Author's Note: Most of this chapter is Veronica thinking things over. As such, though Veronica is doing her best to be logical, there may be flaws in her reasoning and the narrative may be a bit disjointed.

And: I asked, and I got over thirty responses, ranging from short to a page or more in length, detailing their arguments, and I got some for all three cases. It helped sharpen this chapter immensely.

So: To Shieldage, DonSample, Silverfish, Shikome Kido Mi, BTL, Ansku, Misslinglink, Ben, Ponder, EarnestScribbler, Silverwave, Speakertocustomers, Pierdalumbre, Wilkens, Frardowin, wickedfire, dspyre, CmdrUhura, RachelK, StephanieBHall, KWJordan, Allen pitt, Hollow, Tater, Absconding Cascade, PatM, Greywizard, Caminus, Carandol, Marcel, Duchess, Arkeus, Imzadi, daisuke, ironic-hat, lubof, sobriety, curius, HowardRussell, purpleorchid85, ghostdraconi, gabrieldarke, KJA, and anyone else I might have missed, thank you for your arguments, your viewpoints, and your opinions. They were much appreciated.

X X X X X

Thinking, now.

Part of my thinking would have to be done while I did other things.

I'd called Dad and told him I would be a little late, but now I had to head to the office and do a couple of hours' worth of paperwork. Dad would be finishing up whatever paperwork only he could do that remained from the Viola Kerrigan case, and probably getting things in order with Lamb and company, if he hadn't taken care of that already.

The office work at Dad's office wasn't entirely mindless, but 95% of it I could take care of with 5% of my attention, leaving my brain more or less free to ruminate, hard, over my next course of action.

The best-laid plans of Mars and men, alas.

I got to the office to find Dad standing just inside, waiting for someone. The someone turned out to be me.

"We have to go," he said, and he didn't look happy about it.

"Go where?"

"The Sheriff's Office," he said.

"Whatever it was, I didn't do it, I was elsewhere, I have witnesses, and I'll sue for harassment."

"Nothing like that," Dad said. "Lamb decided he wants your perspective tonight, 'while it's fresh'."

"I'm elsewhere, I have witnesses, and I'll sue for harassment."

"Sorry, sweetie," he said, ushering me towards the door. "Think of it like ripping off a band aid."

"Can I think of it like punching a really annoying person in the face?" I asked hopefully.

"Sure," Dad said as we got in his car. "You can think of it like that all you want."

Translation, no hitting the not-so-nice sheriff. Pooh.

X X X X X

The meeting was better than I'd hoped. Which meant it was simply mind-numbingly dull instead of just short of actual torture, the way most of Lamb's interrogations were.

Still. It was the dictionary definition of "two hours of my life I'll never get back," and if Lamb learned anything he didn't know yesterday, I'll french Drusilla the next time I see her.

I managed to restrain myself from murdering Lamb. That alone should get me into Heaven.

At around 6:30, Lamb, unable to think of any creative way to ask me "and what happened after Lynn Echolls stormed upstairs" for the fifth time, finally let me go. Dad, in the meantime, had been going over his report with one of Lamb's deputies; one of the smarter ones, too, because Dad had apparently only needed to explain everything twice. It was no wonder Lamb had gotten the job once Dad had been recalled; he was smarter than the rest of these goons put together.

Hell, Harmony was smarter than the rest of them put together.

And it's not as though Lamb was breaking any records on IQ tests, himself.

Oy.

I grinned as we left the interview room and said, "Always a pleasure, Deputy," while letting my eyes tell Dad exactly what kind of pleasure it hadn't been.

"You know, Miss Mars," Lamb said, "That stopped being funny a long time ago."

"Your job as sheriff, on the other hand," I said, "Continues to be a laugh riot." I moved over to stand next to Dad.

"Are we done here, Don?" Dad asked pointedly.

"Oh, yeah," Lamb said.

"I trust you were cooperative with the nice Sheriff?" Dad asked.

"Answered every question," I said. "Sometimes as many as five times."

"Get out of here," Lamb said.

We got.

X X X X X

Dad gave me a pass on paperwork for the night, even though I volunteered. We scarfed up a quick pizza and then he headed back to the office.

There had been no news story about Aaron Echolls confessing, retiring from film, apologizing,to Lynn, or getting himself killed trying some stupid stunt, so whatever effect the wish had was staying strictly in private for now. My only possible witness, Logan, wasn't talking anyway, not that I could blame him.

So. At home.

Time to ruminate.

Leaving aside practical considerations – such as, could I help Buffy locate the vampires' headquarters if I decided to help her, or could I find a way to communicate with them if I decided to warn them – There were three alternatives.

One was helping Buffy to the best of my ability.

Two was warning the vampires that the Slayer was out for blood, and to not be overconfident.

Three was sitting on my hands and doing nothing and just letting things play out, the way I did with Inca Mummy Girl and Reptile Boy.

Let's go through the ramifications in reverse order.

I was least likely to go for option three in any case, but to be thorough I had to consider it.

This covered any variation on not doing anything: Whether I stayed in Sunnydale and kept to myself, or I ran for my life. Not that I was likely to do the latter, but if Dad tumbled to the truth about Sunnydale he and I and Backup would be packed up and out of here just as soon as we could, and that was more or less the same thing.

So. Sitting on my hands. Not something I'm good at, but this isn't a talent show.

This isn't necessarily about what I want, either – this is about what needs to be done. Per the bet, I'm supposed to be changing things around here for the better. Whether I'd done that so far was anyone's guess.

Of course, that was one of the things, maybe the main one, making this decision so hard. I'd already changed enough that, while individual episodes were still things I could change – I couldn't think of anything I'd done to alter Bad Eggs, for instance – the overall storyline was very much in flux.

So doing nothing would simply let whatever I'd done so far play out, which had Buffy confronting a Drusilla in the prime of health and lunacy, and a slightly damaged Spike. (I didn't really have a lot to go on, but I was assuming that a vampire with a broken arm, particularly a smart and cunning one like Spike, was still pretty damned dangerous to the average person on the street, if somewhat less so to Buffy, even at her current level of experience.)

That was one thing I had to remember, also: Mid-second-season Buffy wasn't as good a fighter as she was later. She'd had over a year of experience, and she was still damned good. But taking on Spike and Dru?

She could, of course. I wasn't underestimating her, either. But I don't think it would be anywhere near a guaranteed win even in season seven.

And those two things together pretty much out paid to any notion of sitting this one out. There was no way I was going to win the bet with the Adversary if I just stood by and watched –

Unless that was the 'lesson' he was trying to teach me. The Adversary never put any limitations on me researching him, and it had come up in the course of my phony search for Epimetheus anyway, that his 'bets' were always about teaching someone a lesson.

Maybe mine was supposed to be about arrogance, thinking that I could change things for the better. If so, it was a lesson I was determined not to learn, because if you give up thinking you can change things for the better, what's the point in doing anything?

"If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do." Angel's words were glib, and you had to hear them the right way or it just sounded like he was contradicting himself, but they rung true.

Anyway. No. the bet was still whether I could make things better, not whether I could learn to stand around while things happened around me.

And if I did nothing, it was reasonable to assume that Buffy had a better chance of ending up dead or badly injured.

So, that much was settled, at least. I was going to have to do something. The question was, what.

(Running screaming into the night? Not an option. Also a spectacularly bad idea, particularly in Sunnydale.)

And assuming 'going catatonic' and 'waking up a la Normal Again' were also off the table, that left trying to manipulate Spike and Drusilla into leaving town, or doing my level best to help Buffy blow them off the face of the planet.

Note: the choice is between helping them both, and killing them both. Killing just Drusilla? Bad idea. Bad, bad idea, considering what that would do to Spike, in the short run, and probably the long. That Spike would never be a good guy, or even think of it. All he'd be is out for vengeance. Not a good idea.

So: what were the arguments for helping out the vampires, instead of helping out Buffy?

One was preserving the future as best as I could.

Drusilla didn't do a whole hell of a lot on Buffy past this season – I think she only showed up for Crush and in flashbacks – but she did things on Angel.

But were any of those irreplaceable? She'd re-envamped Darla, yeah. But it wasn't like she was the only vampire on the planet, or probably even the only one willing to work with Darla as they rampaged across Los Angeles. They'd massacred the Wolfram & Hart crew, but Darla and random vampire X were perfectly capable of that their own selves.

Beyond that? Nothing. (In dramatic terms, I was always annoyed that they hadn't done more with her. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: Drusilla is the second best completely insane character ever created in fiction. Only the Joker tops her, and that only when he's done well.)

So Drusilla could be comfortably excised from the future timeline without causing too much of a ripple.

Spike, though . . .

Between the end of this season and season 4, not much. Lover's Walk? Well, that was crucial for the plot; without Spike's trenchant analysis, maybe Buffy and Angel keep thinking they can make things work (possibly necessary whether Angel becomes Angelus and goes to hell or not), and Cordelia and Oz don't catch on to Xander and Willow's plot-device affair (assuming that happens, if I'm still here and I know about it, it won't, if I have to sit between them for a solid month. That? One of the most blatantly offensive manipulations ever on the show. It was perfunctory and clearly only there just to break up Xander and Cordelia. Horrible.)

Assuming, then. If Cordelia and Xander don't break up, there's no Wish, no Dopplegangland, which may or may not have given Willow a push towards realizing her own sexual identity. No Wish meant no Anyanka, which meant no Anya, which meant no Xander-Anya relationship, which meant no Anya with the Scoobies. But that ship had already sailed, almost certainly, because Cordelia, now knowing what a vengeance demon could do, probably wouldn't be stupid enough to make her "I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale" wish.

That was the problem, I supposed, with changing things around like I'd done. The best analysis I could do was nothing more than educated guesswork. I wasn't omniscient, or even nearly so. What I had was information about a timeline that no longer quite existed.

"All that matters is what I do." Fine. Let's say excising Spike from Lover's Walk doesn't do a lot of long-run damage. Just for the sake of moving on.

Moving on to season 4: Spike provided some information about the Initiative. Without him, maybe Buffy and the gang don't clue in to what's happening quite quickly as they do in the main timeline.

That shifts to season 5, where he helps protect Dawn – from the monster in the cavern, from Glory. Without him to torture, maybe Glory picks someone else – even though they wouldn't talk, either, they'd heal a lot less quickly. (And without Spike they don't get the stolen RV as they all get the hell out of Sunnydale.)

Season 6? The Buffy- Spike affair can be safely removed from the universe without any repercussions, I'd think. Yes, it let Buffy feel something after being ripped out of heaven. But that's pretty much it, not to downplay how important that was. I don't think Buffy would have committed suicide without it. Maybe it would have just taken her longer to get out of her (understandable) funk.

(And let's not get into the rape. Helpful hint: If you ever want to get a group of Buffy fans into a screaming match, the quickest way is to start a discussion on Spike's near-rape of Buffy. I very quickly learned to never bring it up, or suggest that I'd been thinking about it myself. Cindy MacKenzie in a near-homicidal rage? Not a picture that's easy to call up. Nor is it easy to let go, once you've seen it.)

And season 7. Ah, yes. Spike doesn't do a whole lot of the good until the very end, but watch that last step, bud, it's a doozy.

Of course, then there's season 5 Angel – Spike was a part of the final battle. A big part. Of course, since we don't really know what happened after that – did everyone die? Did Buffy and Company pull off a last-second save? Spike's effect there isn't completely clear.

(Remember, if didn't happen on the show, it didn't happen. The comics are not continuity. They're Joss Whedon's fanfiction.)

So removing Spike would have a lot of effect on the timeline.

And that's not even considering what it would do to the rest of season 2.

Had I done enough to prevent Angelus? Everyone knew about the escape clause in Angel's curse now. Was that enough to prevent sex?

Was it at least enough to prevent sex without better-not-completely-lose-myself-in-the-moment hanging over everyone's heads?

Again, when all of this started, I'd thought that that would be my moment of truth: Whether to stop Buffy and Angel from having sex. As I have already noted, I was wrong.

(Either that, or the bottom of the ninth was going to go on for a while. Which I suppose would be a good thing, now that I think about it. If one continues the Adversary's baseball metaphor, if a baseball game makes the bottom of the ninth it means the game is either tied or I'm behind. I wasn't so sure the metaphor needed to be taken completely literally, but you get the point.)

Assuming that played out, a substantially healthier Spike would make for a decidedly different dynamic than the one in the original timeline, anyway. A lot harder for Angelus to sweep in and take over when Spike is on his feet and ready to fight back against what he thinks are bad ideas.

Okay, were there any other arguments for warning Spike and Drusilla? That it would make the future more interesting didn't rate. "Interesting" was only a helpful quality if one was sitting on the outside of a timeline, watching it for entertainment purposes. I was solidly inside this one, and even assuming that I would and could be removed at some point, everyone else still had to live through it. "May you live in interesting times" was considered a powerful curse for a reason.

I was also leaving aside any other storyline-based arguments that don't hold water when you're living through it.

So, the argument in favor of warning Spike and Dru boiled down to wanting to preserve the timeline as best as I could.

Arguments against?

One could start off with the fact that the timeline had already been mucked beyond all hell and that attempting to preserve the Buffyverse I remembered was a task worthy of Sisyphus.

You don't think the timeline's been irrevocably changed? Here's what I've managed to "accomplish" in the last three-plus months.

Everyone knows about vengeance demons. More particularly, Cordelia knows who Anya is. Hard to bring around a stealth wish when the person you're sneaking up on knows you, and what disasters you can bring about, on sight. For reasons I've already detailed, that could end up with no Anya.

Everyone knows that Jenny Calendar is Jana Calderash. And everyone knows about Angel's curse, and the conditions that were placed on it. That could lead to no Angelus, which would mean Ms. Calendar's long-term survival, which could also mean that Kendra survived past the end of the season, which would mean no Faith. Or a later Faith.

Spike's not spending months in a wheelchair, but weeks with his arm in a sling. And Buffy knew he and Drusilla were alive, so could think about going after them rather than assuming that they were dead just because the church they were in had partially burned and turned to rubble.

Willow is interested in magic about six months earlier than she was originally. She seemed to be taking it slower, and listening to Rae's advice rather than trying to figure it out on her own, but she still knew about it, and knew she had a tremendous amount of power.

Sheila Kelly is alive. And she knows she's a witch. And she's somewhat on the side of the good guys, at least when it comes to fighting vampires.

Amy Madison is dead. No BBB, an altered Gingerbread, and no one to lure Willow to Rack's in season 6, assuming Willow's even on tilt like that at that point.

I'm sure I'm missing things. I'm intentionally leaving out things like "Got rid of Ted a week early" and "killed Norman Pfister instead of the Cyclops" and "ended Halloween and the Dark Age earlier than in canon." I was thinking about things that had long-term ramifications on the timeline. I suppose The Dark Age ending early could result in some changes to Ethan Rayne's attitude, but that was so vague and nebulous that I really couldn't justify factoring it in.

So one could easily argue that the timeline was already shot to hell anyway.

Second, of course, is that in attempting to preserve the timeline I would be guaranteeing that other people would die. I was trying to make the place better, after all, and Spike had more than a year post-season-2 to kill people, and Drusilla survived to the end of both series.

I'm not even sure I can ballpark how many people that is, but let's aim low and say fifteen hundred combined.

That's fifteen hundred people who'd be alive if Spike and Drusilla were killed. (Yes, included in that number are probably some who would have died anyway. I'm not sure of those stats and really can't be bothered to look them. Let's just say "fourteen hundred sixty-four," if that makes you happier, okay?)

Fifteen hundred people living who would otherwise be dead is a pretty powerful argument.

Boiling it down, now.

The best argument in favor of warning Spike and Drusilla is to try to preserve what I can of the original timeline; that Spike, at least, still has important things to do, and that killing him now would change things irrevocably.

The arguments against: It would save a lot of lives, and the timeline was already irrevocably changed anyway.

Shit. Of course. I wasn't thinking clearly. I'd almost fallen victim to paralysis by analysis; the longer I spent agonizing over whether to change, and what to change if I did, the more likely things would be to go on without my intervention.

And I wasn't here to preserve the timeline, anyway. The terms of my bet included nothing about maintaining the timeline; hell, it was almost the exact opposite. I was supposed to make things better.

Desperately attempting to steer things back on the original course was conceding that I'd been wrong to mess with the timeline in the first place.

Which would pretty much guarantee that I would lose the bet.

And that settled things. I was going to intervene; and I was going to my best to make sure Spike and Drusilla didn't make it to 1998.

It might lose me the bet, but that was okay with me.

I might lose, but I would be damned if I was going to concede.