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Crossing Shadow River, by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into Unchipped Territory. You should read that if you want to know everything about how to cross dimensions, and how Buffy and Spike got to be together. If you insist in reading this first, this is the recap: Buffy met evil Spike when she accidentally fell in another dimension. Hijinks ensue. He returns souled Spike to her (I’m not telling how) and they lived happily ever after. I still think you should go read it first, my summary doesn’t quite do it justice…
Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, ayinhara & mommanerd, sometime betas meko00 and LadyAnne. to the ladies from Tea at the Ford and Herself for some great pointers; i-digress-uk and deborahm for help with British dialogue.
Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to
Prologue
Spike gets home when the sun is setting in all its multicolored splendor, just like it does every day. He pays it no mind; the sunset miracle has repeated itself so often that it's not special anymore. He uses the last of the slanty rays to find and light his lamp and start a fire. He sniffs the soup, and decides it'll do if he heats it up long enough. And he doesn't much care if it kills him, although he supposes death from spoilt fish soup must be pretty wretched. He's got nothing to live for, anyway. Every day that he wakes up in one piece he wonders why he bothers.
He drops in half of today's catch of assorted fish, cleaned only roughly. He's tired and hungry and doesn’t fancy cleaning one properly and broiling it. Besides, he's out of oil. It's time to do the bartering rounds again. His fish for his neighbor's soup, Mrs. Jackson's oil. He doesn't even dream of a new set of clothes anymore. The ones he's got are bleached and grayed from the sun and many washings in salt water. He sits down wearily on the makeshift bench outside his cabin and sinks his head against the planks. God, his back hurts. He could really use a drink, but he drank his last bit of moonshine last night, when he was too drunk to care. He'll start up a fresh one tomorrow, if he gets home from his labors early enough.
Spike wakes up when the familiar odor of burnt fish reaches his nostrils. He rescues what's left of the soup and dunks in last week's bread, a gift from Mindy. Now he's got a crick in his neck as well as a backache. The moon peeks out over the Pacific and stretches out her silvery fingers over the water. Pretty. Bedtime. No point in wasting oil, nothing to read anyway. He's long sold what books he scavenged after the initial breakdown for food.
He's just about to heave himself off of his bench when a dark shadow obscures the moon. He can't suppress a tiny start of fear. There's nasty things that roam at night, and by day for that matter, and as he's not as strong as he used to be, nor as heedless; he tends to stay in and hope for the best. The fear subsides when he sees how small the form is, and feminine besides. He's got some kind of reputation among the scattered female inhabitants of the changed shoreline formerly known as LA, but he's too sore and tired to cater to their needs tonight.
"Spike?" a long forgotten voice says.
His hand goes automatically to the big flensing knife at his side. If whatever this is knows him well enough to mimic Buffy's voice, he could be in big trouble.
The shadow steps backwards and holds up her hands. "Hey. Don’t you remember me? Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer?"
He can’t seem to find his voice. It sounds real, and his virtually useless human nose picks up scents the like of which he hasn’t encountered in a decade. Perfume and shampoo, and freshly washed clothes. The things the survivors whisper about in hushed voices when they are huddled around the campfires.
"Look!" she says, in that happy perky voice that means she woke up in a soft bed, and breakfasted on coffee, fruit and cereal, things that would bring in more barter than the use of her pampered body.
She fishes around in what must be a purse and with a tiny click switches on a flashlight. It illuminates her face from underneath, but the effect is not scary.
"Put that away," Spike hisses and puts his hand on her indescribably soft and smooth arm. "They can see the light from miles away."
"Who’s they?" her voice says, amused.
"Could be anybody," Spike says and pulls her inside. "Lemme hold it."
She hands him the light without demur, which is an indication that she's not from here even more than her clean scent and well cared-for skin.
His finger remembers easily how to switch on a torch and he shines its trembling light on the apparition. It does look exactly like Buffy, how Buffy would have looked if she and 98 percent of the world's inhabitants hadn’t died in the last apocalypse. A well preserved thirty, smiling, dressed in colorful clothes of an unknown fashion, wearing actual shoes and rings and, anyway, real clothes. Somebody who hasn’t known hunger and deprivation for ten years, who hasn’t had to live off fish and scavenged cans, who hasn’t had to do with the one set of clothes for all this time, who showered this morning.
The flashlight thuds from his hand on the concrete floor of the hut.
"Buffy," he says stupidly. "You’re really Buffy. How?"
He staggers to his one chair and almost knocks over the sputtering oil lamp.
"The one and only,” she says. "Although that's not completely true actually. The only Buffy in this world."
"Yeah."
He doesn’t know where to go from this. His brain isn’t what it used to be after all this time of hunger and too much sun and booze. He latches on to the one important fact he can think of.
"Did you know I'm human? Shanshu'd after the apocalypse as my reward for being a hero?"
She laughs softly and kneels by his side. Her hands land warmly on his thighs and he twitches embarrassingly from the contact.
"I know. I bet you’re very proud of that, and it’s why I came. There aren't many human Spikes in all the different worlds, you know. You're a rarity."
He has no idea what she's talking about.
She interprets his silence correctly and laughs again, the soft self-assured sound like rain on his parched skin. Feelings he thought forgotten or withered away flare up. It's Buffy. His great love, the girl he lost, or the chance of her he lost by not joining her in Rome when he'd gotten resurrected. His cowardice gained him humanity and lost him love. What does her presence mean?
"How? Why?" he stutters, utterly confused by her close warm presence. He reaches out for her and his hand folds eagerly around a soft silk-encased shoulder.
"I'll try to explain it in short words," Buffy says and stands up. "Is there anywhere I can sit? Is this the bed?"
God, he's so ashamed he's got nothing better to offer than the bed, a sad mockery of the real thing in the form of an old mattress with a couple of ratty blankets and duvets.
"Yeah. Sorry, it’s not much, but I…"
"Hey. It's fine, it’s not important. Anyway. According to Willow, every decision anybody makes causes a new world to split off where this decision wasn't made. So there are a million possible Spikes, and a million possible Buffys, and also worlds where none of us has ever existed. Willow – you do remember her, don’t you?- made a device to cross over to other realities."
"And so you are from a different world?" he asks in wonder. "Where you didn't die."
"Not even the tiniest apocalypse in years now," she says gaily. ”Which is good."
"And no Spike I guess?"
She hesitates. He may not be a vampire anymore, but he's not turned into a fool. She's gonna lie, or avoid the truth. What for?
"There is a Spike," she says at last.
He knows there is more, but he's dizzy with her presence and doesn’t want to press the issue and risk her displeasure.
"Why come here? For me?" He hardly dares hope this will be the case. There hasn’t been anyone for him for so long.
"Yes, for you," she says sweetly and reaches up to cup his cheek. She exclaims softly in surprise. "So rough! Do you have to shave now?"
"Of course," he says defensively. "And shit and eat and sleep. The whole works."
She comes even closer. "That's good. Why don’t you come sit beside me?"
He can hardly see her, the lamp doesn't give that much light, but he hears her pat the blankets. Hope and lust crash through him. Buffy. The chance to hold her in his arms again after so long. He stumbles down next to her and her hands are on his arms, softly stroking.
"So warm," she says, surprised and intrigued. "So…male."
His heart does a polka and his dick stands up like it hasn't in years. A diet of fish does not a horny man make.
"Buffy?" he says. "Do you…?"
"Shh…." She says and guides his face to hers. "Kiss me."
He's not so addled that he doesn't know there has to be a catch. Slayers don’t just travel worlds to give their ex-lovers a shag for nothing. He thinks that whatever the catch turns out to be, he’ll gladly pay the price to have her in his arms once more.
She kisses him and the taste of her mouth is the sweetest thing that's happened to him in forever. Her skin so soft and fragrant, her hair, the sleekness of her body, he's dazzled, helplessly enthralled by her sheer presence. Her face is not such a sharp memory anymore after all this time, but her scent and the weight of her breasts have never left him. He's half ashamed of his rough skin, his unbrushed teeth, his thighs that tremble with fatigue, but she's like an angel, he's never known her to be this soft and accommodating. She rides him, guides his cock into the velvet haven of her pussy. He loses it, of course, the impact of all these heavenly delights on his senses is too big for any kind of restraint.
"Buffy, I'm…unh…I'm sorry, I…"
She doesn’t seem to mind. "Shh, you're tired, sweet Spike, let’s lie down together and sleep."
He's falling like he's been hit over the head, straight into the infinite gentleness and softness of his dream Buffy, who presides over his sleep like she always does, and she's less fuzzy and undefined than she had become.
He wakes up with his nose in her hair, and it should be the best awakening ever. The thing is that age, deprivation and a hard bed rob him of the glorious morning after feeling he should have had. His joints ache in the morning, and his arm is asleep where she's lying on it. He's hungry and thirsty and he needs to pee. He tries to slide out from under her silken weight without her noticing but she sighs deeply and snuggles her soft arse against his disappointingly unerect cock.
"Spike?"
Her smile is like the sunrise, but he's not yet in a fit state to appreciate it. He gets up with a groan as his muscles and back protest and stumbles outside. When he gets back, with one less urge, she's sitting on the bed like a goddess, all golden skin and bronze locks, brushing her hair with languid movements. Her breast jiggle softly and the gleam of her thighs, the spread of her hips on the bed stir his lagging appetites. He dips a beaker of short beer for her out of his meager stock and offers it to her.
"Spike, thank you, what's…is this beer?"
He scratches his head. "Can't drink the water here, love, we have to add alcohol to make it safe."
She doesn't look convinced. "Coffee? Orange juice?"
"Don't you know anything about this world? Come, step outside."
To his surprise she doesn’t even cover herself but follows him readily. She has changed. Even when they were fucking like crazed weasels she used to cover herself all the time, as if he wasn’t allowed to look at the ass cheeks he'd just been plunging into. She's shaken that off, apparently.
She stands outside in the brilliant early morning sunshine and looks around at the sea shore below him, and the miles and miles of bleached rubble land inwards.
"What are those? Mayan ruins?"
"Buffy, sweetheart, this is LA. What's left of it."
Her mouth forms an 'O' of surprise. "Gee," she remarks inanely, "I never saw the aftermath of an apocalypse before. Wow. Impressive. I can see it would be hard to get to a mall."
He feels the beginning of a large amount of irritation. Can she really be this dense?
"No malls left, Buffy. As far as we know. The world has changed. No electricity, no computers, no cars. I fish for a living, brew my own booze, and barter for everything else."
"Oh. It must be really hard to make a living around here. So, beer is what I'm gonna get for breakfast?"
"I could cook you some fish?"
She looks at him as if he's insane. "From the sea? Is that safe?"
"Well, darling, where did you think fish fingers came from? Of course it's safe. Probably safer than in your world, no pollution here."
He relights the fire in the old barbie. She watches while he guts the fish and scrapes off the worst scales. He's more meticulous than he usually is, because he's betting that when the fish are done she'll be hungry enough to eat some. The heat beats down on their heads relentlessly and Buffy retreats inside to dress. She returns in different clothes than the night before, complete with big sunhat and glasses. She's packed for a stay, then. After breakfast he'll try to finagle out what she's up to. He folds the fish in his carefully kept and reused bits of aluminum foil and shoves them under a heap of ashes.
She sits down next to him on his rickety bench and he feels her look him over.
"You’re so tan," she says softly.
"Yeah, well, human, no sunscreen to be had – even my English Rose complexion gave up the struggle."
She giggles politely.
Her fingers thread into his unruly thatch of curls. "A little bit of gray in there!" she teases him gently.