By Trial and Terror (1/?),  by dutchbuffy2305

Thumbnail: Buffy and Spike from season 2 are abducted by scary scientists from the future, name of Burkle and Knox...

Rating: R

Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305

Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk

"Just watch the tape first," the woman in the white lab coat says. "We'll explain later."

Spike glances aside, to the Slayer bound tightly in the restraints, just like he is. She refuses to make eye contact and stares ahead angrily. Where the hell are they? At first, he thought it was a hospital, what with the lab coats and all, but this is not their kind of place, much too posh and modern with all that gleaming pale wood, and he's sure he saw a demon in a business suit rounding the corner. The tape starts rolling and he resigns himself to watching.

The camera zooms in on a toddler playing in a yard. His curly head gleams copper in the evening sunshine. A house can be seen behind him; the porch around it  deep in long shadows. The toddler burbles unintelligible words as it plays a game with a stone and a leaf.

A disembodied voice sounds from the porch.

"Come here, baby. Gonna give you a hug. Hurry up, then, you little earthworm. I promised your Mum I'd change you. Come on, then."

The toddler raises itself on stubby legs and giggles.

Spike groans. "This being your idea of torture? Showing me dinner and not letting me have any?"

The woman behind them remains silent. Buffy jabs her elbow in Spike's side perfunctorily. Spike resents that. His elbows aren't free.

On the screen, a white hand inches out of the shadowed porch and reaches for the toddler. It immediately starts to smoke. "Bloody hell! Get your little arse over here!"

Spike sits up. "Hey. Lookit that. That feller must be hungry. Offer him candy, you idiot. Pretend you're grandmother and you'll show him your teeth..."

"Who are you talking to, Spike?" Buffy says. "Is the concept of moving pictures alien to you?"

Spike snorts. "Was there when they showed the first one, you little undereducated mayfly. Don't pretend you never cheered on your favorite ice dancer to try on a triple Axel. Same thing."

Buffy harrumphs but fails to retaliate.

The toddler on the screen is taking steps towards the shadowed porch and the camera zooms in, revealing the outstretched arms and jeans-lad form of the vampire, waiting to pounce on the hapless toddler. The moment the little one gets close enough, the big white hands shoot out and snatch the squirming, squealing little bundle inside.

"Poor little thing! Couldn't you have saved him if you were filming this?" Buffy says accusingly. "Heartless monsters!"

The woman behind them doesn't react.

"Think of it as a nature documentary, pet," Spike says, grinning. "They never save the sweet little antelope from the lion when they film, do they? Hey, mate, what are you waiting for? Tuck in, man, tuck in!"

"You are gross and disgusting," Buffy grumbles.

The still indistinct form of the vampire on the porch appears to be lying supine and throwing the chortling baby into the air. The camera zooms in further and adjusts to the lack of light. The vampire smiling up at the child is revealed to have hair as curly as the baby's, only bleached bone white.

"Huh," Spike says.

A giggle escapes Buffy's lips. "He looks just like you, Spike."

"You're a miserable stinking lot, you are," Spike says with feeling. "S'pose you filmed this when I had my chip put in. Gonna see the poor bastard torn apart by chip pain, aren't we? Ever heard of the Geneva Conventions?"

"You're seeing the future, a possible future," the voice behind them says expressionlessly, although with a distinct Texas twang. "Pay attention."

"Future looks just like the present, then, don't it? A bloke tries to get a bite of supper, gets his unsuspecting brain blasted, claps his hand to his noggin, and cue a raised finger telling me, 'we told you so.'"

The vampire hides his face in the baby's neck. Pudgy hands pull at the vampire's hair in a pathetic attempt at self-defense.

Spike tenses up, expecting pain and shouting, almost feeling it himself.

The door of the house is thrown open and a woman enters the porch.

"Oh, that's the bloody limit! Get away, you fool, it's the Slayer!" Spike yells at the screen.

Buffy sighs in enjoyment. "The sun's still up," she says maliciously. "Run off through the garden and burn, Spike look-alike."

The Buffy on the screen looks down on the vampire and the child with a forbidding frown on her face.

"Look, Slayer, you're all wrinkly," Spike crows, and receives another elbow in his side.

"Spike," the woman on the screen sighs, "Please tell me he's already had his dinner?"

"Um," the dangerous predator on the porch floor says shamefacedly. "Not exactly."

"Oh, Spike, keep an eye on the time for once willya? The babysitter's coming over any moment now and she only stays until eleven. We'll hardly have enough time for patrol as it is!"

"Sorry love," Spike mumbles and gets up with an impressive crunching of his pale abs.

 Screen Buffy pats them appreciatively and picks up the baby.

"Give mommy a kiss!" she croons and the baby obeys promptly.

"At least he almost ate your sprog," Spike mutters.

***

Buffy is too mesmerized by the little scene playing pout on the screen to punish Spike for those words. It's not the fact that she has a child that chills her to the bone. It's the unmistakable resemblance the child bears to the vampire sitting next to her. It can't be true. It's impossible, and it should be.

The vampire on the screen catches the Slayer in a full body hug, and with horror Buffy sees big white hands lustfully squeezing her ass.

"This is gross. This is disgusting," she chokes out, too overwhelmed by the little home movie to remember she's already said that.

Spike beside her is silent, which is so utterly against his nature that she guesses he finally has grasped the real meaning of what they've been seeing.

***

"This is a low blow," Spike says finally, stunned. "This is wrong."

"Exactly!" The woman with the white lab coat freezes the video in the midst of a deep kiss and faces them. "A union between Slayer and Vampire. A souled vampire, I might add. The second souled vampire in the world."

Spike frowns. "There's another one? I thought Angel was the only sad bastard who was cursed with a soul."

A man, also in white lab coat enters the room. He and the woman seem too young and not clean cut enough to be military. His hair is curly and grows long over his collar; her shoes are weird but definitely frivolous.

"Angel is unique. Or rather, he's supposed to be. The existence of another souled vampire screwed up his future. He was supposed to be in that picture, raising his son with you, Buffy Summers."

Spike checks out Buffy's red flush and clucks his tongue. "True wuv," he sneers, "How adorably teenage!"

"I'm glad to hear this," the young scientist says, unperturbed. "Since we're expecting you two to go back in time and prevent it."

Buffy makes a strangled sound. Too stupid to get it straightaway, Spike reckons. It's a grand plan, supposing it works. Yeah. Now that he's past his first few seconds of enthusiasm, plans like this never work. Magic, science, all the same thing. Granted, science got humanity cars and the telly, which are both brilliant, but this is just too easy to get wrong.

"I'm Fred Burkle and this is Knox. We're scientists, and we made a time monitoring device especially for this goal. To get Angel the future he deserves. The one Spike stole from him when he got a soul."

Next to him the Slayer straightens. "So how would I prevent Spike from getting a soul?" she says slowly.

"That's easy. Just show him the error of his ways. If I could have stayed away from Sunnydale, I wouldn't have gotten chipped, and I would never have ended up here," Spike says.

The female scientist waves a hand. "We've selected several moments in time that were pivotal. The chipping is one of them; your first meeting not so much. The moment that Spike decides to help Buffy against Angelus, that's a major crossroads in history. The moment Angel becomes Angelus too."

"What?" Buffy screeches.

Ms. Burkle smiles tightly. "However, we've decided against using that pivotal moment. We might prevent it at the original date, but our computations show that there is 99, 9 % chance that it would happen at another date."

This is gibberish to Spike. Sounds like a good thing, Angelus losing his soul. Ought to make the old man a damn sight happier than getting a brat on this annoying teenager. The annoying teenager scowls at him.

"Time is like a river," Ms. Burkle lectures on. "Like rivers, it has tributaries and offshoots. Sometimes those little offshoots get so wide and deep that they in their turn become the main river. What we want you to do is dam up the offshoot and return the water to the main body of the river, so that events can run their proper course."

At a nod from her, Knox unties Buffy. "What we're going to do is send you to the point  in time when you and Spike work together to prevent Angelus from destroying the world. We've calibrated the machine; all you have to do is step through the curtain. Spike, you must not interfere in any way. Perhaps even leave Sunnydale for a while. Buffy, you must find a way to destroy Angelus on your own."

"Destroy Angel?" Buffy says dazedly.

Spike looks at her with contempt. Hard to imagine she survived her first vampire encounter with an attitude like that. And if that tall skinny bint thinks he's gonna obey her orders, she'd better think again. He's got Dru to think of. He hopes she's allright on her own.

***

 "Remember," Mr. Knox says. "Your mind will merge with the Buffy you encounter in that timeline. That might be a bit of a shock. Don't forget your goal, whatever happens, whatever you see or remember. Think of your future happiness, and Angel's. "

Buffy nods. Yeah. Knox and Burkle can talk all they want, but she has her own way of solving problems. She folds her arms and watches as Mr. Knox unties Spike's bonds. They're magical ones, she notices. Are they scientists or magicians? Maybe both.

Spike walks over to her, rubbing his hands and grinning widely.

"Alrighty, Slayer. Isn't this gonna be fun, you 'n me in that tiny little booth together?"

As if. Buffy waits until he's close enough and then plunges her hidden stake into his heart. There. End of Spike. The surprised look on his face before he dusts is priceless. Didn't he read her job description? Vampire Slayer slayed vampire, story of her life.

The scientists are as thunderstruck as Spike was. Pale grey dust drifts slowly onto the expensive deep-pile carpet and Buffy scuffs some in vindictively.

"You can't stake Spike!" Ms. Burkle says and she almost looks as though she might cry. Buffy finds that odd. This was Spike, not Angel. Not worth crying over, not even by his creepy pals. But no way, not like vampires can really love one another. Only Angel. Because he has a soul and he loves her.

"So," she says, feeling better now that she's offed the annoying vampire, "should I still get in the booth and deal with Angelus all by myself? How did he lose his soul, by the way?"

The scientists confer amongst themselves in harried whispers.

"She's ruined the timeline! We need to fold it back to the main line; quickly.*

Buffy yawns.

"Hurry. There isn't much time."

Buffy waits and twirls her stake. Her stomach feels a little funny. Chocolate would be of the good right now.

The whispering reaches a higher pitch. Ms. Burkle stalks to the windows, her face white and set. She yanks up the blinds and Buffy's heart clocks a few extra beats as she sees what's outside.

The sky is a dark, sickening grey, heavy and threatening like lead. While she watches, something...some thing flies into view and tears open a hole in the massed clouds. The tear belches nasty chartreuse puffballs into the sky and when the creature claws its way inside, the sky bleeds gobbets of red.  Buffy pushes her hand and face against he window, trying to get a better view. What the hell? Under the light pressure of her fingers the glass turns into translucent jelly and slides down on the sill with a wet plop.

"Ms. Burkle, what's happening to the glass? What's...?"

The scientists have wedged themselves into the booth. "Miss Summers," Knox calls out. "You have to go out there and make everything right. Angel must not be killed."

Out there? Buffy casts another look out. The sky is now a glittery grass green, and every now and then a piece of the green detaches and flies away. Whoa. When she turns back to ask the scientists for a little more direction, she can hardly see them; the booth, the machinery, the movie screen and the chairs, everything is fading. The scientist themselves are translucent and Knox manages a lame wave in Buffy's direction. O-kay. It's time to run away and let the Slayer do the heavy work, huh? It's a good thing she's a well-trained, dedicated Slayer.

Behind Buffy, the door that was her intended escape route is growing tentacles. Ew. She pushes at the outside wall and it turns to nothing under her fingers. She steps through the wall and onto the parking lot of what she now recognizes to be the new office building behind the mall. Well, that's not too far from Revello. But before she can start walking, the parking lot heaves itself up with a big sigh and starts moving away, stretching and rolling its long sides like a stingray. Buffy's too surprised to react immediately and tries to stay upright on the heaving black mass. Who knew parking lots were yearning for freedom? There's another shiver through the front part of the lot, in what might be the shoulders in any other creature, and Buffy jumps off just in time. With a cry of triumph the parking lot works its undulating sides in to wings and takes off into the sky.

"Goodbye parking lot!" Buffy calls out. "Watch out for that Sunnydale Inn  lot if you see it around, it's totally evil. I get lost there every time!"

Yeah. She feels for the lot, she really does, but how is she to find Angelus in this kind of weather? This is more like sty-under-the-covers weather, with some soothing old music on and her mom bringing her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Jeez, a sandwich would go down well. She's hungry, and she has no idea what to do. She wants Giles, and Willow to work some of their research mojo, and Xander could do that thing where he always turns up with pizza and Krispy Kremes just when she needs them most.

The sky, flickering between a liverish purple and a thundery yellow, drenches her in a shower of something really nasty smelling. Most of the raindrops turn into frogs and hop away. Oh great. Now she's not only hungry and thirsty Buffy, but stinky Buffy as well.

She sits down on a park bench, overlooking what she thinks used to be the playground. It's a good thing there are no toddlers around, because what the swing is doing to the seesaw defies description and should be X-rated. Under her, the bench quivers and turns into a mossy rock. That's fine with her. Mossy rocks are chillier than benches but do well enough for resting purposes. With a thud she falls through the rock which has become a lump of Jell-O. She now has Jell-O-butt.

"Stupid rock," she says crankily. Isn't there some place she can just sit down for a minute and think on what she can do? Cars giggle in the driveway and explode into clouds of pink and yellow butterflies; buildings sink into the earth or take off for greener pastures. With a crack, the part of Sunnydale she's sitting on breaks off from the rest of California and floats away.  Buffy stands on wobbly legs, or wobbly ground, who can tell, and contemplates jumping over the roiling chasm of nothing she sees beneath her feet. She decides against it at the very last moment. Instead, she stretches out her arms and yells for help.

The sun sets with an audible thud.   Did she shut her eyes or is it really night out there? Hey, it's morning already. Either she's falling asleep and waking up in 12-hour stints, or time has gone really wonky...The sun rises. Sets. Rises. Sets. Rises.

Huh. Maybe there's something wrong with her. But no, her feet are firmly planted in the soil and her leaves rustle pleasantly in the breeze. All is right with Buffy-tree.

Sunset and sunrise flicker past in a frightening succession. Somehow she's getting the feeling the world is not exactly what it used to be. She tries to speed up, get a little more out of life than this on-off thing, and it seems to work.

She now has long moments of sunshine to enjoy. The pink grapefruit in the green sky shines down on her face and makes her bark grow nice and tough. A dragon comes winging past, a shining creature hung with shimmers of rainbow brightness, colors dripping slowly off its wings with every beat. Angel is riding it, and he and Drusilla are looking as festive as their steed. Jewels in brilliant colors adorn their hair, their earlobes, their long-fingered hands. Drusilla's gown trails behind her like a comet's tail, slowly disintegrating and raining down on the floating islands of Sunnydale real estate. Showers of gold rings and drops of stale beer mark their passage.

"Avaunt!" Drusilla cries. "My dragon shall carry me to the stars, twinkly sweet stars for me to pluck and eat..."

"Faster, you slow old thing," Angel, or maybe it is Angelus, mutters.

Without warning, the dragon evaporates in a little puff of blue air and Drusilla and Angelus tumble to the ground with dull thuds, at Buffy's knobby rooty feet. This is not how Buffy wants Angel to see her, so she keeps her mouth shut about who she really is.

Drusilla stamps her feet angrily. "Bad Angelus! Naughty Daddy. Mummy has told you again and again about keeping hasty words behind your eyes!"

She pokes her red-tipped claws in the direction of Angel's eyes, and he moans dejectedly.

Drusilla seems to forgive him instantly. She bends down to him and plants a black kiss on his forehead. "Silly boy. Wait here for Mummy while she goes shopping for another Puff."

She shakes her filmy skirts about her and picks them up. Skirt in one hand, twirling parasol in the other, she ascends the stairway of shimmering blue steps that appears in the air right before her feet.

"Dru! Don't leave me here!" Angel calls out desperately, but his legs seem to have sunken into the ground so he can't move. "Dru!"

"Toodle-oo!" Dru waves gaily without looking back. At the top of the stairs a door appears, richly decorated with gold scrollwork. A delicious smell and heavenly singing waft from it as she steps inside. The door slams shut and it and the stairs disappear.

Angelus cries a little and sinks further into the ground. Buffy would like to extend a helping branch but she can't move. Funny how helpless Angelus seems, while Dru effortlessly influences her strange surroundings. Sometimes, Buffy reflects sadly and sanely, it's a bonus to be insane.

The suns flicker on and off in a whirling disco ball of colored sunsets. Angel is nowhere to be seen, except maybe that dark spot on the grass is him. The tufts stand up just like his hair used to. It's funny how she's not feeling sad and hurt. Do trees have feelings? She guesses not, because Angel, he's, like, the love of her life.

Another chunk of former Earth floats by, grass and trees on top, a piece of rock layered like cake below. She recognizes stones, tombs, a graveyard. Wouldn't it be too much of a coincidence if it was actually one of her own graveyards? And yep, there he is, Mr. P. Salignis Rosenberg, Sr. A cauliflower has sprouted behind his tomb.

The cauliflower rises into the air, and a dark figure can be seen to be attached to it.

"Oy, Slayer," it says without surprise.

Buffy experimentally waves her branches. She's still a tree. How would Spike of all people, um, all vampires, know she's Buffy?

With a painful thud she falls to her knees. Oh. She's human Buffy again. Only naked. Too bad one of her fingers didn't stay wood; she could have staked Spike with it.

Spike puts his hands on his hips and looks her over, grinning evilly. "Why don't you come on over for a bite of supper, Slayer?" he says.

Supper. Buffy's whole being yearns towards those words and before she can think about the wisdom of jumping over the gaping chasm between their rocks, she's already jumped. Halfway across Spike's face changes from evil but human into his full demonic face, and Buffy realizes the folly of her action. Jumping into Spike's arms buck-naked would be [ADW1] dumb in the best of times, but when you've just been a tree for God knows how long and you aren't armed, major A-grade stupid.

Her landing knocks Spike over, but still he's got his teeth in her neck before the back of his head hits the ground. It's just like being bitten by the Master. She can't resist, and she doesn't even want to any more, which is the scariest part of all. This was not her plan, being killed by Spike. In her plan there was Angel, and a vague sunny house and a not very clear job. Possibly pancakes.[ADW2] 

Spike lets her go and crawls out from under her. He staggers upright and almost falls over again.

"Bloody hell. That was bloody something else, Slayer. You've got blood like an H-bomb. I'll be drawn and quartered. Bloody Hell.."

Buffy sits up with difficulty. "Dinner you said?" she snaps.

"Yeah, dinner. My dinner, you twit. Can't believe you fell for that." He makes a grand gesture at his chunk of rock. "If I had a little volcano I would have baked you an egg, but alas."

Buffy stares at him woozily. His hair is growing. Must be the Slayer blood.

"All right, Slayer, I'm all rested up. Let's go and have the rest of you."

"There's no one else, Spike," Buffy says weakly. "What will you eat when I'm dead?"

"There's a thought," Spike says unconcernedly. "Live now, worry later, that's my motto."

"Hey, seize the day," Buffy tries to say, but she's not sure the words are coming out.

TBC

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