Title:  Forget and Smile

Author:  Miss Murchison

Rating: R, eventually 

Disclaimer:  All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc.  Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Notes:   This is a sequel to Sweet Lethe, a short story I wrote just after Chosen aired. At the time, I called it my Silly!Sappy!Amnesiac!Shanshued!Spike tale, and that's a pretty good description. I started writing the follow-up then, but never finished, although I kept adding bits from time to time. I suppose the delay makes sense, because the story picks up years later, when Buffy goes to visit Willow and Spike. She hasn't seen him since the events in Sweet Lethe, and he still has no memory of his past.
 

  Chapter Two

"Nice tower room," Buffy said to Willow, looking around the cluttered office. The circular walls were covered with what had to be custom-made bookcases, filled with books that ranged from musty old tomes to shelves full of shiny new textbooks. Buffy picked up one of the latter and flipped through the pages. It was filled with big pictures and large type designed to lure reluctant students to read about World History. The tactic worked on Buffy about as well as it always had. She shut the book and set it down.

A small shrine or maybe an altar stood near the window, holding some statues, candles and a knife. There were a few pictures on the walls, mostly of pretty women with long hair and long dresses looking sad as they stared into space.

Willow grinned and sat down behind a huge desk. "It is a nice room, now that we've finally patched all the leaks in the roof. The weather around here gives us much more trouble than dragons or invading armies. But my house is kind of in the thick of things, and this place lets me block out the world below if I want to do magic. Also, I kind of hope being up here gives the impression I can see everything that's happening down on the campus. Scary Principal Rosenberg, you know."

Buffy didn't think Willow looked much like a principal, and definitely not like any of the principals they'd had in school. Willow was casually dressed in jeans and an embroidered top, and her hair was redder and curlier than when Buffy had last seen her. She seemed much too young for the job. But something about her cast an aura of power. That would probably be a magical ability strong enough to destroy the world.

Buffy waved a hand towards the window. "Any particular reason someone built a fake castle in the middle of a prairie?"

Willow shrugged. "People out here get crazy ideas."

Avoiding several straight-backed chairs that she suspected were intended to make disobedient students uncomfortable, Buffy plopped down on a sofa. "Funny. I always thought of this as boredom central. What do they call it?  Flyover country? Or one of the ones in the middle?" It took a second to remember where she'd heard the second phrase. Then she wondered if Riley was still roaming the world, throwing himself at one difficult task after another, trying to find a mission impressive enough to convince himself he was a real hero. Then she wondered how many women had finally given up trying to convince him that he already was a hero. The last time she'd seen him, his second wife was getting very tired of that chore.

Willow hit lecture mode. "There's a special damping field out here that keeps people from noticing anything weird that may go on, and so they ignore demonic activity the same way they ignore professional wrestlers acting as governors and cross-dressing farmers square dancing on antique tractors."

Buffy blinked at the effort of imaging those things. "That's a joke, right?"

"Nope. And wait until you see the butter cow." 

"Please tell me you mean cow butter."

Willow shook her head firmly. "A cow made out of butter. Life-size. I've seen a butter Harry Potter too. And Elvis." 

I am definitely not going any further down that conversational path. "But even here, a school full of slayers has to seem a little odd."

Willow shrugged again. "Compared to that Maharishi School, we're normal. They teach levitation and business management."

Before Buffy could demand if that was a joke, there was a knock on the door. Her brain barely had time to register the sound before it opened.

"You wanted to see me?"  He stood in the doorway, hands on his hips, his expression neither concerned nor overly pleased.

Willow looked up from her desk. "Yeah, Spike. Come on in. This is my friend, Buffy."

His gaze moved to the sofa, reached her, grew puzzled and then cleared. "You knew Angel, right?" he said. "Came to LA once when the witch and I were there."

"That's right," said Buffy hoarsely.

"Yeah. You're a slayer."

I was The Slayer. The one and only. I was the last girl ever to be able to say that. I was your Slayer, too, once. All yours, at the very end, but you didn't believe me.

"Yes, I'm a slayer," she said neutrally.

He nodded as if that explained her to his complete satisfaction, and stepped behind Willow's desk, where he pulled aside the picture of an emo-looking woman in a long gown riding in a boat. "The witch hides the good stuff behind the Lady of Shalott. Like Scotch?"

"No, thanks," said Buffy, watching him spin the dial on the old-fashioned wall safe. She remembered every muscle in his back, every characteristic twitch of his shoulder, every tilt of his head. But the dark blond locks of his hair--streaked now with an occasional strand of grey--those were strange and alien to her.

"I keep it for him -- and for Giles," Willow hastened to explain. "I haven't turned into a lush or anything."

"No, I'm the resident lush. Do you know the watcher?" asked Spike, turning with a bottle in his hand.

"Yes, I met him years ago," said Buffy, watching his face intently.

"Nice bloke. Comes over from the English branch of the school and bores the girls to tears twice a year with his special lectures on the History of Slayers," said Spike. "Goes on at length about the days when there was only One Girl In All The World. There's generally much texting and whispering amongst the troops. I usually get him drunk afterwards to make up for the little bitches' lack of interest."  He poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into one of the coffee mugs sitting on Willow's credenza and held up the bottle in invitation.

"No, thanks," said Buffy again. She couldn't imagine what the effect of alcohol on her would be. Things already felt unreal, as if she were trapped in a calm and reasoned drunkenness.

There was a long silence as Spike finished his drink and poured another one. He looked from Willow to Buffy, and seemed vaguely uneasy at the lack of conversation. "So," he said at last, with the air of a man who has cast about in his mind for a topic of small talk, "seen that great git Angel lately?"

"No," said Buffy. "At least, I went back and helped him deal with some of the fallout when he finally set the Wolfram and Hart crowd packing. And there was an impending apocalypse in Quebec a few years after. We both showed up for that. But I haven't seen him since."

"His Broodiness was in Dublin the same time as us a couple of years ago for—what was that, witch?"  Spike asked Willow. "We weren't killing anything, as I recall."

"The conference on Evil and the Dark Arts," replied Willow. "You gave that paper on ambiguous morality with all the quotations from William Blake. Angel talked about evil and its consequences."

"Yeah. I think you attended his session, didn't you, pet?"

"Yeah," said Willow. "You went partying instead."

"Never gotten very pally with the bloodsucker," said Spike. "Not my type, what with having fun not being his strong suit. Not to mention his drinking problem. Heart would be in the right place, though. If it were beating."

Buffy stared at him in astonishment, and even Willow seemed impressed at this concession.

"So, what brings you to the Boudicca Academy?" asked Spike. He sat down on the couch next to her. "And please tell me you're the new English--excuse me, Language Arts teacher."

"Sorry."  Buffy smiled as naturally as she could with him suddenly so close to her. "Not my best subject."

"Balls. I've had to combine classes to make seven into five, and between grading illiterate essays and trying to rearrange all the readings for Demonology, there's no way I can make my daily quota of slacking." He glanced from her to Willow, clearly puzzled as to why he'd been summoned, if it didn't have anything to do with his work schedule.

"Buffy is here to rest up a little, and to see if I can help her research some demons she encountered a few months ago," said Willow. "I was wondering if maybe you'd ever heard of them."

He looked interested again. "What are they called?"

"We don't know," said Buffy. "But they're like vampires, in that they take over human bodies, but they don't--don't displace the soul. They just sort of squat in someone's head." She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

He spoke in a gentle tone she remembered well. "Did they do it to you?"

"Tried. Got close enough that I--" she waved that thought away. "They can walk in the light too, and we don't think they need an invitation to go anywhere. But they feed off humans like vampires, and we don't think the original host has to die when it sires a new one."

"Sounds like a hybrid of vampire and human. But vamps are already hybrids. Wonder if there's something else in the mix?"

"I hadn't thought of that," Buffy said slowly. "So they're like the great demonic melting pot? Give me your dead, your evil, stick them in the tired masses yearning to escape?"

"Just an idea." Spike paused, caught in his thoughts for a minute. "So, the victims' souls wind up still aware, but trapped in the same body as a demon?"  He shook his head. "Sounds like the definition of hell to me."

"Yes," said Buffy, her throat dry. "But we haven't been able to figure out where they come from or where they'll strike next. And we want to find a reliable means of exorcising the demons without destroying the original owner of the body."

"And Giles is off in Nairobi helping set up the new school," said Willow. "So he doesn't have time to be Research Guy."

"Yeah, he kept that Nairobi gig for himself," said Spike, a shade of envy entering his voice. "Too bad. I'd like to see Africa someday."  He must have heard Buffy's sudden intake of breath, because he glanced at her for a moment before turning to Willow and suggesting, "Not a bad idea to set up an exchange program for teachers from the different academies, witch."

"When I'm down two full-time teachers, it definitely falls into the bad idea category," said Willow.

He pretended to pout, but his mind was clearly running on Buffy's story. "Never heard of these things that attacked you, but I'll ask around and check the more obscure on-line databases, especially the ones in demon languages. Giles always neglects those. Might even crack a book or two for the cause." 

"I'd appreciate it."

"You're welcome, Miss America. I'll see what I can dig up." He stood up, but stopped halfway to the door, frowning.

"What is it?" asked Willow.

"Just a stray thought."

Before he could say anything, two discordant tunes began to play simultaneously. Willow snatched her cell phone off her desk and Spike dug in his pocket for his. Willow's ringtone was some Celtic thing, and Spike's was Teenage Lobotomy, but the two of them moved in harmony the moment they glanced at their respective phones. A moment later, Buffy found herself dashing out the door at their heels.

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