Welcome to Your Alternity: Two
by slayerfest
Tara and Willow stumbled out of the Bronze with the rest of the group. Willow looked over at Tara and saw for the first time that her girlfriend looked both tired and frustrated. Spike emerged from the club moments later, and served as a perfect distraction. Willow turned to Tara and looked deep into her eyes. “Are you all right?” she mumbled.

“O-of course, why wouldn’t I be?” Tara answered quickly. Then her face gave up trying to cover up the fatigue a little bit. “Well… I think so. It was… I don’t know. I…” her gaze flickered to where the others stood next to them. “I don’t think I want to talk about it here.”

Willow looked over at her friends and saw that Spike was still acting as distraction. “Let’s just go. They won’t need us tonight; it’s too late to do anything. We’ll just sneak away now while they’re not paying attention, they won’t notice a thing.”

Tara’s tired eyes looked grateful. “Well… okay. If you’re sure that’s what you want to do.”

“It is.” Willow took Tara’s hand and led her into the shadows, where they simply turned and walked back to their dorm room.

***

Buffy opened the door to Spike’s crypt and walked right in. A shuffling from behind her made her whirl around in astonishment and the change of expression on the bleach blond vampire’s face when he saw her was remarkable.

“Buffy,” he said softly, as though hardly daring to believe she was in his crypt.

“Spike,” she returned in the same tone of voice, though sarcastically.

The dreamy appearance on Spike’s face faded a little into skepticism. “Why are you here?”

Buffy sighed deeply before answering. “You know things. You knew that the people on stage were vampires, but you also noticed that nobody else was leaving. I saw that too; no one else seemed to think it was weird.” Buffy sighed again and swallowed as though working up incredible courage. “I think,” she began, “I might need your… help.”

Spike sat down on a tomb and looked at the Buffy with arrogant amusement. “You’re asking me for help.”

“...Yes.”

“And you’re not even insulting me. You must really want me to do it.”

“Something tells me these aren’t your average vamps. I went around back and tried to find them so I could stake them after the sound had stopped; they weren’t there. They weren’t in the club, they weren’t behind the club, and they weren’t around the club. I think they may have vanished.”

Spike still looked extremely amused. “And you didn’t ask your incompetent friends for help because…”

“Because they can’t kick vampire ass as well as… others. Something about this says Big Danger to me, and I don’t think it’s the kind of thing they can find in books or through Witchcraft.”

Spike’s smiling face broke into a grin. “And you suppose I’ll just drop everything and help you, do you?”

Buffy’s face, still contorted in minor disgust that she had to ask Spike for help, exhaled sharply through her nose in amusement and exasperation. “What, you’ve got better things to do?”

“Well, yeah. I may not be able to kill, but I’m still a vampire. I’ve got things that I can do.” Spike looked at Buffy and saw that the corners of her mouth were twitching upwards in disbelief, and he blinked his face into annoyance. “Fine. Cash, love. Show me a reason to and I’ll give you a hand.”

Buffy, though looking extremely irritated, reached slowly into her pocket and pulled out a wad of bills as though she’d been expecting this. She stuffed it in Spike’s outstretched hand and sat on a crypt opposite from where Spike was sitting. “So,” she began, “lay it on me.”

***

“So,” she began, “lay it on me.”

“Lay what on you, Willow?” Tara asked innocently as they walked into the dorm room.

“Oh, no you don’t. You don’t get away that easily, Missie.” Willow closed the door and led her girlfriend over to her bed. “You are going to sit down and tell me everything.”

Tara swallowed nervously and sat down next to Willow. Willow saw for the first time that Tara looked actually very concerned about the whole thing. “Okay. But… just give me a little while.”

“Of course, sweetie. Whenever you’re ready.” Willow watched with worry as Tara bumbled around the room making herself a cup of herbal tea.

When Buffy’s mother had fallen ill the week before, Willow found Tara to be even more secluded in her thoughts than usual. Tara surprised her girlfriend two nights ago by explaining that her mother had died two years back and that she needed to go and visit where her mother was buried. Willow had offered to go with her, but Tara looked quite horrified at the prospect, and had gone on Thursday night alone, promising to be back the next day. Willow returned from her classes to find a hurried and slightly panicked message on the machine saying that something had come up and that Tara would be home Saturday at 8pm on the dot.

And now here she was, safely home (if a little late) but apparently distraught. Willow couldn’t think of anything that didn’t contain “and my mother rose from the grave” that would cause Tara to act this way.

“Willow?”

“Hm?”

“There was nobody alive in my hometown.”

“…Oh.”

That might do it, too.

***

“I don’t know much,” Spike explained as he pocketed the cash, “but I’ll tell you this, Slayer, things are not right around here.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Buffy said, annoyed.

Spike ignored this last and continued. “Have you ever seen the Bronze that crowded before? You’d have thought it was a ritual sacrifice, all the sodding people in there. And nobody made any indication they thought to leave the place when the noise made its lovely appearance. They all just stood there, making faces and staring at the vamps. It’s a wonder your pathetic friends didn’t stick around, too.”

“I… think they meant to,” Buffy said, looking alarmed. “They never really looked like they were going to leave until I said I was going. Then it occurred to them and they followed.”

“Well, there you are, then. Mister Stupendous not the soldier you thought, hm?”

Buffy briefly wondered what Spike’s suddenly more open vendetta toward Riley was about, and then brought up what was really bothering her. “Vamps don’t vanish, Spike.” Then she widened her eyes in alarm and looked up at the vampire. “Right?”

Spike held the slayer’s gaze for a minute. Then he looked down at his knees to hide his smile and responded, “No, love, but they move right swiftly. All this time you’ve spent with vamps and you’ve never seen them jump a building?”

The tone in Buffy’s voice changed abruptly. “That’s the second time tonight you’ve called me ‘love’. Are you drunk or something?”

Spike’s coy smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed as he looked up. “And you asking me for help, that’s not out of the ordinary?” Spike blinked and looked down again. “Besides, I’ve got this splitting headache. I’m just a little out of my element tonight. Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Buffy said. “I just paid you enough to buy you enough blood for a month. You’ll tell me what you know now.”

“I really don’t feel up to it, Slayer. What am I going to do overnight, kill one of the Superfriends? Right. That’ll solve all my cranial problems.”

Spike looked up and Buffy saw that he was quite seriously tired-looking. Her face softened ever so slightly. “Okay, fine. I’m so not in the mood to argue with you anyway.” Buffy jumped off the tomb she was sitting on and sauntered toward the door, shouting over her shoulder. “But if you don’t tell me everything tomorrow, Spike, I swear I’ll finally achieve my dream of the past year and plunge a sharp wooden object through your chest. I may even have Riley do it while I videotape…” her voice trailed away as she left the graveyard.

Buffy was halfway home when she stopped and came extremely close to turning around and marching right back to Spike to beat the information out of him. She’d gotten very little before she’d retreated because he ‘looked beat’. Since when has she ever cared what he looked like?

Hey, you’re tired too, said a voice inside her head. She decided that her fatigue was more important than her need to find out what happened tonight. She had time; there really was no rush.

Buffy entered her house to find both her mom and Dawn in bed. She sauntered into her room and flopped onto her bed, still fully clothed; she fell asleep within the minute.

***

“Completely obliviated.”

“No. The town was there, totally in tact. It was the people who were completely… poof.”

Willow’s face was much paler than usual. “And the rest of your family…”

“Moved out last y-year,” Tara said quickly. “The graveyard was so full… it looked like some kind of… of disaster happened there.”

“Like, the natural kind, or the supernatural kind? Because I could… I mean, we could talk to Buffy. She can figure it out.”

“It looked deserted, Willow. Like someone left it there on purpose, untouched. Like everyone just died of natural causes at the same time, were all buried at the same time and the same place, and then the people who found everyone just… left.”

“Oh, baby…” Willow took Tara’s face in her hands. “Do you want to go back there?”

“No,” Tara whispered. “Can’t we just leave it?” A tear rolled silently down her cheek.

“Shh, hey. We’ll leave it if you want to. We’ll just leave it. I'm here for you, baby. I'll always be here.” Willow pulled Tara toward her and they sat, Willow stroking Tara’s hair as she let out her fear in the form of tears.

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