Archive of Our Own ^beta

The unlife on the Hellmouth was full of risks one normally didn’t even consider. Warlocks screwing up spells, raw power seeping through from the other side, or just general ambience being particularly nasty that day. Spike fell asleep in his own lair, in his own bed, his head full of pleasant dreams of finishing a certain Slayer.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was.

He was sitting in a chair, for starters. At a desk. Right in front of him, there was a monitor, a pretty sleek one at that. His hands were on the keyboard, his fingers positioned as if he was typing something. Only…

Those weren’t his hands.

The nails sported black nail polish, but the shape of the nails was wrong. There were familiar rings on the fingers, but those were not his rings. Good replicas, shiny new. Who replicated his rings and where were the originals?

Spike looked around. His coat was hanging on the hook in the corner. He examined it. Same story. Good replica, but not his coat. Not even real leather.

He looked around the room. A bed, a nightstand, a mirror. He wasn’t even shocked when he realized he could see his own reflection. It was not him anyways. Bleached blond hair, yes, but the eyes were brown, the face round, and the cheekbones all wrong.

Spike started for the door and then stopped abruptly when he noticed a name on the screen.

His name.

He sat back into the chair and started reading.

It was some sort of a story. About him. This in itself wasn’t surprising. By this time of his existence, Spike surely hoped humans had a story or two about him. He was even prepared that the story would have nothing to do with real events. But this? What the hell? Him and the Slayer doing what? For how long? Confessing what? Why would he? Why would she?

Eventually, Spike couldn’t take any more of this nonsense. With a predatory smile, he deleted the steamy scene, orgasms and all, and started writing what would actually happen if he and the Slayer ever ended up locked in a crypt on their lonesome.

How he would kill her proper.

It went slowly at first. Spike was not the most experienced typer. But gradually, he got a hang of it, and got to business. His fighting sequence was not half bad, even if he said so himself. And in the end, of course, he gained the upper hand, throwing the Slayer on the floor and landing on top of her before she could get up. Her green eyes widened, no doubt reflecting her realization that her end was near. Spike leaned to bite her…

…his fangs pierced her golden skin, his mouth filling with the tastiest blood he ever consumed. It was real, it felt real, the blood was pouring into his mouth from the torn artery, and the Slayer was shaking, and it was the tremor of death.

Spike took the last sip, looked around the crypt, and closed his eyes in triumph. He’s done his third Slayer.

When he opened his eyes, he was back in the weird room with the computer.

What the bloody hell?

He was out! He felt it! He was in that bloody crypt, with the dead weight of the Slayer on his lap!

Spike looked at the screen. The fighting sequence was just as he wrote it. The moment of him biting the Slayer was captured in minute details, even though he didn’t remember writing it. There were also two words added right after the finishing phrase ‘He’s done his third Slayer.”

THE END

Spike frowned. It was not the end! The end was when he was in his own body and his own world!

He scoffed, deleted the whole scene, and started writing again.

This time, he placed them into the Bronze. The Slayer was dancing - just like she did when he first saw her. He was in the crowd, watching her every move. She did know how to dance, this Slayer. In every sense of the word. Her body moved with the same grace as when she fought. She lifted both her hands…

…turned her head, and looked right at him.

Spike didn’t see from where she procured the stake, but a moment later, she was coming straight at him. He laughed, exhilarated. That’s all he had time to do before she was on him. Pretty soon, his laughter died. She was angry, right pissed about something, and gave him hell from the get go. Within moments, he was pinned to the wall. Then the harsh wood pierced his heart.

Spike gasped, grasping his chest, wondering why he wasn’t disintegrating, before realizing that he had.

He was back in the strange room with the computer.

On the screen, his fight with Buffy was captured in every unflattering detail, with two words added after “the wood pierced his heart”.

THE END

Spike groaned. This was unbearable! What’s the point of killing the Slayer - or being killed by her, for that matter - if this just brought him back here?

Maybe they should not kill each other. Maybe he needed to write his own escape.

Spike gritted his teeth and typed:

“They turned away from each other and went their separate ways.”

He waited.

Nothing happened.

He added two words: “THE END”

Nothing happened.

Right. Right. It didn’t work this way. Last two times, he would only get back in-world when he started to really enjoy what he’d written. When he would actually get invested.

The premise would need to be grabbing. Maybe he should indulge in one of his fantasies. And then, when he was in, he would need to somehow remember not to continue the fantasy, but to get on with the escape.

His fingers moved fast now. If anything, he would get out of here with much better computer skills than he possessed previously.

His next try went sideways in a most unsatisfying way. He was in the middle of writing a dialogue, him and the Slayer swapping insults (she’d always been good with her quips), when he found himself in-world. He was excited for about a second, before he realized the snappy comeback he had for the Slayer wasn’t coming. Wasn’t it supposed to just roll off his tongue? He was writing this scene a moment ago! How could he forget his own lines?

The momentum was lost, the Slayer grabbed at her stake, and it went downhill from there. Two minutes later, Spike was staring at the words ‘THE END’ stifling an impulse to throw the monitor against the wall.

The following try was not much better. This time, he did remember his lines, but he was so cautious not to make the wrong move and follow his idea for the plot precisely that Buffy got weirded out and staked him just in case.

The next couple of dozen tries revealed a pattern. The only thing Spike could control was the setup. He could place himself and the Slayer - there had to always be the Slayer, dammit, he couldn’t just write about himself alone, or himself and Dru - he could place them anywhere on the Hellmouth, from her bedroom to his lair to her Watcher’s flat. He could set in stone what they were doing - bantering or fighting or negotiating another truce. But the moment he fell into the story and found himself in-world, he would lose control. Everything from then on was a matter of chance, like it always was with this Slayer. He had no handle on the plot.

Once, he even tried to write them discussing the ridiculous situation he found himself in, and how to get out of it. He laid out to her in abundant detail how much the idea of them making out was disgusting to him. He couldn’t resist ascribing to her some disappointment at the news (which she attempted to hide, of course, but he knew, because he was writing it). He enjoyed imagining the dialogue, but he never fell into it. Writing reactions for Buffy was good entertainment, but a poor substitute for the real thing, even though he managed to recall and document a number of her adorable puns.

In his restless state Spike clicked on other open tabs. Apparently there was a whole community writing stories about him and the Slayer. Some of the stories, he had to admit, had interesting ideas. All of them, in one way or the other, lead to him and the Slayer hooking up, coexisting happily ever after, or dying a glorious death for the other to mourn, not necessarily in that order. Spike was getting a feeling that his story had to fall along those lines, too, if he ever wanted to get out of this bloody loop.

He tallied his findings.

He could control the setup. He knew what took him in-world. But what to do from there? While he was on this side, he could type whatever, bring to life any string of coincidences. But once in-world he had no tools to make things go his way. Him trying to remember the plan only made him slow and got him staked.

Wait.

What if he didn’t remember? What if he set it up for himself to forget? Like, wake up and remember this room as a weird dream. Being self conscious proved his downfall all the previous times. He’d remove it from the equation.

Perking up, Spike worked on the rest of the plan.

He needed the plot of his story to unfurl gradually. His experience showed he couldn’t handle anything fast-paced. It would suck him in easily enough but, once in-world, he’d stumble over his own words and it would spiral out of control.

He could afford very little deviation from his own behavioural patterns, as well as the Slayer’s. The moment they didn’t behave like themselves, it ruined the story.

He wanted something that would give him a wide room for manoeuvre. The story should allow for him and Buffy to have a thing, but also leave a lot to interpretation. In the stories he’d read it went under the label ‘slow burn’. He could do slow burn.

He needed himself and the Slayer on relatively friendly terms. Every time he started with them being antagonistic, it ended up with one of them killing the other, and with Spike returning to this stupid room to stare at the stupid ‘THE END’ words.

What would make the Slayer the friendliest?

Historically, they worked together best when their significant others would screw up, or get lost. This was already true for Spike. Dru dumped him. (And it still stung.) In his story, the Slayer needs to be single as well, no Peaches in sight - but not due to some supernatural threat that would make Buffy think it was her duty to intervene. No, let’s say Angel… left her. Yeah. Peaches went to LA to start (Spike grinned) his own investigation agency. He broke up with the Slayer, broke her heart. For Buffy’s own good, of course.

Okay, Spike got them both unattached. Now, it would be nice to have some precaution against Buffy staking him just because. Some sort of immunity. Spike browsed the stories in the community until he came across an idea. The Gem of Amarra. In his story, it will be hidden in Sunnydale. It was ridiculously far-fetched (many a vampire looked for the ring far and wide, and the Master would definitely lay his paws on it if the gem had really been in the vicinity) but it was his story, right? He could claim any sort of coincidence.

He now had the setup. The Slayer, newly single, is attending college or whatever kids do these days. Peaches is in LA. Dru is… wherever she is. Spike himself shows up in Sunnydale to look for the gem. The Slayer and him have no particular beef with each other.

The last thought struck him as odd. Spike frowned. When did he stop wanting to kill the Slayer? He didn’t know. He just knew he was no longer interested in it. He fulfilled his fantasy of killing Buffy twenty times over. It got old. It got boring.

He still wanted to be back to his own body, his own world. But he was done killing Slayers. He now wanted to understand what made them tick. And he would have all the time in the world to figure it out.

Pleased with his plan, Spike crackled his knuckles and started typing.

THE END