Standard disclaimers apply.
-Blond Spike-
Spike leaned casually against the wall listening to his Nibblet worry. He would have much rather been lying down, but the girl was already upset by the marks on his face; no way he was going to let on that the remaining wounds weren't just cosmetic. He spared a brief grateful thought for Harris' blood delivery that morning, too little, too old and too cold but he wouldn't be faking it this well without it.
A less bitter gratitude had gone out to the whelp's orders to Dawn. They might not like each other, but neither denied the other's loyalty to the girl.
"Do you think they're going to be okay? I mean, what if the you they got doesn't like us? Or doesn't have the chip? And Xander was there but he was younger and pale, so he was probably vamped too, and Anya once told me that vamp!Xander was pretty evil..."
"Wouldn't fret so, if I were you. Was probably wisest that you not be there while they worked things out, but the spell was supposed to bring help, yeah? And even before the chip, I wasn't so chuffed on hell dimension opening. Told your sis once, I like the world, and whatever version of me this is likely feels the same way."
She nodded, paced a little, then came and leaned beside him. "I guess so. Just hope there's something they can do to help."
He could only agree. Well, agree and try to distract her with tales of Rio for a while until a strange feeling crept up on him.
"Nibblet, p'haps you'd best get below for now." He guided her quickly over to the hatch to the lower crypt.
"Is it Glory?" He cursed himself for frightening her.
"No, luv, not sure what, not even sure it's bad, truthfully." It actually felt like it was calling to him, like when Drusilla had been away chasing her mad ideas a while then came back to him, but not quite, and in spite of the indirect light that told him the sun was still high in the sky a part of him wanted to run from the crypt and reunite with... whatever it was drawing near.
Instead he took a firm grip on his instincts and arranged himself casually in his armchair, close enough to defend the lower level if need be, but not so obviously blocking as to draw attention to it. He tried to force down the pain and prepared himself to fight if he had to. The pulling sensation only grew stronger until he could hear running footsteps just before his door burst open and the most important person in his life ran to him.
Or maybe it was just Harris.
Spike sat in shock for a moment as he tried to reconcile the feelings of love/want/protect with the face and voice it was aimed at. Eventually he started listening to the words.
"...whoever did this! Seriously, they'll be so dead there won't be enough left to go to Hell. But we have to get you better first. Please, drink Sire." And the words confirmed what the feelings and lack of body heat had been trying to tell him, that this was his beautiful Childe and was offering him strength, so there was really nothing for it but to vamp out and bite.
It wasn't Sire's blood, but it wasn't the odd, tainted taste of unrelated vampires, either. It was rich and heady and felt a little like he had stored some of his own strength away to be returned to him in his hour of need. It was love and comfort and submission and...
And being ripped away and thrown across the crypt into a hard wall. Leaping to his feet, he looked over to see his Childe being menaced by... himself?
"What the Hell, Childe! How dare you let someone else feed from you? Some fucking past life loser? Just because he looks like I used to, you want to-"
"Leave him alone, you wanker!" He was shouting at himself and preparing to enter a fight he knew for a fact he would lose to defend a Childe he had just met a minute ago. Sure this was the Hellmouth, but seriously? "I can feel the bond with him and I don't even bleeding like my Harris! The pup was running on pure demon instinct."
His doppelganger shifted out of gameface and looked down at the whimpering vampire in his hands and Spike saw the moment when the rage shifted to confusion and concern at vampire-Xander's broken explanations.
"You were hurting, Sire, hurting so bad! I could feel the pain and danger and hunger, so hungry, Sire shouldn't be that hungry and hurt and I had to help, had to fix you, and..."
"Shhh, shush Xanpet, it's okay, I'm not angry anymore, I didn't know you felt the bond with him... Bloody strange, all of this if you ask me."
"Right there with you, mate." Spike settled back into his chair and enjoyed the feeling of his body starting to knit together in a way it hadn't been able to on the short rations he'd had access to. Not that it would help if he had to fight this version of himself. He could feel the age and strength of the demon before him and was belatedly catching up to the fact that both vampires had entered from the still sunny outdoors. "Guess you held onto your ring then, huh? But how is it working for both of you?"
His older self accepted the tacit offer of a truce and settled down on the nearby tomb, still gently petting his distressed Childe. "Got my Xanpet here to thank for that, on both counts really. When we first found the Gem, he commented on how a hand wasn't the most defensible place to wear it - something about a bloody goblin maybe biting my finger off before falling into a volcano..."
"Gollum." Spike and Xander corrected at the same time, and the younger vampire stared at him for a moment before pointing accusingly at his true Sire. "You tried to make like you'd never read Lord of the Rings! If he knows it, you really must have too!"
"Not the point," the other Spike said smoothly, but spared a glare for his double before continuing. "So I wore it on a chain under my shirt for a while - long as the gem was touching me it still worked - and when we each had one we actually put them in our bodies so no one would be removing them without a really lucky shot or an extended vivisection."
Wow, he was an idiot. "Damn, why didn't I think of that?"
"What can I say, he drives me crazy, but Xan thinks around corners." Spike took a moment to appreciate how effective his 'calm appraising' gaze was before he got annoyed at having it turned on himself. "So, two questions. Who's the human bint in the basement here and what the bloody buggering hell happened to you?"
Easy one first. "My sire left me, I got experimented on by soldier boys and then I starved for a year and a half before a hell god decided to play Twenty Questions. I've been recovering on sodding pig's blood, how do you think you would look, mate?" But even as he said it, he knew this version of himself would never be stuck in such a situation. He had a family, he would have had backup, and probably not been a little drunk and a lot reckless with anger at losing the gem to begin with.
"Glory did this to you?" Spike liked this protective, vampiric version of Harris. "That's it, I'm gonna kill that bitch even deader than we planned. Nobody messes with the Fang-tastic Four, even in another timeline!"
The other Spike froze for a long second, until Spike gave in and mouthed 'Fang-tastic Four?' then dropped his head hard onto the stone lid. "I told you never to call us that around... well, sentient beings, didn't I pet?"
It was a near thing, but vampires still couldn't blush. "...yes Sire."
"Remember next time, yeah? So, soldier boys, eh? You were the one they nabbed in this version?"
"That's right, they chipped someone else in yours?"
A tight, angry nod. "Dru. She wandered off to play while we were here looking for the gem - we'd already done the Slayer at that point so we didn't worry much, but she managed to get into Red's dreams and we figured out where she was. Hired some muscle with the rest of the swag from that tomb and wiped out the whole sodding lot of them."
"Wills figured out how to get the chip out, but it was horrible the few times we saw it go off." Xander looked haunted still and from the smell of them they had to be decades in the future. "Hey! I should ring her up again, maybe she can do something about yours!"
All three vampires turned towards the hatch as a loud "Eep!" came from the lower level.
"Right, about the human downstairs...?"
Spiked cursed to himself, his brief moment of joy at the thought that the chip might be removed crushed by the reminder of what its loss would do to his relationship with the Bit - to say nothing of Buffy.
Actually, better to say nothing of Buffy right now, anyway. Just that brief moment of holding his Childe, even one he hadn't truly made or raised, had him rethinking what he and a human could offer each other. What he felt for her was real, but that didn't mean it had any hope of a future.
But on to the immediate problem. "She's under my protection, and I think that's all you need to know for now." He said it like a threat, because that's how master vampires said that sort of thing but they all knew it was half bluff and half request. Still, with the bond he had to this different Xander, he figured he'd get away with it.
The other Spike had apparently made the same assessment and just smirked. "Taking in strays, mate? That's fine, but is she decent for company or she going to hide downstairs and eavesdrop all day?"
"I wasn't eavesdropping!" The Bit popped her head up and pouted. "You guys talk loud, it's not like I had a glass to the ceiling - Spike doesn't even have glasses!" She came all the way out and stared openly at the two new vampires. Xander stared right back, confusion written all over his face.
"Um, Sire?"
"Yes?" Spike was glad that vampires didn't blush as he answered at the same time as his doppelganger.
"I'm kinda remembering this girl and kinda not and it's giving me a wiggins."
"How so, luv?"
Dawn moved not so subtly over and sat on the arm of Spike's chair away from the other vampires.
"Well, I know her name is Dawn, and I'm pretty sure that she's Buffy's sister... But I don't remember Buffy having a sister. Except that I know she does in a really general way, I just can't dredge up any specific memories with her in them... Serious wiggins."
The other Spike nodded, but stayed relaxed. "Sounds like we found our key. Contrary to Red's opinion, I do pay some attention to research. When the key was made flesh in our reality, it was a massive spell; made a place for the new human in the world and in the minds of everyone who 'should' have known him. Same thing happened here, but we weren't around for the transforming spell, so you're just getting some residual effect, weak enough to see the holes."
Dawn was trembling slightly, but Spike's relaxation was becoming more real. Even several decades out of date, he knew himself well enough to be sure he wasn't bluffing, and the other Spike was regarding the Nibblet without any sort of malice. "So what exactly are you needing the Key for?"
Xander grinned. "Believe it or not, we need it to save the world."