A/N Thank you so much to those so far who have reviewed. Your support is indescribable.
Beyond Truth and Lies - Four
by Megan



"Really, Buffy. How could you have done something so..." Giles struggled for the words and finally gave in to an explosion of temper. "Bloody selfish?"

"Yeah, Buffy," taunted the object of their not-so-civilised argument; Buffy's badly thought out plan and loud mouthed pain-in-her-ass consequence. "How could you?"

Buffy stared at him, the impostor—except he really wasn't---and almost snarled. He was Spike, just a hundred years before his more favourable evolvement.

"Would I still be selfish if I just poked you in the heart a teeny little bit with my big stake?" she asked, making sure that her brand new extra voluminous mascara was getting maximum workout while her hand sans weapon pumped the air obscenely.

Spike stared at her shiny lips and licked his own, tilting his head to the side as he looked her up and down and then slid his own hand down to cup the bulge that always took him by surprise as soon as she opened her mouth and got narky. "Depriving yourself of a real man, Slayer?" he leered. "Some would call that selfless. Me? I'd just call that bloody stupid. Besides, you couldn't do it. Not when I wear the face of your nauseating little sweetie bear."

Buffy visibly wilted, the eyelash batting dropping several notches as all the fight went out of her. An irritated cough reminded her none too gently that she and BR Spike weren't the only ones in the room—BR because she'd correctly identified him with that scar and the drool worthy locks as the obscenely evil Spike that had just killed his first slayer during the Boxer Rebellion. And she was being chastised for causing a dilemma in the ranks that everyone seemed to want to blame her for. Okay, so it was kinda her fault, but it wasn't like she managed it totally on her own. Willow had helped. In fact, Willow had done the whole freaking spell. Buffy had just held back with arms that ached to right a wrong that so apparently wasn't going to happen now.

The tears were not quite a surprise—at least not to her. The empty chasm that was her heart was, and staring at the vampire that was supposed to love her but really really didn't, didn't help.

Ever since he'd appeared, she'd felt the life drain out of her. Not in small dietary supplements, or a free tap to her neck, but figuratively losing her grip without Spike there to make her grasp strong.

"A-And to go around calling yourself The Immortal," Giles continued, his initial disgust morphing into something close to admiration. "That's just...bloody brilliant actually, but I'm not going to admit that to the Council. Seems like it's made the real Immortal rather irritated and he's making a few slip-ups. I have Slayer Division Six tagging him now. It's really rather flushed him out. Well done, Spike. The Council has been concerned about his influence for centuries."

"Right. Well, that was my last bleeding intention—to help out your Council of Wankers." His eyes flashed before bunkering down again as Buffy loomed threateningly over him.

"Ah, a distinct impossibility actually. The Council is now made up largely of women. It turned out that many of the wives of our operatives—those that were killed last year—knew as much about the operation as their husbands. Apparently once in, the Council becomes their lives. It's been rather handy in the reformation." Giles stopped, smiling quite confidently as he gave into his compulsive urge to scratch at his glasses with his regulation hanky.

What was left to do but sulk? Spike, aka The Immortal, slumped back in the easy chair and began to fiddle with the neckline of his new top the Slayer had bought him. It was a rather startling shade of midnight blue and he was really not getting fonder of it like she'd claimed he would. The focus had switched back to Buffy, however, and that was all the entertainment he needed.

"Buffy, I am so disappointed in you and Willow. What exactly had you hoped to achieve by doing this?" Giles had tucked his hanky back into his pocket and replaced his glasses upon his nose, his smile turning upside-down as he thought of the one vampire in the entire world he'd thought himself rid of. He knew it was unfair prejudice that made him feel that way—knew it was more than likely the guilt he was feeling was for not believing Buffy was right all along in supporting Spike. If he had the vampire back he'd be forced to apologise, and he just didn't think there could ever be the right words to take back something like an attempted dusting.

"What did I hope to achieve?" Buffy's voice was wobbly. She was so tired of this perpetual ache in her throat and this expectation that she'd not known what she had been asking Willow to do for her. Yes, she'd been entirely selfish. But when had she ever been? When had she ever put her own feelings first and fought for what she needed to get through the day? When had she allowed herself to be first in her fight to save everyone else? Just how much and for how long was she meant to sacrifice herself and her own happiness? This had been her time and she had so much that she wanted to take back, to make sure she got to say and force certain undead people to believe, that she really didn't care how disappointed Giles was in her.

"What I hoped, Giles, was to bring Spike back. I was going to tell him how very much I love him, how much I need his support and just his existence to drag me through each day. And then I was hoping to show him through lots of hot naked sex that he is the one thing in this world I will die before losing again. Selfish? You betcha. And if you think I'm going to apologise for that, you've got space demons in your head." She ignored the snort and derisively curled lip of sandy-haired Spike, catching instead the confused look on Giles's face and feeling a blush rise on her cheeks at how much Andrew was influencing her thought metaphors now.

He continued to look at her oddly, enlightenment not coming until she whispered 'Andrew' in embarrassment.

"Right, of course. I-I don't really expect you to a-apologise for how you feel, Buffy. I just wish you had consulted me on this beforehand. I—" He cringed before snagging his glasses from his face and holding them aloft, making it easy to avoid Buffy's eyes while he continued the lie. "I might have been able to help."

Buffy scoffed, her very audible 'pffft' causing the barely restrained 'Immortal' to hold himself together. He was highly entertained by how these creatures danced around each other, ignored each other's feelings and it was bloody comical how this slayer loved a vicious vampire and her watcher wanted to belt her sane because of it.

"Shut. Up!" Buffy shouted at him, advancing menacingly until he'd sat up a bit straighter and tried to hold the laughter in.

"Right, chit's a bit tetchy on the topic," he confided in the Watcher with an insincere wink. Then he turned back to Buffy, his eyes lingering hungrily on her barely restrained breasts. He could seriously get to love the clothing women adorned themselves with in this timeline. "How 'bout you and I go out on the town, luv. Go dancin' maybe? Have some fun. Don't rightly guess you've been having much of that lately." He'd sounded almost concerned, and it was a little trick he'd clung to over the years, knowing it came in handy to reel the bait in before he sank his fangs into vibrating lively flesh. If the bint was going to hold back a good hot meal, the least he could do was take her out and torture her with the lack of being her precious Spike.

Though not being wanted in favour of his souled and wimpy alter-ego truly pissed him off. Even more than seeing Angelus lose himself between Dru's widely parted legs.

"I don't want to go anywhere with you," she pouted grumpily, but the expression changed and he saw the quick veiling of pain. That just really rubbed him the wrong way, and if his cock was going to swell one more time when he thought of rubbing against her enemy flesh, he could very well do damage to it. Unless...

"You're a right frustrating little bitch, you are. You know what? You wanted Spike, you got Spike. Go put on whatever you bints call seductive in this time and let's go. I'm dying for a neck shake and if you're not there to take care of me, I might not be able to stop at just one."

That angry flash of temper in her eyes was a bloody turn on, and the threat of violence was always going to have control over his libido. Besides, he'd just killed a slayer. What could be better than luring one into bed and fucking her breathless? At least she wasn't ugly. Not that the dead one was either, but the chosen bints did nothing for him. Nothing except get the blood roaring in his ears. Maybe the constant crying about how he wasn't 'her' Spike was beginning to get to him. If using his cock would shut her up then he could see all kinds of rewards.

"I did NOT get my Spike," she refuted violently. "I got some try hard wannabe that is using the name of some enemy that managed to get Dru into bed. And while we're on that: newsflash, so not of the hard to achieve. That skank jumps into bed with anything that has the right shaped protrusion."

Fangs burst out and his face almost erupted with bumpies and the insane urge to attempt to decimate the slayer in a room full of weapons.

"Okay, okay, so that was low. What I really meant was, they don't even have to be the right shape. As long as they can screw Dru into the ground—and ooh, I made a rhyme—she's Mrs. Happy Demon. You should be pleased for her that her tastes are so simple."

He went for her throat. One minute he was panting heavily with repressed fury, hate contorting his demon face, and the next he'd lost all sense of control and had roared his hatred as his hands closed around her neck.

"Buffy!" Giles shouted as the pair slammed into the far wall away from his desk. A portrait of his dearly departed mother cracked down the centre as it hit the floor, glass tinkling as it left the antique frame. "Buffy, you're destroying my office."

Buffy ignored him and laughed manically, kicking Spike in the balls and then kneeing him in the face.

"OUCH!! You just bit my knee!"

"You bloody deserve it, bitch. Teach you to kick a vamp when he's got his fangs out," he gasped between protective squeezes of his balls and wild swings for her head. "Stay bloody still so I can kill you good."

"Awwww, is the wittle master vampy needing the big bad slayer to go slow so he can get a hit in?" Buffy ducked as a chair came flying at her. It sailed over her head, embedding in the office wall and to the echo of Giles screaming in fits of pique.

"Stop acting like spoilt children," he shouted, his normal control slipping badly as he made to grab up every valuable piece he'd stupidly brought to this Roman branch of the new Council.

"Fuck off, pops," came the snarled reply and Giles dove under the desk with his collection as fists, bodies and cheap decorator items spun and flew around the room.

"Look, face it, fang face. Things are sooo much better for you when you dump that deranged whore. She doesn't miss you even the littlest bit."

The lights suddenly went out as Spike tested his new status and ploughed Buffy bodily into the wall, shorting all the electricals in the building and plunging them into uncomfortable darkness.

While the muted thudding continued, Giles tried to get comfortable under the desk and contemplated how wrong he might have been to keep Spike's return a secret from Buffy. Definitely two of the buggers in this dimension was a bit much to take. And truth be told, he preferred the other one. Not that the blood still almost figuratively dripping from this one's fangs didn't put him a little off the creature.

Though posing as the much wanted Immortal was almost doing a civil service.

One final thump and everything went deathly still.

Giles, for all the bad he'd suspected of Spike in the past, had gone beyond the expectation that he was biding his time to kill Buffy. As much soul searching as he'd done since the collapse of Sunnydale, he felt he'd grown enough to admit that the glistening emotion that was hardly ever absent in the vampire's eyes as he'd gazed at Buffy wasn't the malice he'd wanted it to be. He rather thought it was indeed the love that the vampire had claimed to feel for so long—and he could only admire Buffy for not only recognising the truth of it and using it to her advantage, but also in her tenacity to let go of all her friend's prejudices and reclaim the man she'd loved so deeply in return.

He'd been a fool. A blind, damaged fool that had taken the example of Angelus and let it sour every experience for him. As a watcher—being trained to take notes as his life would consistently persist with the unexpected—he should have known that one souled vampire would not necessarily be the same as a second. And being that Angel and Spike had never shared one single similarity, he'd been beyond stupid to persist in believing that a vampire like Spike, showing such strength of regard for far longer than his fateful decision to court Buffy in the most darkest way possible, would ever degrade into such an evil creature.

Buffy had shown how very much wiser she was than all of them.

Giles located a torch in his drawer and made a hesitant effort to see why the silence was so still. Crawling out slowly, his limbs feeling the cramp all the way down to his aged calf muscles and knees, he found them. A clone-like Spike but with longer, more naturally coloured hair was passed out on top of his slayer, and Giles felt a tickle of humour twist at the edge of his lips. Buffy's hands were now loosely caught in the wild curls while fangless vampire lips rested against her throat. Never in his wildest dreams had Giles thought such a sight could be amusing to him, but they looked so much like children who had suddenly fallen asleep during a playful tussle that he was unable to help himself.

Looking intently at her face, Giles could now see the lines that sadness and grief had hopefully not made permanent. He could have prevented this. She could have all these weeks been frolicking naked—right, he wouldn't think exactly what she could have been doing as that image was disturbing enough to have him stabbing at his glasses to combat the embarrassment.

Pain-filled moans began to drift from the pair and Giles saw it as a cue to leave. He'd need to find another office—with electricity—so he could make a collect call to LA. No point in running up his phone bill when Angel had the coffers of evil at his fingertips. Giles wouldn't have trouble at all making a bet that their finances were a lot more infinite than his. And besides...Spike!

Before things could be said or begun that he'd really rather not have to hear, he left.

It was time he made peace with a vampire.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Buffy awoke to what felt like a brick wall compressing her diaphragm and blood definitely dripping into her hair.

She hadn't felt so exhilarated in months.

"Hey," she prodded, her quick upward hip thrust quite obviously not her best move as something long and hard pressed into her thigh. A subtle twist and Buffy stopped breathing as it probed her suddenly wet crotch and cool lips sucked at her neck.

No way was she dreaming that the life-sized fantasy doll was Boxer Rebellion Spike. Before she could give in to the dream of it being her Spike, of being able to touch him and love him and just TALK to him, Buffy attempted to push him from her body.

Apparently a determined and very latched on vampire wasn't so easy to budge.

"What's your 'urry?" he drawled lazily, lustily as his hand began a roaming trip across her belly and underneath her shirt.

Buffy squeaked and violently thrust his hand away, desperate to get away from this situation before she gave into something she just knew she'd be ashamed of later. His lips felt the same, his bulge felt agonisingly the same, but it really wasn't. Buffy knew it wasn't really him. Knew that he was so far from loving her that it could only lead to a quick release and then certain heartbreak.

"You know? That dancing idea was kinda of the good. Let's go do some of that?" she asked hopefully, groaning as a hand brushed beneath the swell of a betraying breast. She ached for his touch—for Spike's touch, and that's what acted like a bucket of cold water. She wouldn't betray his love like this. He fought so long and hard for her to see who he really was that it would be worlds of wrong for Buffy to give into a version of Spike who wouldn't even appreciate what the event meant.

"This is wrong," she said, finally pushing him onto the cold, hard floor of reality.

"Who bloody said? Felt right to me. Warm flesh, pretty perky bits, and nice hot blood to wash the revulsion down with. Couldn't ask for anything more right."

"You're disgusting." Buffy kicked him, not really knowing where she got him in the dark but from the sounds of his writhing pain, it was somewhere that hurt—a lot.

"You know, if you don't lay off the crown jewels then they're not gonna be as receptive to you in the future as you might think. In fact, pretty certain right now they'll curl up and die as soon as they see you coming. And that's not in the pleasurable way."

Buffy glared at where she thought he was, then gave into the lip that wanted to wobble in misery.

"You so suck," she got out on a weak, hurt voice and then ran from the room, leaving a bewildered and horny Spike, aka The Im-bloody-pressive-in-bed Immortal. And bugger if he'd lost his chance to show the bint his estimable skills in that arena. He'd want to fix that blip up before the whole of Rome was onto him and out for vampire dust.

He was just about to take off like an evil vampire in the night when a clasp of steel gripped his arm.

"Not so fast. Did you really think I'd forgotten about you? As if I'd let you go wild on the populace. Nobody would hate Rome that much."

"Well, Nero might have had a shot, pet," he grinned, almost giddy that he'd made her come back for him.

As Buffy dragged him back through the corridors of Rome Office: Council of Watchers, Buffy completely convinced herself that she hadn't been about to put her own heart and comfort ahead of a dangerous vampire on the loose. She may have convinced him to behave with the threat of not being sent home if he was naughty, but she wasn't stupid enough to believe that a good stern eyeballing ensured he stuck to the plan. Doing evil was habit to him now.

Buffy was so ignoring the possibilities that might come with Willow not being able to send him back.