Author's Notes: My thanks to my betas for their guidance and insight, and to my readers for your support and understanding.

This is where the true detour from BtVS canon begins. I might have stretched the AtS timeline a bit, but roughly the dates should align so that the following fits in canon. If not, I'm going to unapologetically make it fit in canon. Heh. No knowledge of AtS is necessary to follow what transpires from this moment on—I'm just using the characters. Their destinies will be shaped by the events I put into motion; I might use things from AtS canon, but if I do, they'll be explained in text.

In the meantime, thank you all so much. I hope you're comfortable—this ride's just getting started.

Chapter 17

The note remained in her pocket for two weeks. She couldn't bring herself to remove it—couldn't stand the idea of any further separation from him, even if it was to leave behind the scrap of paper on which he'd written. She felt strangely close to him with his writing in her pocket. His ominous note which promised to find her, no matter the cost.

The revolving door of emotion had finally landed on comfort. Discovering the note had left her numb for what felt like days, and in the immediate aftermath of shock, it was always natural to search for anger in place of cool, rational reasoning. Spike had known from the beginning what she was going to do—he hadn't stopped her, he hadn't even confronted her. He hadn't done anything except what she'd told herself she wanted; he'd let her walk out the door.

He'd known all along. For some reason, it made her angry.

Anger never lasted, of course, especially when it was unfounded. In Buffy's case, her anger stretched the length of perhaps thirty seconds before she dissolved into tears. And it seemed she hadn't stopped crying since.

Spike had let her walk away. He hadn't tried to stop her. He'd let her do what she felt she needed to do.

He'd let her...

And now she ached. There wasn't an inch of her that wasn't sore. Pain stretched her every nerve, every cell. Her insides were consumed with hurt. She felt it with every step. Every time she tried to climb to her feet, all of her went rigid and she found herself sapped of the will to move.

It was as though her body had collapsed on her. Now she was lying in bed, her eyes blankly fixed on the cream-colored wall. The room she'd booked was nice, as per Spike's instructions, and she still had plenty of money left even after two weeks and Los Angeles' sky-high prices. She didn't want to think about where he'd gotten it or when he'd had the time to place the cash in her pocket. She didn't want to think about the decision she'd made at all.

She didn't want to think about how alone she was.

The pain stretching through her worn body was unlike anything she'd felt. It had begun as a stomach ache—a vague annoyance. Nothing she would have expected to extend into all-out incapacitation. But for the past day and a half, Buffy had lacked the will-power to do much of anything. Hours were occupied on her hotel bed, watching the news as her thoughts wandered to the life she'd left behind.

To those in Sunnydale—faces she knew and loved. Faces she didn't know when she'd be ready to see again. Any thought to a possible homecoming was far away—a distant speck of nothing on an endless timeline.

Buffy shivered, a dark shadow filling her veins. She tried telling herself that time healed all wounds. That the boulder resting on her heart would eventually erode into nothing. That she would awake one morning without feeling like every corner of her body was cracked. Her memories would wash into something painless, and she would face the prospect of a new day without breaking.

She knew time healed all wounds, but even knowledge couldn't provide clarity. All Buffy knew right now was she didn't want to go back.

It wasn't a matter of now.

It was a matter of never.

Buffy sighed heavily, wincing as she forced herself to sit up. Every move made her weakened body scream in protest. If the world wanted to end right now she'd be in no place to stop it. She couldn't slay a fly, much less a vampire. Acathla's jaw could drop and suck everything into the spiraling bowels of Hell and she'd be useless to do anything more than find something and hold on tight.

Something was wrong. Wrong and more than wrong. Buffy knew depression could debilitate people, but it wasn't supposed to be like this. So consuming. So...

She wanted Spike.

The thought of him had her screaming nerves sighing with a small measure of relief. Spike. Spike would make everything better. His touch would cool the fire scorching her skin raw. The comfort of his arms would ease every screaming ache in her body. She wanted him so much.

Something was very wrong. Something had happened—changed. Something was different.

Something had changed in the motel room with Spike. He'd brought her body to life with pleasure. He'd held her and kissed her tears away. He'd been everything.

He'd bitten her.

Buffy's eyes went wide, her hand shooting to the tender mark on her throat.

He'd bitten her. He'd bitten her, and something had changed. He'd said something—God, he'd told her she was his.

His cock rocking in and out of her wet pussy, his eyes possessing her, his hands marking her. His fangs stained with her blood. His body worshipping hers, loving hers, in all the ways she couldn't bear to let him.

Mine, he'd said.

And she'd said yes.

Not only that, she'd bitten him in turn. And she'd said the same. She'd staked her claim on Spike.

Blood. Vampires. Words. Oaths.

Something had happened that night. Something unprecedented. Something which had changed everything.

She just had to find out what.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It felt very wrong stepping inside a public library without Giles over her shoulder. For a long second, Buffy stood motionless in the foyer, her eyes absorbing the bustling movement of eager readers moving from aisle to aisle of books. She was so unaccustomed to seeing the library—any library—filled with eager patrons that for a second she considered stepping outside to double-check that she was in the right building.

It wasn't until she was standing in front of a stern-looking librarian that she really began to miss Giles. In Sunnydale, asking for books about demons and vampires wasn't something that earned an arched-brow and a cleared throat. And while she was nearly certain the reaction she received from the librarian was all in her head, it didn't make the effects resonate any less.

No, Buffy felt most assuredly alone.

"Vampires?" the librarian repeated. "Anne Rice, that sort of thing? Our paranormal romance section—"

"No," Buffy replied quickly. "Not paranormal romance. I mean...like...non-fiction."

"Oh." A blink. "Certainly. This way, please."

Ten minutes later, she was hidden away in a secluded area of the library, staring at a page of text she honestly hadn't the first idea of how to decipher. And in seconds, she found herself sinking in her seat. This was so much not her area. The books. The knowledge. She was more a stake-in-hand-slaying-baddies person. Without someone to translate what the words meant, she might as well have been reading Greek.

Buffy really didn't know what she was looking for. There wasn't a word for what she was feeling; for the pain stabbing her heart with every breath. For the way her hand trembled every time she moved to turn the page. For the hurt consuming her chest with every breath.

For the way she craved Spike—craved the comfort of touch and silky touch of his kiss. Craved him like she'd craved nothing before.

"I'm getting nowhere," she murmured, turning another yellow, aged page. Words meshed into a shapeless blur. "This is me...getting nowhere."

How could she research something based on something she was feeling? Spike had said mine when he bit her. Mine. There wasn't an index big enough to cover the implications of that one, monosyllabic word.

If there were any implications.

If this wasn't indeed all in her head.

Buffy sucked in a breath and turned another page. Nothing. Nothing. Garlic. Crosses. Holy water. Speculation on the earliest vampires in history. Words here and there about the ways vampires were born, a debate on whether or not they aged, and a few paragraphs from so-called experts as to the truth behind the Slayer myth.

"I could be standing on a hill in the middle of nowhere and I'd know more about what's happening to me than I know right now." Buffy sighed and surveyed her surroundings wearily. "I'm also talking to myself, which isn't exactly the best of signs. I'm talking to myself and I'm learning nothing. This was definitely worth the trip."

Her words died with an electric crackle of energy. A crackle which undeniably should not exist in a library. In a blink, she was shot back some three hundred miles, buried in a book in Sunnydale, where energy crackles and dimensional rips were something normal. Something not completely out of the ordinary.

Buffy didn't know how she knew it was a dimensional rip; she just did. It was split-second recognition. Something she knew immediately, without fault. Without hesitation.

And just as quickly, the pain in her body hardened into a rush of determination. She shoved everything internal aside and jumped to her feet, instincts leading her toward the roar of the blast. Thoughts rushed alongside reason and collided in a jumbled mess; she didn't know where she was running or what toward—she didn't have anything with her but Spike's note—and reality, it seemed, was on an indefinite hold.

The air roared with the familiar shrill of human terror. Buffy turned a corner and saw it.

She didn't have time to stop. She barely had time to hesitate. The light was blinding, a cloudy swirl of shapes and colors. Something in the distance bellowed but she didn't allow herself a beat of hesitation. There was a girl with a book in her hands—a young girl whose face was stricken with terror.

"Help!" the girl screamed. "Oh God, please!"

The blinding cloud of light was growing wider. In a second it would consume the entire aisle, and the girl would be gone.

Buffy didn't breathe. Didn't think. In an instant, her hand closed around the girl's wrist and she was running again in the other direction. The girl fell in clumsily behind her, a deadweight, but quickly gathered her bearings and broke off in a sprint.

"I—"

Buffy shook her head hard. "Don't talk," she said hurriedly. She shoved the girl behind a row of shelves and dropped instinctively to the ground, pain spearing through her body like thunder. Her heart hammered, her breaths crushed her chest, and every inch of her was aching beyond ache.

Beside her, the girl she'd rescued was shaking hard. "What was that?"

Buffy didn't answer her. The answer was there, of course, but she didn't know what to tell her. Even if her thoughts weren't racing and her body wasn't about to crack and shatter in a thousand indiscernible pieces, this wasn't her area. This was so not her area. This was Giles's area. Her area was saving the helpless. Her area ended now.

Her area ended after the grunt work was complete.

A few minutes went by; a few minutes which could have easily spanned a few hours for as much as her insides hurt. The roar of the dimensional rip rolled into a gentle rumble before dying out altogether, and the shadows it cast against the row of bookcases similarly faded into nothing. And then there was nothing. Nothing but her heart drumming hard against her breastbone and the terrified tremors of the girl at her side.

Nothing that Buffy could see, anyway.

"Stay put," she said sharply. The girl nodded and jerked her head forward, her eyes focusing on the carpet.

Every move she made cut deeper into her body, but Buffy forced herself to ignore it. Worrying a lip between her teeth, she raised herself onto her knees and peered around the shelf.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Not a hint of the rip which had torn through the barriers of reality just seconds before. No screams. No blank stares from a group of bystanders. In the distance, she heard conversation and the click of fingers against keyboards. She heard the scan of books being checked out and the recitation of due dates from the lips of librarians. It was all there—far away, of course, but there. People around her were continuing with their lives. On the surface, nothing had happened.

How was that possible?

Buffy thought immediately of Sunnydale, and she knew the answer. If it wasn't right in front of some people, they didn't see it. And she had been alone on this level of the library. She'd been alone other than the girl. She'd been alone with her book on vampires which provided no answers and a thousand additional questions. Life continued around them as though nothing had occurred, because ostensibly, nothing had.

"I-is anything there?" the girl asked. "S-s-sorry. I don't mean—"

"I don't see anything," Buffy replied. "Lemme make sure...wait here."

"Okay."

Buffy climbed to her feet, fighting off a wince. "I'm gonna go check it out."

"Be careful," the girl whimpered, but she didn't need to be told that.

The walk back to the aisle was long. Every step seemed to render her destination further away. She was panting hard, every breath stabbing her lungs with shards of self-awareness. And when she reached the row of books where the dimensional rip had opened, there was nothing to suggest anything extraordinary had occurred. No burnt carpet. No books on the floor. Nothing.

Well, nothing except for the green demon, whose eyes were so wide she was at first convinced that her presence had come as the greater shock.

"Great googly—"

Buffy's hands flexed in need of a weapon. "Hey—"

"I'll just..." The demon motioned in the other direction. "Be on my way."

"Not so—"

The words barely had time to touch the air. The demon waved awkwardly, then turned on his heel and bolted. And while she commanded her legs to follow him, they had hardened completely into lead. She toppled forward before she could stop herself, her palms bracing her fall and the impact sending shockwaves of pain through every fiber of her being.

That was how the girl found her. Curled on the floor, gasping for air and needing Spike so badly that she was certain she wouldn't make it through the night.

"Oh my God," the girl cried, falling to her knees at her side. "Are...are you all right?"

Buffy whimpered, her voice clawing for escape.

"I'm gonna get you help," the girl promised. "Just stay—"

"Uhhh..."

"I'm gonna—"

"No," she managed at last, rolling onto her back. "No. I..." There was no one who could help her. No one but her vampire, and she still didn't know why. "No...I'm...I just need..."

There was a beat of silence. "Let's get you out of here," the girl said softly. "I'll get you help."

"No—"

"You saved my life. I'll get you help."

Buffy wanted to argue but found she hadn't the strength. She hadn't the strength to do anything. So she didn't speak. She didn't try something she knew she would do little more than zap what diminutive energy she had left. Instead, she allowed the girl to help her to her feet. She took her arm when offered and wobbled on unsteady legs to the nearest table.

"I'm Fred, by the way," the girl said awkwardly. "Fred Burkle."

"Buffy," she replied in kind, though it came out as little more than a gasp.

"I'm gonna get you help."

There was no way she could, but the point was very much moot.

Instead, she allowed Fred to escort her from the library, hoping the girl's strength would be enough for both of them if she collapsed again.

Hoping Spike would be waiting for her when she left the library, ready to make good on his promise. Ready to find her.

She hadn't even the strength to cry when she stepped outside at Fred's guidance, and was greeted by the sight of nothing at all.

Spike wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere, and she couldn't blame him.

She'd left him, and he wasn't there.

He wasn't there. Of course he wasn't. She'd left him. And in spite of whatever he'd told her, in spite of the note burning a hole in her pocket, there was no reason to expect him.

Not when she'd been the one to walk away.

She'd made the call. She'd made the decision.

And now she was in pain. Her bones were diseased with pain. Her heart was sick. Her skin was tender. There was no part of her that didn't hurt.

She was alone.