Another party, another deja vu moment of seeing what would someday become Spike if Willow didn't stop it. She hadn't even talked to him, not beyond asking him if he'd like more to eat or drink. With a deep breath, she decided now would be best. The sight of a redhead with him stopped her. And she felt sick when she saw who that woman was and growled low.
When the doppelganger winked at Willow, she ran into a guest when she turned, covering his suit with red wine. "I'm so sorry. I'll, oh, sir, I'll fetch you another suit."
"Miss Rose, you'll do nothing more than leave this house at once and never return. You'll get no reference from me."
"Mr. Underwood, please. I need this job." Finding employment had been difficult, losing this would ensure not finding another legal job. "You hate this suit anyway. Let me get you cleaned up."
He grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the house and threw her into the street. "I'll sell your things to pay for the uniform you wear."
Not wanting to be seen crying, Willow stood up, dusted her dress off, and walked away. The footsteps behind her were familiar. "What do you want, evil me?"
"To lend a hand." Vampire Willow stood in the other's way with a piece of paper in hand. "Go here and you might find work as something other than a whore. Consider it a consolation prize for losing William."
"Fine, I got the message, can I go now?"
The vampire leaned in close. "He is delicious. You'd be amazed. William's almost as good at eating a woman out as other women are."
"Keep this conversation up and I'll find a way to die. There's gotta be something we haven't tried." She looked at the sky, hoping an answer would rain from the heavens.
"I'd love to keep trying, but we exhausted every method available right now."
"How long have we been here? Six years?"
"Almost seven." The two Willows walked down the immaculate London streets together.
"You know, you're not only my nemesis, but my best friend too."
"Don't give me cavities." The vampire pushed Willow in jest and Willow pushed the vampire back. "Did you know the Master's in town?"
"For how long?"
"As far as I can tell since a week before we got here."
"Wanna kill him?" Willow asked.
"I'll help you kill him if you help me cover up turning William without making me move."
"I'll think about it."
"You've got to be kidding me!" Xander screamed. "We've been living in the woods for how many years now? Just to make sure we cause no weird butterfly problems, and you're telling me we're still affecting too much? I learned archery, skinned and gutted animals I've killed, and then ate them. I haven't had anything that didn't taste like smoke and charred wood in over a decade. All I drink is water. And not just me but all of us. How are we making waves?"
Angel stifled a groan. "I heard some hunters talking today about how they found our cabin. We need to become nomadic if we don't want to create a horrible future for ourselves. Since we know that vampires here are the same, and I'm the only anomaly, we have to work on the assumption that this world is our world. Now pack."
"Buffy?"
"Oz and Angel made this decision and I don't know enough about time travel or dimensional travel spells to know where we are or how we got here. Until there's definitive proof of this being our dimension or a different one, I have to rely on their knowledge of magic and physics. It is physics, right?"
"Right." Oz agreed as he packed his bedroll.
"How are we going to find out if we don't go into the world sometimes?"
"I don't know, but what else can we do?" Buffy touched Xander's arm, but he pulled away.
"I think the reason you're on his side is that you two can go at it like bunnies, consequence free, and you don't care about anything else. Certainly not anyone else."
"Xander?"
Xander huffed away and packed what he could carry. As he was packing he found Angel's emergency stash. When he left out the back, Xander mentally apologized for stealing the last of daddy dearest's money.
After five days of walking, and before he got to civilization, Xander traded his leathers for his blending in clothes. Between the money he stole and his skill with wood and hunting, Xander felt sure he could make a life for himself. He'd felt like a slashed flat tire in their group anyway what with Oz shaking up with Angel and Buffy. It was like because he didn't have super powers, he didn't have desires according to them. He was sick of being the only one not getting laid.
A tavern looked like a good place to find some food, drink, and company. His step gleeful, Xander went and made with the merry happy that every history book was wrong about the hygiene thing.
When he noticed the human version of Angel, he paused for a second before ignoring Liam's existence. He wouldn't stop Angel from getting turned. He was on board the keep the future the same train that far, but he wouldn't avoid the drunken lout either.
"Anya, it's been over a hundred years hasn't it? Can't we let the subject drop?" Giles asked as they walked through the next village of what would one day be called Sweden. "I'm tired of apologizing."
"You should grovel at my feet every day, Rupert. You were the one that found the spell. You're the one that got us stuck in times so far back that there's zero chance of us not screwing up the future somehow. And neither of us can do magic. None, nada, zip, zilch. And being my orgasm friend doesn't get you off the hook." Anya sighed.
"At least no one speaks English around here or they'd set us on fire. I don't want to go through that again." Giles held a chipped and scratched lens to his eye. "It appears we found what we were looking for."
"Blind old codger, that's not what we were looking for. I could see how you made the mistake though." Anya approached the trader and spoke to him in his native tongue. "Do you have anything other than rabbit meat?"
Giles found a log to sit on. The recent rain made the ground a wholly unpleasant seat. He couldn't wait until the advent of spectacles, having never been so aware of his poor vision as he'd been for the last fifty years. When he lost the other lens to glasses whose frames had become unusable, he never recovered from the blow. He needed a walking stick just to keep from hurting himself or anyone else.
Anya sat next to him, obvious that it was her by her lack of BO compared to everyone else. He laughed to himself. "We should teach people about proper hygiene."
"Sure, right after we teach them about bacteria and microbes. He had some deer jerky not on display. I traded him a remedy for sore throats and got enough to last a week. I don't understand how these people still overdo the rabbit diet. The stupid fluffers kill more people. I hate them." She handed him a strip.
"You're terrified of them."
"That spell more than messed up. The logistics make no sense. We don't age, nothing kills us, we heal super fast, I can't get pregnant, but we can get sick, and if we don't eat well, we get weak. And again, no magic to get back." Anya stopped talking to chew off a piece of her jerky.
Giles refrained from replying. They'd been over this a trillions of times, and it led nowhere except her leaving him helpless for months. He swore she liked to be angry since she was rarely anything else.
A man sat on the other side of Anya whose odor was so offensive they both put their jerky in their bags. "Maybe we could try to teach them the finer points of cleanliness."
"I'd prefer not to be downwind of anyone when we do if you don't mind."
"Agreed."