt like doing that."
"Not complaining," Buffy said with a smile. Spike smiled back and kissed her again.
Author's Note: If you haven't read them yet, I have two others stories on here. They're called Betrothed (not finished, but pure humor) and Eclipse (finished and kind of dark, but still Spuffy).