RATING: NC-17 at least.

DISCLAIMER: No, I don’t own them, but if Joss says the Buffyverse was intended to be the source of fanfic, then I am by Joss gonna write some. No infringement intended.

APOLOGY: I like to finish fic before I send it out, then send all the chapters at once. That doesn’t seem destined to happen this time. I’m under some serious deadlines, and just couldn’t get this piece finished. So, expect a few more chapters over the next week or so before it’s completed. _______________________________________________________________________

Now and Then
part 1

Patrols had gotten damned boring the past few years, Buffy Summers reflected as she did a sweep of the last of Sunnydale’s twelve cemeteries. It wasn’t that demon activity had slowed down all that much, although things were pretty quiet for months after she foiled an attempt by the personal legions of Asmodeus, the legendary demon king, to pave the way for their master’s triumphant return to earth and his enslavement of all mankind. She sighed. What was it with demons and their end-the-world-and-enslave-or-destroy-the-humans mentality? She had so been there and done that. Far too many times. But the bad kept on coming, drawn to Sunnydale by the ever attractive--at least, to supernatural evil--Hellmouth.

The real reason for her ennui during patrols was the complete lack of challenge. She had long since gotten the art of staking fledglings down to an efficient, deadly science. They were dust almost before they cleared their graves, and it virtually never came down to actual combat anymore.

At this point in her life, the most demon action she saw was down at Willie’s place, when she went there to drink and play pool with her erstwhile enemies. Which was happening more and more often, lately.

If she tried to pinpoint the exact moment when she had started to draw away from her friends, and spend more time in the sanctuary Willie’s offered, when she had begun to feel more at home amongst the demons she hunted than with the friends she protected, she wasn’t sure she could nail it down. It had been more an accumulation of things, rather than any one major incident which led to the change. After her first difficult year at college, when she and her best friends drifted so far apart, she had been desperate to keep the group together, to hold onto those she loved. And yet, now, she was much further from them then ever, even though they all continued to live in the same small town.

Part of it had been Riley, of course. He never really allowed himself to understand what being with the Slayer meant, what being the Slayer was all about. He kept planning and dreaming: he would get his Master’s, she would graduate, they would marry and move back to Iowa to raise a house full of kids. Just like his parents had. Just like his sisters and brothers were doing. She tried to disillusion him early on, but figured that over time, and well before she got her degree, he would see how things were for himself: she was the only thing standing between the world and the hosts of darkness just waiting to ooze up from the pits of hell and take over. Her place was here, on the Hellmouth, and she couldn’t keep that place while nine months gone with child somewhere in the mid-west. Or even right in the heart of town. That was the real clincher. Riley talked of compromise, saying maybe he was rushing her, that after she’d had a few babies, maybe she’d welcome the opportunity to take her family someplace more sheltered. After all, with Willow’s growing facility with magic, and Tara’s power backing her up, the Scoobies could certainly keep things under control.

And it was then that Buffy dropped her bombshell: being the Slayer not only meant staying on the Hellmouth, it meant staying in fighting trim. And that meant no babies. It was the final rift in their relationship.

It was also a salient lesson for Buffy. When she was first called, the only thing she had wanted was to turn her back on that calling and lead a normal life. Later, she began to understand that such a future wasn’t in the cards for her, and to accept that fact. Still, she had wanted some of the trappings of normalcy, had needed the intimacy of her friendships, and of falling in love. Which was fine when she was a sophomore in high school, and love meant holding hands, making out, and dreaming of the future. And it was fine when she’d had Angel, and the only thing she could see in her future, the only thing she wanted or dreamed about, was him. But that particular dream had been shattered long ago. Now, she was in the future. And she was out of dreams.

Nearly three years after Riley left, Buffy recognized that it wasn’t he who had taken the last of her dreams; it was Angel. When the man who would always hold her heart walked away from her in the midst of the smoke after their victory over the mayor, whatever fragile dreams of happiness and love she had resurrected after his return from Hell went with him. Hooking up with first Parker and then Riley had simply been a way of denying the inevitable. Being with Riley not only stripped away the last vestige of illusion, it made her realize the dangers of holding on to the dreams.

The truth was, she had nothing to offer anyone who might fall in love with her. At twenty-four, she was almost as old as the longest-lived slayers had ever managed to be, and in less than a year, she’d match the record. Sure, she hoped she had a shot at setting a new record, but she was enough of a realist to know that the odds of her survival grew shorter every day. What kind of future was that to offer a prospective mate? And even if marriage weren’t out of the question, children certainly were. Again, not much of an inducement for permanent bonding. Which left her in the position of satisfying her sexual needs without involving her emotions. There were quite a number of men out there who would be only too happy to help her out with that. Men like Parker Abrams. The kinds of guys who would accept that sort of deal weren’t the kinds of guys she wanted to have anything to do with. Truthfully, she never had been one to separate her sexual needs from her emotional ones. She had only ever made love, even when the person she was with had been deceiving her. Even when she had been deceiving herself.

When it came down to it, she was better off alone.

Ironically, just as she accepted that her own path was to be a solitary one, those she loved were choosing partners for life. Giles finally convinced Olivia to marry him, and make her home on this side of the "pond." Their wedding was celebrated a month after Buffy’s graduation from UC Sunnydale, with Buffy as Olivia’s maid of honor. The following year, Willow and Tara held a commitment ceremony. Buffy was Willow’s maid of honor, too. She wasn’t maid of honor at Xander and Anya’s wedding. Xander broke with tradition, and Buffy was his best "man." Fortunately, when her mother remarried, to the LA art dealer from whom she had been buying her best work for the past few years, Joyce opted for a very small civil ceremony. Buffy only had to be a witness, instead of marching down yet another long aisle in yet another fussy dress. And as Wesely carried Cordy off to England for an appropriately pompous ceremony, Buffy didn’t have to do more than send her best wishes and a suitable gift for the final marriage in the group.

It wasn’t that she begrudged her friends their happiness: far from it. Each union that was celebrated felt like a personal victory for her. Because of what she did, those she cared about could have these days of love and laughter, these futures shining with promise. Their happiness made her own sacrifices worth every bit of pain, every moment of loneliness.

But it couldn’t assuage that pain, that loneliness.

As the marriages flourished, and the brides became wives and mothers, Buffy found it harder and harder to deal. Willow was now heavily pregnant with her first child, conceived, as was Tara’s, by Oz. Anya had given birth a few months earlier, and Olivia already had toddlers. The lives of those closest to her had altered radically: conversations about swollen ankles, morning sickness, Lamaze exercises, breastfeeding, teething and colic were now as frequent as conversations about demons and prophesies. Sitting around the kitchen table at Giles’ and Olivia’s new home one afternoon, while Anya and Willow animatedly discussed the rival merits of birthing beds and birthing chairs, listening as Olivia and even Joyce related their own experiences, it struck Buffy forcibly that her best friend now had more in common with a former demon and Buffy’s own mother than she did with Buffy herself. The realization couldn’t help but hurt.

So, while she was happy for her friends, it was a very bittersweet happiness. Like the rest of her life. And she was beginning to think that the bitter was getting the edge on the sweet.

She had known about Willie the Snitch’s bar since high school, and had gone there more than once over the years to bribe or beat information out of him. One night, after getting the lead she wanted, she had stayed for a drink. And not long after, she came back; not in the line of duty, but for another drink. She soothed Willie’s nervousness about losing patrons when the Slayer was around, by declaring his bar neutral territory. He quickly saw the advantages to that arrangement. There were limits, of course: the Slayer was not about to stand by while someone made a meal of an innocent. But as long as no one was actively wreaking havoc, or planning the imminent destruction of the world, the usual suspects were safe from being slain while in the bar. Willie’s provided Buffy with a way of forgetting, a bit of a respite. She had outgrown the Bronze, and with all of her friends happily domesticated, she didn’t have anyone to go there with, anyway. At Willie’s she didn’t have to watch the endless mating rituals of the adolescents and the young singles, rituals in which she no longer took part. And she didn’t have to listen politely to conversations about maternity bras and diaper rash. She didn’t have to pretend to be a normal girl out for a good time. At Willie’s she could be exactly who and what she was: a deadly predator at ease amongst her prey.

Hell, she was even learning to drink and play pool.

She hadn’t been much for alcohol, but she was learning. She was developing a fondness for whiskey, and her natural coordination was coming in handy at the pool table, although she wasn’t yet willing to take bets on her game. She didn’t make a habit of going to Willie’s. But it was nice to know that when she needed a bit of forgetfulness, there was still one place where she could find refuge. And she badly needed refuge, every now and then.

As she completed the final circuit of her sweep, she wondered if maybe she should seek out that refuge tonight. It had been a good six weeks since her last visit. Maybe it was time for another go.

Willie’s was crowded when she arrived. Smoke hung in the place as thick as Spanish moss on southern oaks. Buffy waved her hands before her face to clear the air enough to see her way to the bar.

"Is there a Phillip Morris convention for the non-human in town this week?" she asked Willie as she slid onto a barstool.

"Nah. Just a bunch of coruscating demons." Willie poured her whiskey. At her raised brow, he elucidated. "They got a thing for tobacco."

"Everybody needs a hobby," she said, taking a drink. "So, anything new going down?"

"You wanna know that in your professional capacity? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I don’t know nothing."

"And if I’m just being sociable?" she asked dryly.

"Well, in that case, I heard an old friend of yours was in town. Might be you wanna welcome him back. Maybe buy him a round?"

"So, this old friend of mine is here?" she said, going through the short list of threats she had faced down who had survived the encounter. She could only think of four off-hand: the First Evil, Spike, Ethan Rayne, and Faith. Willie’s dive didn’t strike her as the kind of place the First would hang at. And Willie had said "him" which left the younger slayer out. Besides, Faith had reformed years ago. Though her relationship with Buffy was still somewhat strained, they worked together when they had to, and if she were in town, she would have come to Buffy first. Ethan Rayne, on the other hand, wouldn’t reform if the gates of hell were yawning at his feet. In fact, he’d probably be the one gleefully picking the locks and prying them open. Even his brief stint in the persuasive care of a US government holding pen hadn’t noticeably changed his outlook, and Willie’s was exactly his sort of place. It was exactly Spike’s sort of place, too, and Spike had been a regular here himself, not that long ago. So, it had to be one of those two.

"Beef Eaters or Jack Daniels?" she queried Willie. He gave her his best innocent look, which was about as innocuous as a weasel with a mouthful of chicken feathers. She sighed. "You’ve already told me that much. Might as well let me buy him that bottle you want to overcharge me for."

"Hey, I charge the going rate."

"The going rate for those who can’t walk into a regular bar and get it at the normal rate, you mean."

"Supply and demand, Slayer," a familiar voice said behind her. She smiled wryly.

"A bottle of Jack Daniels for my *friend,* Spike, please," she said, then turned to look at her former nemesis and erstwhile ally-by-necessity.

Nothing about him had changed since she’d last seen him, three years before. If she hadn’t learned, during his brief stay with Giles, that he replaced them regularly, she would have sworn he was wearing the selfsame black jeans, shirts, and muddy Doc Martens that he’d been wearing the first time she saw him, in her junior year of high school. She knew for a fact that the leather duster was the same one. He was still making regular use of the peroxide bottle, too, and she doubted she’d ever learn what color his real hair was. Not that she cared.

"Spike," she greeted.

"Slayer," he returned.

"What brings you to town? Thought you said hell would freeze over before you came back here."

"Yeah, well, remind me to send Satan an overcoat," he told her as he slid onto the barstool next to her, reaching for the bottle Willie had placed on the bar. He didn’t bother with the glass set beside it, but lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long pull. "If you’ll remember," he began a moment later, "that wasn’t all I said."

His voice was smooth as the whiskey he was drinking, and his eyes glittered with green fire. She was wrong, she realized. One thing about Spike had changed since the last time she’d seen him. The first time they fought, she could feel the deadly power coming off of him in waves. Angel warned her that once Spike set on a course of action, he didn’t stop until everything in his path was dead. She discovered during that first battle that Angel was right. The lesson had been driven home in her encounter with him a few weeks later, at Halloween, and again not long after that, when she barely kept him from killing Angel in his ceremony to restore Dru’s health. That was nearly the last time she could recall the fire. When he made his offer to ally himself with her, he had barely recovered the use of his legs, and was still chaffing under Angelus’ return and his enforced subservience. The fires inside him were banked: smoldering, perhaps, but under too many layers of cooling ash to be discernable. A year later, deserted by Dru, he’d been a drunken wreck: still devious enough to endanger her friends, but nothing like the power he’d been before. When he found the Gem of Amarra and battled her in broad daylight, some of the old fire and rage had returned. But even then, she had somehow felt that his heart wasn’t really in it. Some quality of pure menace had been missing from that battle. Oh, he’d fought viciously enough, with no holding back. And yet, it had seemed somehow a perfunctory performance. The next time she saw him, the Initiative had implanted their chip in his head. While he could still be devious, he wasn’t remotely a threat, and about as menacing as a de-clawed housecat with its teeth pulled. Thus it had remained ever since.

Until now.

She knew it instinctively. Once more, Spike was fairly radiating power, assurance, and danger. Only one thing she could think of would account for that. With a sigh, she reached for her own glass.

"You got the chip out," she said.

"Right-oh," he agreed jauntily, lifting his bottle in a mocking toast to her powers of perception. "Couldn’t find a doctor willing to cut that deep, so I did what I should have done in the first place: found a sorcerer who was open to monetary persuasion. Which is just about all of them. They’re always needing to buy the odd gramarye or mystic knick-knack. Takes the ready, I can tell you."

"So you bribed a warlock to remove the chip, went back to your evil ways, and couldn’t wait to rush back in to town to tell me the good news," she said. "Well, congratulations. Enjoy that bottle. Really. I’m happy for you. And the minute I catch you outside of Willie’s, you’re dust."

"Oh, you are going to catch me outside of Willie’s," Spike purred, his eyes smoldering as he regarded her in a way that sent a flush of heat across the surface of her skin, making her shiver in reaction. There was something avid in his gaze; something. . .hungry. As sure as she knew that he was now chipless, she knew that his hunger was directed at her. "You and me got a date," he said as if to confirm her thoughts.

"Eager to get up close and personal with Mr. Pointy, are we?" she said with a calmness she was far from feeling.

"Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, cutie," Spike warned as he knocked back another slug of Jack Daniels. "You’re the one who laid down the challenge. I told you then that once I got that chip out of my head, you and me were gonna have a confrontation, and you told me I could count on it. So, pet, I’m counting. You wanted a confrontation. You are by God going to get one."

Buffy had no idea what Spike was talking about. Other than routinely promising to see that he became intimately acquainted with her favorite stake, a threat that had eventually become more a matter of habit than anything else, she couldn’t recall any specific promises about squaring off against each other. Figuring that he must be referring to those very general, and ultimately halfhearted, threats she had made years before, she just shrugged.

"Whatever," she said.

Spike grinned at her, and there was something so evil, and yet so delighted in his look, that she barely repressed another shiver. "Tomorrow night. Restfield Cemetery. In front of the Alston crypt."

She nodded. "Good choice. Plenty of room to move." She drained her glass, and signaled Willie to get her another, then turned to Spike and gave him her sweetest smile. "Just make sure you leave Dru’s address someplace I can find it. I want to know where to send the ashes."

The smoldering heat in his eyes turned to fire, and his answering smile could only be described as wolfish. "Just make sure you say good-bye to your little friends before you get there. Don’t want to upset Red too badly when you go missing. Her being in a delicate condition and all." All humor deserted Buffy.

"If you dare threaten my friends," she began. He slid off the barstool and leaned over her before she could complete the thought. His face hovered inches above her own, and he stared down at her. She found herself caught and held by the intense green fire of his eyes.

"You want to keep them safe, love, you keep them the hell away from Restfield tomorrow night." His voice was soft, and somehow all the more menacing for that. "It’s going to be just you and me, pet. Let’s see how you manage against the Big Bad alone, for once." He straightened away from her with another confident smile, picking up the bottle of Tennessee whiskey. "And thanks for the drink," he said cheerfully as he sauntered out of the bar.

Buffy stared after him for a moment, weighing her options. Following him outside, and trailing him until he left the neutral zone she herself had created was not one of them. That would be a breach of her own implied promise of safety, a betrayal of her word. She was simply going to have to wait until the next night, trusting the Spike would be true to his promise, and leave her friends out of this, as long as she did the same. For no good reason she could think of, she was certain he would keep faith on the matter.

Sighing, she turned back to her second glass of whiskey. That was usually her limit, but she had a feeling that tonight she might push the envelope. It looked like she and Spike were finally going to throw down. And it wouldn’t be like before, with Spike distracted and angry and off his game. No, this was the deadly, assured, focused Spike she had first encountered in high school, the implacable foe Angel had once warned her about, the enemy who would let nothing stand in the way of his achieving his objective.

Well, she had been bemoaning the lack of a good challenge. For once, she was getting her wish. Buffy frowned down at her half-empty glass. After all her years on the Hellmouth, she really should have gotten the "be careful what you wish for" drill down.

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