Hand between the knees of the latest wannabe not a mother, Willow sighed. Menstrual extractions weren't complicated, but they posed a risk. Antibiotics helped but Willow worried that the early invention would lead to resistance to the drug a lot sooner than they'd find an alternative. The struggle for women's rights was ongoing though, and she had little opportunity to research.
"Madame Laurel, could you make up a necessity kit for this one? She's almost done. And get Spike to take her home if he's back from his duties with the renters. If not then help her get three blocks away and ring a cab." When Willow was finished with the woman in front of her, she smiled. "Take the antibiotics the way I instructed and you should be fine. You can pay the Madame when she gives you the kit."
Willow cleaned up and sterilized the equipment while she listened to Laurel tell the woman what everything was for in her kit. Oral medication, a diaphragm, some herbal teas if they miss another period, and a book about the female reproductive system. They left without Spike, so she waited for him to return, relaxing with music on the victrola.
When Spike showed up it was dawn. "Report?"
"Word's gotten out. The only renters work for your Madames and are protected from harm by hired thugs. That pimp who tried to invade your territory has been terminated. He's the only casualty of the night. And Will?"
"Yes."
"Willow wants to see you for breakfast, so look respectable, or at least pick a gender." He toed off his boots, hung his coat up, and disappeared downstairs to sleep with the other vampires that looked over her employees.
With hair cut close to her head, Willow passed as a man when she had to consort with the rich. While in the hollow, she dressed however she pleased, mix and matching male and female clothes. So she changed into her suit and got the remains of the procedures out of the icebox and into the cooler.
Her horse was easier to maneuver through the streets than the car, so she took him. Her arrival at the Addams estate was met by the hostess. "Hello Willow, how are you doing this fine morning?"
"Tired of being stuck in these primitive times. Have you learned why your magic isn't working, Will?"
"That willing to give up invulnerability?"
"There's no risk, so I'm immensely bored. God, I even sound like I belong here. You must do something." Willow looked at the cooler. "Is that a big or small breakfast?"
"Medium, but it should do you for the day." The women walked through the front door. "You gotten any closer to gaining the Master's trust?"
"The bastard is more careful now than I remember. It's bizarre. He could tell I was his, but no matter how many times I tell him what happened he's leery of me. Doesn't easily trust creatures from other dimensions or times." She accepted the cooler as they sat in the dining room. "Uterine linings and fetuses might be worth not killing innocent people. I've tasted nothing sweeter."
"Well the women are just happy to not bear unwanted children. Hurts no one for you to reap some benefits." Willow crossed her ankle over her knee. "So tell me, what have you heard about our boy? Have any of your contacts heard anything? Mine haven't."
"Turns out he's determined to modernize war tactics of the oppressed while working through legal channels at the same time. And he's yours not mine. Mine wouldn't risk exposure. He wouldn't work with things so low as politicians. And how are our inventions coming? I can line up some new frontmen for us whenever you need."
"The inventions are great. Big for my taste but there's not much I can do about that yet. I need large equipment before I can make smaller versions. You going to get your hands dirty this week and help out?" She got up and poured herself some whiskey then lit a cigarette.
"If I have time. My 'mother' has taken ill and I need to make a show of looking after her. I don't think we can stay in London for more than another year. People are talking. They talk about how uncanny the resemblance is between me and my mother and my grandmother before her." Willow sipped her red liquid breakfast. "This batch is perfection. No impurities in the blood."
"Two upperclass women. I'm sure you know them since they commented on how much we look alike."
"Do tell!"
"You know I won't."
"Fine. I'll hit you with the bad news then." She paused to pick her words. "If we're going to kill the Master, I need to do something big for him. Darla insists that he likes parties. The kind with a lot of human victims. But I will not piss in my cornflakes and cross you."
"You don't want to end up in a dozen boxes buried miles away from each other again." Running fingers through her short hair, Willow pondered the problem. "No one under sixteen and no one under my protection, but if we're not staying much longer then we need to dust him sooner rather than later. And we need to make a plan for the businesses left behind. I'm not leaving those people unprotected."
"I have an idea about that. Give me a week and I should have an exceptional plan in place. You must promise to make it to the next ball. Bring your little girlfriend if you want. Should make for a wonderful scene."
"Everyone still thinks I'm your brother?"
"They do. People see what they want. You know that as well as I do."
Angel, Oz and Buffy sat in the inn watching the surrounding people. "Is this how you remember it?" Buffy asked.
"No. Women had little standing when I was alive. Nothing like this at all. I have a theory about why these changes are happening."
"Don't keep us in suspense." Oz sipped his tea.
"I think some of us, the ones there for the spell, got sent back even farther. Far enough that they couldn't help disturbing the timeline." Angel sighed. "And Xander's been making substantial changes too."
"Well all of us have so much future knowledge any of us could make a killing. We could be super rich and powerful. But other than Xander, who do you think would make these changes?" Buffy asked as she picked at her lard soaked breakfast.
Oz shrugged. "It could be anyone. The emphasis on education we've seen could be Giles or Willow, and the women's rights could be Willow or Anya considering her kill men tendencies."
"The good news is we're probably not in our home dimension. Things are so changed that at least one of you probably don't get born. If we were in own universe one of you would've disappeared by now." Angel twisted his knife on its point.
"What if there was another one of us that has disappeared? Someone with us that has already disappeared? Would we remember them?" Buffy asked.
"Wouldn't happen that way. If we're in our home dimension, we're really not. As soon as we ended up back in time a fork got made. We created a new river in time. Even if we never get born, we'll be fine."
"Huh?"
"The future us that may not get born are more like clones of us but they aren't really us."
"So their fates have no effect on anyone thrown back through the spell. Interesting." Angel sat back and pondered the physics and philosophical implications.
"I understood that one. I blame it on being stuck here for over a century. How did you do this the first time around, Angel? The lard alone is too much." She dropped her fork on her plate.
"I was born into this, and then I was a vampire."
"But no more woods?" Buffy asked. "I mean if we're in a different timeline, why stay hidden?"
"She has a point, big guy."
"You're willing to risk more change?" Angel asked. "Both of you?"
Buffy dropped her napkin on her plate. "At this point we need to make changes. Oz is super smart with electronics, you're great with people, and I've got a keen fashion sense. Between the three of us, we could rule. Or at least improve things."
"I'm with her." Oz said.
"We should find Xander." Buffy dropped to a whisper. "He's probably feeling alone with no one who knows he's from..."
A man walking by stopped and addressed them with a thick Scottish accent. "Did you just say you were looking for Xander?"
"Yeah, I guess that's not a common name right now."
"I can take you to a man that knows all about him. You must show respect though. The great Xander freed Scotland, and I'll not listen to anyone speak ill of him."
"We'd never speak ill of such a great man, would we?" Angel asked the other two as he stood up.
"Never. We revere him and his legacy." Buffy nodded and stood up as well.
"As they go." Oz also stood up, leaving coin on the table.
"Well then, follow me. His son's putting together his own campaign to free even more people from oppression. His ideas sound radical at first, but hear him out for he takes after his father." The man bowed. "My name's Kirk, seems to tickle young Mr. Harrison. And who might you be?"
"My name is Elizabeth but everyone calls me Buffy, and these are Liam and Daniel." Buffy didn't let her disgust for the name Elizabeth show. She wasn't an Elizabeth, she was a Buffy.
"Will the lady honor me by allowing me to escort her?" Kirk bent his elbow.
"I knew Mr. Harrison when I was a child, his favorite stories were about a man named Kirk that lived in the stars." Buffy threaded her arm through his. "His son loved those stories as well if I recall."
The four left the inn took a carriage to a home in the next town. They'd been greeted by a woman in her late forties. She lit up when she heard their names. "He'll be delighted to see you all again. We've been in the area specifically looking for you. Thank you for bringing them Kirk, but Alex would like to meet with them alone. Give them privacy to catch up."
"Of course ma'am." Kirk bowed and left.
"I'm Margret, Xander's wife. He's told me so much about all of you. He's been searching for the others, Giles and Willow as well but has had little in the way of luck."
Xander walked up behind his wife and kissed her cheek. "We hate it but these days Margret passes as my mother to the outside world and I'm my own son or you know, something."
She pressed her forehead to his cheek. "I can't believe he stays with an old hag like me."
"We've talked about this. You're not old, or a hag of any kind. You're gorgeous and I wish I could get old with you." He kissed her lips. "And these are my friends, my real friends, and we don't have to pretend around them. We can just be the married couple we are."
Buffy stepped forward. "He's right. You're gorgeous and if Xander's doing this well, you must be brilliant. How have you kept him from falling all over himself?"
"It hasn't been easy let me tell you. He seems to gravitate to the idiotic actions, but he listens when I tell him he's about to make a big mista-" Margret disappeared.
Xander's devastation was compounded by the sudden shift in their surroundings. Buffy, Angel, and Oz all found themselves rattled to their core at the shift in the world. "Another timeline?"
Giles and Anya had been freeing slaves in the Middle East when the world melted into something they hadn't seen before in their entire existences.
"Didn't we just killed the Master?" Spike asked as he saw the oozing pitch around them.
"We did," Willow said. "Will please explain this."
"Um, I'm thinking."
"Well is there a reason for this or not?" Spike grabbed Will by the shoulders begging for an explanation.
"Not a scientific one as far as I know. But is that guy over there the Master? As a human?" Will pointed to a naked man bowing to a demon the size of the Chrysler Building. "His chanting sounds like the Master's voice. Willow, you agree?"
"Ugh, it does. That's him as a human? He's so scrawny. Can I eat him and put him out of everyone's misery?"
"I don't see why not, but let's feel things out first."
Spike kept his eyes on their environment. The cloud high monsters ignoring their existence, the lack of solid ground. "Are these the dinosaurs you spoke of?"
"No, these are what will one day be known as the Old Ones. They exist in a pocket of time that will become magically sealed from scientific study. It's a part of history I only know about from magical texts. After the dinosaurs and during millennia of the first humans that no one knows about. This is when demons mingle their blood with humans because they see the writing on the wall. They see they can't keep their purchase on this world, and produce progeny that will stop at nothing to bring back their ancestors. The ancestors banished to other dimensions and connected to this one through hard to open portals and hellmouths. This for lack of a better term is the beginning of the end of hell on Earth." Will looked at Willow and Spike. "And we can change things for the better. Make it even harder to bring this back. Save this dimension if the others don't end up back even farther than us."
"Did she just make an argument for saving the world that we agree with?" Willow asked Spike.
"She did. But to be fair she had help. This is not my idea of a permanent vacation locale."
"Me either. And we're stuck here for the foreseeable future." Willow pouted. "I miss my world. Chains and pony rides."
"So how far back did we go?"
"Approximately, two hundred thousand years."