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Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground	By : cousinjean Category: AtS/BtVS Crossovers > Het - Male/Female > Buffy/Spike(William) > Buffy/Spike(William) Views: 2581 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) or Angel, the Series (AtS); nor any of the characters from them. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Dead Leaves & the Dirty Ground

by cousinjean

Prologue - Only The End Of The World Again

RATING: R
SUMMARY: It turns out the Chosen battle was not the Apocalypse to end all Apocalypses. That one comes a couple years later, and ends with Buffy getting trapped in Hell. Can Spike find a way to save her without unleashing Hell back on Earth? And what will be the consequences if he does? S/B
SPOILERS: BtVS, through Chosen; AtS, S5; Fray #3.
A/N: This story incorporates elements from Fray #3. It's not necessary for you to have read that, but it won't hurt.
Thanks to sunbrae, Jen, and hold_that_thought for the betas, and to fenwic, adjrun and Dionneshea for going "Oooooh!" when I told them my story idea.
Disclaimers: Joss Whedon created these people, but he said I could play with them, so we're good. The overall title is borrowed from the White Stripes. The prologue title is borrowed from Neil Gaiman. Neither one of them said anything one way or the other, but I bet they won't mind, 'cause they're cool like that.

Archiving: Feel free. Just drop me a note to let me know where it's going.

~*~*~

Dead leaves and the dirty ground

when I know you're not around.

Shiny tops and soda pops

when I hear your lips make a sound.

--The White Stripes

~*~

~~It was a battle like none the Earth had ever seen.~~

It was the end of the world as we kn
The Armies of Hell arose and kicked our asses
Once up on a time

Bugger it. I'm no Watcher. Not a writer, either. Only doing this because Rupert Giles is gone, and Wesley wasn't there. He was there for the fight, don't get me wrong. Ex-Watcher's no coward. But he wasn't on the front lines. He didn't see. Even if he did, he'd miss the point. Which is that Buffy Summers is... she's gone.
She's in hell. And so am I.
Well, if I'm going to be the one writing this down, I'm going to tell my story, right? Try to tell hers, best I can. Mine, hers. Ours. All runs together any way you look at it.
It started three years ago, with another battle. We thought that one was the big A, fighting against the big E. The First Evil. Scary, no? Ineffectual blowhard's more like it. Oh, the bastard put us through the ringer, that's for sure. Did a ruddy tap dance all over my sanity. But when it came to the actual fight? Well, I can't exactly say that Übervamp army wasn't threatening. Took my death to stop them, didn't it? Trust me, it did. I'm sure Giles wrote that down, though it wouldn't surprise me if he vagued up the bits about my contribution. And Wesley's got a big, fat binder in his office about my mysterious return. Ask him nice and he might let you see it.
But that's not the point.
Thing is, we had all these Slayer potentials. And there was this ancient weapon, some sort of scythe-- bet Giles wrote all this down, too, so I won't waste space on it here. But Willow did this spell. Took the power out of the weapon and gave it to all the girls. All of them, every potential, world over. Made them all bona fide Slayers. A whole army of them, just waiting to be gathered and trained. And that's just what Rupert and the others did. Buffy, she wanted no part of it, at first. She just wanted her life back, and who can blame her? Anyway, there must've been a couple hundred, by the time they found them all. Willow used this tracking spell to hunt them all down... imagine everybody's surprise when it eventually led them to me.
Don't know what that means. Not that I'm some kind of male Slayer, that's for damn sure. But I kept a little extra in the way of strength and speed when I came back. Still have no idea how, or why. Nothing like when I was a vampire -- like I said, you can ask Wes about all that -- but more than your average human. I figure it made Willow's tracking spell go wonky. At any rate, what with my having departed from this earthly plane in a literal blaze glory, I was the last person any of them expected it to find. Especially Buffy.
Okay, so this is off topic, but like I said, our story. I'll tell it how I like, and I want to get this down. I wanted to find her. Soon as I got back, that was the only thing on my mind, and nothing could have stopped me. Nothing but Angel and his stupid speech about cookie dough and how she'd said she wanted to get some living done, find herself and all that. How, even with me being human, she wasn't ready for the kind of commitment I hoped for. Not that I cared, if it meant I could hold her again, even once. But then the bastard said that maybe I still had some "baking" to do myself. The clincher was that she'd told him she wanted to be a whole person before she tied herself to anybody, and didn't she deserve to get a whole person in return? And as long as I needed her to complete me -- God, I sound like Jerry Mcfucking-Guire. Anyway, I couldn't put that on her. Wouldn't.
I still hate Angel sometimes.
Not that any of that mattered, soon as we finally saw each other again. But that's another story. And none of your business, besides.
So, Slayers. Army of them. Well trained, well organized, going forth and laying waste to demon kind. Not a bad plan, eh?
Except that demon kind didn't take it lying down. They assembled. They trained. They put aside their differences and worked together. Never seen anything like it before. Never will again. They became a vast army, like something out of a bloody Tolkein novel times ten, and it didn't matter how many Slayers there were, or how many they killed night after night, we were still outnumbered. Seems when Willow dispersed the power through the existing potentials, the line got all used up. One Slayer fell, and nobody new got called to take her place. Their number was impressive, but it was finite. The demons, on the other hand, had the ability to reproduce. Vampires turning all of their victims, some species splitting themselves in two, or three, or four. Others doing it the old-fashioned way. And if you think demon infants don't sound too threatening, try fighting off a newly hatched Ghora some time.
As if that wasn't enough, they managed to open up portals to other dimensions and bring even bigger, nastier, more purebred varieties through to our own. Caused the balance to shift and get all cocked up, and the portals weren't closing back up right. The dimensional walls were crumbling. Earth was on the verge of becoming a hell dimension. We had Armageddon on our hands -- the real deal, this time.
That was a hell of a battle. Literally. Buffy found herself back in the fray, playing the reluctant general, just like always. The Slayers' numbers had already dwindled, and pretty much all the rest of them were lost in that fight. Besides Buffy and Faith, and Kennedy, I don't think any of them were even out of their teens. I was there when Faith went down, and you can believe she went down gloriously, taking as many of the buggers with her as she could. And all of Willow's best protection charms couldn't save Kennedy from her own arrogance. Stupid chit. Sorry, Will.
Fortunately for the rest of the planet, we still had some miracle workers on our team. Willow held it together long enough to work with Giles and Fred, to find a way to close the walls back up. And they did, too. Again, the how doesn't matter. But the thing is, whatever they did, it didn't just seal up the walls. They somehow managed to lock up every demon--well, most demons. Every vampire, all magicks -- all of it got sealed up, banished from this dimension.
Angel was somehow spared. Probably the Powers intervened again. Angelus got sucked up with the rest, but left a human Angel behind. Which was fine with me. The wanker could finally stop bitching and moaning about me stealing his Shanshu.
Willow also found a way to anchor the extreme minority of demons who fought on our side. Spared their lives, but I can't say things didn't change for them. Lorne found himself completely cut off from the Powers. Least he still has his music. Clem-- well, things didn't change all that much for him, actually. Had to find new poker buddies, though.
Buffy wasn't spared.
Christ, this is hard.
We were standing there, together, watching it all close back up. Tasting the victory through the ashes, so to speak. Taking a head count of who survived, focusing on that instead of who we'd lost. And we'd lost a lot. All of the Slayers, save her, and isn't that a hell of a burden to be faced with. Giles. He let Willow leech his power for the spell, and it was too much for him. The little boy, Andrew. Battle hardened and not so little anymore. He'd never gotten over surviving Anya, and there was no way we could've kept him out of the fight.
The rest of us got lucky. I know I felt lucky, and grateful, standing there with Buffy in my arms, watching the forces of evil disappear in some kind of vacuum suck that didn't affect the rest of us, already making plans for the future. Affirming plans we'd already made.
Then a fucking Noki demon busted one of its tentacles through Willow's barrier and grabbed Buffy right out of my arms.
I held on. I had her hand, and I wasn't letting go. I'd have gone with her if I couldn't drag her back. But the others... damn them. They grabbed me, and they weren't letting go either. They were trying to help. Trying to pull her back. But it was a tug of war between them and the Noki, with Buffy and me as the rope. Even with our extra strength combined, we couldn't hold on to each other.
She slipped out of my fingers, and the walls closed back up. Sealed. With no magic left to re-open them.
That was a year ago.
I know what Wesley's doing, leaving me in charge of recording the final Apocalypse. He's trying to distract me. Maybe hoping this'll be therapeutic or something. But I'm thinking I just told you as much about that battle as you really need to know. I've got pages and pages of acid free paper left for recording my progress, taking notes. I'm going to keep looking. Because there has to be a way. There's always a way, if you look hard enough.
I'm going to get her back.

***
Spike laid down his pen and lifted his glasses to rub his eyes. Then he read back through what he'd just written. Satisfied, he closed the journal, set it aside, and turned back to his books.
He still had a lot of work to do.

~*~
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Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

Dead Leaves & the Dirty Ground