FIC: Perfect Vengeance - Chapter One
Mar. 6th, 2005 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxThe Kink: Time travel, specifically S6 Spike and Buffy in 1880s London.
Three other requests: Spike has "replaced" William, but only he and Buffy know; Buffy acknowledges real feelings for Spike (happily or reluctantly; it's your call); and Cecily eats her heart out when she realizes what she could have had.
Prologue Archived Here
Rating: PG (eventually to become NC-17)
Three other requests: Spike has "replaced" William, but only he and Buffy know; Buffy acknowledges real feelings for Spike (happily or reluctantly; it's your call); and Cecily eats her heart out when she realizes what she could have had.
Prologue Archived Here
Rating: PG (eventually to become NC-17)
CHAPTER ONE
Her life was freaking strange. One moment she was in the dressing room of a bridal shop being fitted for the ugliest bridesmaid's dress ever, and the next, she found herself in a dark, smelly alley… still wearing the radioactive-green dress.
=This sucks,= Buffy thought as she tugged the huge flower attached to her collar. She wasn't sure whether to be happy or upset when the accessory came off in her hand.
Weird things happened to Buffy every day, so many weird things that she didn't bother noticing half of them. However, being magically transported wasn't an everyday occurrence. In fact, it hadn't happened ever. And it figured that the one time it did happen, she wasn't magically relocated to a beach in Bermuda or a ski lodge in Aspen. No, it was to an alley… something she saw every miserable day.
Of course, this particular alley seemed darker than most and more narrow. It also smelled weird, kind of like a barn mixed with high school chem class.
=Oh fun. Eau de crap and rotten eggs.= She coughed as the acrid air stung her throat and eyes.
Light flickered in the distance, but the illumination barely reached where she stood. At best, objects around her appeared as little more than charcoal gray outlines; at worst, they were lost in impenetrable shadows.
Shaking off her unease, Buffy began to walk. She was used to alleys. She was used to the dark, but something about this felt strange, foreign… like she wasn't in Kansas any more. Or, in this case, California.
She hurried towards the light, her ruffled hem dragging along the damp, sooty ground until she hitched up her skirt to cross the cobblestone street.
See? Cobblestone. Buffy knew she wasn't the most observant person around, but she knew there were no cobblestone streets in Sunnydale.
She didn't this. Not one bit. And she gave a distinctly girly yelp when a hand reached out to touch her.
"Penny fer a suck," the man said.
"What-huh?" She jerked her arm away.
" 'ere now, don't play coy." He flashed a black-toothed grin as the gaslamps momentarily flared high. "Ye're a pretty one. How `bout a tuppence for a full rogerin'? Give us a toss."
Panic surged through Buffy. "I don't think so." Non-tingly Slayer senses said the guy was human, so she didn't beat the crap out of him before walking away.
"Bitch!" he yelled after her. "You aren't worth a bloody farthing!"
Buffy rushed into the darkness. Nothing looked familiar. Three and four-story buildings stretched into the ink-black abyss overhead, and shadowy passageways jutted off into dark, foreboding alleys. Buffy didn't like the idea forming in her head about exactly how far she had travelled. It felt like she had been plucked from the frilly bridal shop and dumped into the middle of the movie "From Hell," only there was no cute, cockney-accented Johnny Depp anywhere in sight.
"And there should be," she muttered to herself. "There really should be."
She dodged the bums in the street, dirty, skinny creatures who grabbed at her skirts and said things that she mostly didn't understand. And she averted her eyes away from the couples in dark corners doing things she wished she didn't understand.
It really was "From Hell," and she felt like Jack the Ripper could jump out at any moment to say "Boo!"… or whatever it was a psychotic serial killer might say.
=But I could kick his ass,= she reassured herself, even though it didn't ease the knots in her stomach.
Buffy turned the corner and was relieved to find that it was brighter here. Although gaslamps continued to be an uncertain form of public lighting --flaring high and dying low at totally random intervals-- during the moments when the flames were high, she could make out colors as well as outlines.
There was music, as well. Not like any music she'd ever heard played at The Bronze. This stuff was older than grunge and Courtney Love combined. Spike's beloved Sex Pistols could be added and there would still be years to spare. And the sound came from a bar that Buffy suspected that Giles would call a pub.
Buffy didn't go inside. It looked dingy and crowded. And she was afraid that if she did go in, she'd be confronted with evidence of a truth she wasn't ready to face.
Yes, strange things had happened to her —a day trip to a hell dimension and coming back from the dead--but time travel? That was new. What did she know about time travel other than Terminator movies, Delorean sports cars, and Marty McFly?
She told herself that it couldn't be time travel. Maybe she had only knocked herself out in the dressing room, and this was just a bad dream. Or maybe someone had transported her to a movie set in L.A., that way she could buy a bus ticket home.
She didn't want to be trapped a hundred-years removed from everyone that she knew, so she backed away from the pub and followed the streetlights until they led to wider avenues. Things became cleaner when she left the deeply funky area of town for the moderately funky. Everything remained grimy, but in a colorful way that her mom would have called `Bohemian.' There were--
=Crap.= Buffy's denial bubble burst.
There were horse-drawn carriages lined next to the curb, and well-dressed people stood under a gaslit portico, which was framed by plain square columns on shared pedestals. Iron chandeliers illuminated women in full-length evening gowns that would have been suitable for the red-carpet at the Oscars if 'the look' had been retro this year.
Buffy gulped. How had this happened? It would take something intense to cause time travel. It would take something you noticed. It wouldn't just slip by you as you struggled with a zipper. So, how had she missed it? And what was she going to do about it? If she was trapped in the past, there was no way to contact Giles or Willow to beg them to bring her home.
Knots tightened Buffy's stomach. Then she recognized a face in the well-dressed crowd. "Halfrek!" Buffy crossed the street, pushing her way through the crowd even as strangers gave her outraged looks. "Halfr—"
A man grabbed her arm. "See here, what do you think you're doing?
"I'm trying to catch a... uh... friend." Buffy didn't like strange men playing McGrabby-hands and pulled away to slip deeper into the crowd.
She found Halfrek standing on the far end of the portico, dressed in an immaculately white dress with lace ruffles and lavender ribbon trim, a remarkably 'sweet' outfit for a demon.
Buffy grabbed Halfrek's shoulder, and the white-clad brunette gasped, raising a gloved hand to her throat in a frightened, feminine gesture. She looked helpless as she gazed at Buffy with startled eyes.
"You have to help me," Buffy said.
Halfrek recoiled. "Whyever must I do that? I do not know you." She stumbled backward in a panic. "Go away, you wretched creature."
A petite strawberry blonde, dressed in buttermint-green silk, tugged at Halfrek's elaborately embroidered shawl. "Cecily?" Then she looked anxiously at Buffy then began searching the crowd. "Desmond? Desmond, come quickly. Cecily is being accosted by an Unfortunate."
A man of average height with a handlebar mustache which wouldn't look good on anyone, but looked particularly absurd with brick-red hair, came to the strawberry blonde's side. "See here!" he blustered.
Buffy whispered in Halfrek's ear, "I know you're a demon."
The hand Halfrek held at her throat trembled.
Desmond huffed. "You cannot accost respectable ladies of quality."
Hands on her hips, Buffy glared at Halfrek. "I haven't begun `accosting.'"
The strawberry blonde looked flustered as she clawed at Desmond's sleeve. "Summon the constable."
"Isobel, I am perfectly capable of taking care of this."
"Summon the constable!" the girl insisted.
Desmond's face turned a mottled red. "I shall remedy this situation myself, Izzy." He cast a baleful glare at Buffy. "I would suggest that you return to your… your `house of accommodation'."
Buffy blinked. "My house of what?"
Desmond sucked in his cheeks and lifted his chin. "I am sure that I do not know."
"Then why did you say it?"
Halfrek looked irritated. "Honestly, can you believe the nerve?"
Isobel continued pulling Desmond's sleeve, twisting the black wool fabric between her fingertips. "Desmond, our carriage. Please, let us go."
=Oh no,= Buffy thought. This might be her only way home. No way was she letting Halfrek escape.
Desmond patted Isobel's gloved hand. "Of course we shall leave, dear." He offered Halfrek his other arm. "You, as well, Miss Addams."
"Nuh-uh," Buffy protested.
Desmond told his companions, "We shall ignore this wretched creature."
"No." Buffy stepped in front of Halfrek. "I wouldn't advise that. I'm--"
"We know what you are." Desmond sounded outraged. "It boggles the mind that can you be so crass as to announce it to ladies." He caught a passing man's attention. "Have the Theatre Proprietor summon the Night Watchman."
Buffy frowned. "Look, you don't have to do that. Just—"
Desmond shoved Buffy out of their path. "Respect for your betters."
"Hey!" She pointed at Halfrek. "That creature isn't better than anyone-- ow!"
Desmond had slapped her.
Astonished, Buffy touched her burning cheek. "Where the hell do you get off?"
No-one appeared to care that Desmond had slapped a woman in public. In fact, everyone refused to look at her. Women even pulled their skirts away from her, as if touching Buffy's polyester satin dress would taint them. It left Buffy feeling as though she had fallen through Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole in addition to falling through time.
Desmond again offered his arm to Cecily. "Come along, Miss Addams."
After Desmond had handed her into a shiny, black carriage, Cecily looked back at Buffy. There was genuine confusion in her eyes, enough so that for an instant Buffy wondered whether this was a matter of mistaken identity.
But in the space of a heartbeat, Cecily's confused gaze hardened, and Buffy became certain that beneath the lace existed a stone-cold bitch. This `woman' was a demon.
"You won't get away with this," Buffy threatened as Desmond stepped into the carriage and firmly shut the door.
Behind her, Buffy heard a high-pitched whistle, and turned to see blue-wool-clad bobbies.
She blinked, still having difficulty believing that any of this could be real. But, as the Night Watchmen charged towards her, Buffy knew that she had better make a break for it.
She pushed her way through the crowd. If she lost Halfrek, she might lose her only way home, but she stumbled as Halfrek's carriage pulled away from the curb, the horse's hooves clattering against the cobblestones. Desperate, Buffy ripped away the ruffled fish-tail hem --it was ugly anyway-- and started to run.
Muttering curses under her breath, she wondered how long she could race after the carriage without losing it in the dark. Not long, was Buffy's bet.
The carriage passed a streetlight, and she saw a glint of metal. Maybe it was a luggage rack or something. She didn't care what it was. It was something to grab onto. Taking a blind leap of faith, she launched herself into the air, grabbing the curved metal whatever-it-was that curlicued off the corner of the cab down to the flat metal rack which ran along the back edgelike a bumper.
She thudded against the carriage as she landed on the bumper-thingie's metal grate, but she held tight. She glanced over the roof but ducked when the driver looked back to identify the thudding noise. Praying that staying low was enough to hide her, Buffy sighed in relief when they passed into the deep shadows between streetlights, then winced when the carriage hit a pothole, splashing filthy water through the grate and smattering her with manure-scented muck.
=I'm screwed,= she thought. =So screwed.=
She readjusted her grip and tried not to think about what she was going to do if strangling Halfrek didn't persuade the demon to send her home ... because, right now, all Buffy wanted was to go home.
Spike sat bolt-upright in bed, disoriented, with his head throbbing as if he had been trapped in a small room with the percussion section of the Sunnydale High School band.
=Bugger,= he thought as he rubbed his eyes. His mouth felt like he had grown fur on his tongue. Spike groaned, recognizing that he had a hangover from hell.
Stumbling out of bed and across the room, Spike found a pitcher sitting on the dresser. After chugging most of its contents, he poured the last of the water into the basin that had sat beneath the pitcher. Splashing his face, he lifted his head to see his reflection in the…
Reflection?
In a mirror?
"What the bloody hell?"
Chapter Two
Thanks so much to my betas![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fenchurche , rahirah, and fishsanwitt
=This sucks,= Buffy thought as she tugged the huge flower attached to her collar. She wasn't sure whether to be happy or upset when the accessory came off in her hand.
Weird things happened to Buffy every day, so many weird things that she didn't bother noticing half of them. However, being magically transported wasn't an everyday occurrence. In fact, it hadn't happened ever. And it figured that the one time it did happen, she wasn't magically relocated to a beach in Bermuda or a ski lodge in Aspen. No, it was to an alley… something she saw every miserable day.
Of course, this particular alley seemed darker than most and more narrow. It also smelled weird, kind of like a barn mixed with high school chem class.
=Oh fun. Eau de crap and rotten eggs.= She coughed as the acrid air stung her throat and eyes.
Light flickered in the distance, but the illumination barely reached where she stood. At best, objects around her appeared as little more than charcoal gray outlines; at worst, they were lost in impenetrable shadows.
Shaking off her unease, Buffy began to walk. She was used to alleys. She was used to the dark, but something about this felt strange, foreign… like she wasn't in Kansas any more. Or, in this case, California.
She hurried towards the light, her ruffled hem dragging along the damp, sooty ground until she hitched up her skirt to cross the cobblestone street.
See? Cobblestone. Buffy knew she wasn't the most observant person around, but she knew there were no cobblestone streets in Sunnydale.
She didn't this. Not one bit. And she gave a distinctly girly yelp when a hand reached out to touch her.
"Penny fer a suck," the man said.
"What-huh?" She jerked her arm away.
" 'ere now, don't play coy." He flashed a black-toothed grin as the gaslamps momentarily flared high. "Ye're a pretty one. How `bout a tuppence for a full rogerin'? Give us a toss."
Panic surged through Buffy. "I don't think so." Non-tingly Slayer senses said the guy was human, so she didn't beat the crap out of him before walking away.
"Bitch!" he yelled after her. "You aren't worth a bloody farthing!"
Buffy rushed into the darkness. Nothing looked familiar. Three and four-story buildings stretched into the ink-black abyss overhead, and shadowy passageways jutted off into dark, foreboding alleys. Buffy didn't like the idea forming in her head about exactly how far she had travelled. It felt like she had been plucked from the frilly bridal shop and dumped into the middle of the movie "From Hell," only there was no cute, cockney-accented Johnny Depp anywhere in sight.
"And there should be," she muttered to herself. "There really should be."
She dodged the bums in the street, dirty, skinny creatures who grabbed at her skirts and said things that she mostly didn't understand. And she averted her eyes away from the couples in dark corners doing things she wished she didn't understand.
It really was "From Hell," and she felt like Jack the Ripper could jump out at any moment to say "Boo!"… or whatever it was a psychotic serial killer might say.
=But I could kick his ass,= she reassured herself, even though it didn't ease the knots in her stomach.
Buffy turned the corner and was relieved to find that it was brighter here. Although gaslamps continued to be an uncertain form of public lighting --flaring high and dying low at totally random intervals-- during the moments when the flames were high, she could make out colors as well as outlines.
There was music, as well. Not like any music she'd ever heard played at The Bronze. This stuff was older than grunge and Courtney Love combined. Spike's beloved Sex Pistols could be added and there would still be years to spare. And the sound came from a bar that Buffy suspected that Giles would call a pub.
Buffy didn't go inside. It looked dingy and crowded. And she was afraid that if she did go in, she'd be confronted with evidence of a truth she wasn't ready to face.
Yes, strange things had happened to her —a day trip to a hell dimension and coming back from the dead--but time travel? That was new. What did she know about time travel other than Terminator movies, Delorean sports cars, and Marty McFly?
She told herself that it couldn't be time travel. Maybe she had only knocked herself out in the dressing room, and this was just a bad dream. Or maybe someone had transported her to a movie set in L.A., that way she could buy a bus ticket home.
She didn't want to be trapped a hundred-years removed from everyone that she knew, so she backed away from the pub and followed the streetlights until they led to wider avenues. Things became cleaner when she left the deeply funky area of town for the moderately funky. Everything remained grimy, but in a colorful way that her mom would have called `Bohemian.' There were--
=Crap.= Buffy's denial bubble burst.
There were horse-drawn carriages lined next to the curb, and well-dressed people stood under a gaslit portico, which was framed by plain square columns on shared pedestals. Iron chandeliers illuminated women in full-length evening gowns that would have been suitable for the red-carpet at the Oscars if 'the look' had been retro this year.
Buffy gulped. How had this happened? It would take something intense to cause time travel. It would take something you noticed. It wouldn't just slip by you as you struggled with a zipper. So, how had she missed it? And what was she going to do about it? If she was trapped in the past, there was no way to contact Giles or Willow to beg them to bring her home.
Knots tightened Buffy's stomach. Then she recognized a face in the well-dressed crowd. "Halfrek!" Buffy crossed the street, pushing her way through the crowd even as strangers gave her outraged looks. "Halfr—"
A man grabbed her arm. "See here, what do you think you're doing?
"I'm trying to catch a... uh... friend." Buffy didn't like strange men playing McGrabby-hands and pulled away to slip deeper into the crowd.
She found Halfrek standing on the far end of the portico, dressed in an immaculately white dress with lace ruffles and lavender ribbon trim, a remarkably 'sweet' outfit for a demon.
Buffy grabbed Halfrek's shoulder, and the white-clad brunette gasped, raising a gloved hand to her throat in a frightened, feminine gesture. She looked helpless as she gazed at Buffy with startled eyes.
"You have to help me," Buffy said.
Halfrek recoiled. "Whyever must I do that? I do not know you." She stumbled backward in a panic. "Go away, you wretched creature."
A petite strawberry blonde, dressed in buttermint-green silk, tugged at Halfrek's elaborately embroidered shawl. "Cecily?" Then she looked anxiously at Buffy then began searching the crowd. "Desmond? Desmond, come quickly. Cecily is being accosted by an Unfortunate."
A man of average height with a handlebar mustache which wouldn't look good on anyone, but looked particularly absurd with brick-red hair, came to the strawberry blonde's side. "See here!" he blustered.
Buffy whispered in Halfrek's ear, "I know you're a demon."
The hand Halfrek held at her throat trembled.
Desmond huffed. "You cannot accost respectable ladies of quality."
Hands on her hips, Buffy glared at Halfrek. "I haven't begun `accosting.'"
The strawberry blonde looked flustered as she clawed at Desmond's sleeve. "Summon the constable."
"Isobel, I am perfectly capable of taking care of this."
"Summon the constable!" the girl insisted.
Desmond's face turned a mottled red. "I shall remedy this situation myself, Izzy." He cast a baleful glare at Buffy. "I would suggest that you return to your… your `house of accommodation'."
Buffy blinked. "My house of what?"
Desmond sucked in his cheeks and lifted his chin. "I am sure that I do not know."
"Then why did you say it?"
Halfrek looked irritated. "Honestly, can you believe the nerve?"
Isobel continued pulling Desmond's sleeve, twisting the black wool fabric between her fingertips. "Desmond, our carriage. Please, let us go."
=Oh no,= Buffy thought. This might be her only way home. No way was she letting Halfrek escape.
Desmond patted Isobel's gloved hand. "Of course we shall leave, dear." He offered Halfrek his other arm. "You, as well, Miss Addams."
"Nuh-uh," Buffy protested.
Desmond told his companions, "We shall ignore this wretched creature."
"No." Buffy stepped in front of Halfrek. "I wouldn't advise that. I'm--"
"We know what you are." Desmond sounded outraged. "It boggles the mind that can you be so crass as to announce it to ladies." He caught a passing man's attention. "Have the Theatre Proprietor summon the Night Watchman."
Buffy frowned. "Look, you don't have to do that. Just—"
Desmond shoved Buffy out of their path. "Respect for your betters."
"Hey!" She pointed at Halfrek. "That creature isn't better than anyone-- ow!"
Desmond had slapped her.
Astonished, Buffy touched her burning cheek. "Where the hell do you get off?"
No-one appeared to care that Desmond had slapped a woman in public. In fact, everyone refused to look at her. Women even pulled their skirts away from her, as if touching Buffy's polyester satin dress would taint them. It left Buffy feeling as though she had fallen through Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole in addition to falling through time.
Desmond again offered his arm to Cecily. "Come along, Miss Addams."
After Desmond had handed her into a shiny, black carriage, Cecily looked back at Buffy. There was genuine confusion in her eyes, enough so that for an instant Buffy wondered whether this was a matter of mistaken identity.
But in the space of a heartbeat, Cecily's confused gaze hardened, and Buffy became certain that beneath the lace existed a stone-cold bitch. This `woman' was a demon.
"You won't get away with this," Buffy threatened as Desmond stepped into the carriage and firmly shut the door.
Behind her, Buffy heard a high-pitched whistle, and turned to see blue-wool-clad bobbies.
She blinked, still having difficulty believing that any of this could be real. But, as the Night Watchmen charged towards her, Buffy knew that she had better make a break for it.
She pushed her way through the crowd. If she lost Halfrek, she might lose her only way home, but she stumbled as Halfrek's carriage pulled away from the curb, the horse's hooves clattering against the cobblestones. Desperate, Buffy ripped away the ruffled fish-tail hem --it was ugly anyway-- and started to run.
Muttering curses under her breath, she wondered how long she could race after the carriage without losing it in the dark. Not long, was Buffy's bet.
The carriage passed a streetlight, and she saw a glint of metal. Maybe it was a luggage rack or something. She didn't care what it was. It was something to grab onto. Taking a blind leap of faith, she launched herself into the air, grabbing the curved metal whatever-it-was that curlicued off the corner of the cab down to the flat metal rack which ran along the back edgelike a bumper.
She thudded against the carriage as she landed on the bumper-thingie's metal grate, but she held tight. She glanced over the roof but ducked when the driver looked back to identify the thudding noise. Praying that staying low was enough to hide her, Buffy sighed in relief when they passed into the deep shadows between streetlights, then winced when the carriage hit a pothole, splashing filthy water through the grate and smattering her with manure-scented muck.
=I'm screwed,= she thought. =So screwed.=
She readjusted her grip and tried not to think about what she was going to do if strangling Halfrek didn't persuade the demon to send her home ... because, right now, all Buffy wanted was to go home.
Spike sat bolt-upright in bed, disoriented, with his head throbbing as if he had been trapped in a small room with the percussion section of the Sunnydale High School band.
=Bugger,= he thought as he rubbed his eyes. His mouth felt like he had grown fur on his tongue. Spike groaned, recognizing that he had a hangover from hell.
Stumbling out of bed and across the room, Spike found a pitcher sitting on the dresser. After chugging most of its contents, he poured the last of the water into the basin that had sat beneath the pitcher. Splashing his face, he lifted his head to see his reflection in the…
Reflection?
In a mirror?
"What the bloody hell?"
Chapter Two
Thanks so much to my betas
fenchurche , rahirah, and fishsanwitt
