walkswithheroes | (no subject)

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spike

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A portal on the island almost traps three people on the other side.

When Fred thinks about it, it's something she should have been terrified of. A portal's what sent her to Pylea, what tried to drag her through another time back home, what sent her here. She should have been terrified of it, but she wasn't. Mostly, Fred had been too excited at the possibility of getting somewhere else.

And maybe the portal's fried now, but it's something. It's a start. And it's further than she's gotten in her year on the island.

The excitement hasn't worn off when she goes to find Spike, and there's probably a spring in her step too.

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Buffy might've poked fun at his lack of tan, but it wasn't as if he avoided the sunlight entirely. He enjoyed it, no matter how much he still felt he belonged to the darkness, and that morning, he was outside, repairing what was soon to become a leak in his roof.

He wore a pair of dark blue jeans, instead of his normal black, and by the time he'd climbed down for a drink of water, he'd discarded his t-shirt. Wiping the back of one hand across his mouth, he turned to see her coming down the path, practically skipping.

"What's got you so bloody chipper?" he asked, amusement heavy in his voice, "Don't tell me... A taco truck appeared out of nowhere on the boardwalk, last night?"

"Better," she replies, and she's about to start going on about the portal, about how there may be some island intervention, but that there's actual qualitative research on leaving that yielded actual— albeit disastrous— results, when she actually takes in the scene.

"...but first you've gotta tell me that you're not crazy body-switched Spike somehow."

Former creature of the night out of black and shirtless? It's a distinct possibility that there are body switch shenanigans going on.

"If I was, do you think I'd up and tell you right off?" Spike pointed out, his brow arched, "Put a bit of a damper on all that evil scheming, eh?"

Reaching for his t-shirt where it had fallen in the dirt, he shook the sand out of it and pulled it on over his head. "Human body, human sweat-glands, love. We can't suffer every day for the sake of fashion, now can we?"

"So did I just stumble on Spike Fashion Break Day?" Fred asks, teasing, because for as long as she's known him, she can't really think of another time that she saw him in something other than black. Except for a fuzzy scarf sometime last winter.

"I completely forgot to bring a present."

"Beautiful, brilliant and funny? It's a bloody miracle I'm able to keep my head with you around," Spike smirked, rolling his eyes as he took a seat on the bench out front of his hut, motioning for her to claim the spot beside him.

Crazy Spike Fashion Break Day aside, that's not really why she's come all the way out to his hut today. She takes the seat next to him, pulling her legs up onto the bench and nudges him with one shoulder in response to his comment.

"Tell me you've heard about the portal already." she says.

"Heard whispers. Like listening to a game of bloody telephone, story changes every time," Spike said, arching a brow, "But I can take a guess that if there was a dimensional portal, you weren't far from it."

"I mostly just stumbled onto the whole thing," Fred replies, because that's how it had happened. She hadn't even had any idea they were building one until she'd ended up in the scrapyard to find that Tony Stark and Peter Parker had already gone through it. She's still a little disappointed that she hadn't been able to help with the construction of it, but being able to see it work at all had been more than enough, really.

"They actually went somewhere, Spike," she continues, grin bright and wide, "Okay, so maybe we all could have been killed because of it, but someone built something and went somewhere not the island."

"Somewhere where, exactly?" he said, a bit of a frown tugging at his features, thinking of that bit of hell they'd glimpsed at on the day that Buffy sacrificed herself. Thinking of the stories he'd heard about Fred's time in Pylea.

"Not that I'm not excited for you, love, and whatever spark of scientific genius was just unleashed, but in my experience, that sort of thing always ends messy."

"Yeah... there was creature splatter. This didn't exactly end cleanly either," Fred replies, frowning at the memory. Strangely enough, Los Angeles had prepared her for her share of being splattered with various creature goos.

"I don't think anyone knows for sure. It wasn't any of our home dimensions, at least." Of course, that doesn't meant that it can't ever be someone's home dimension.

"In that case, 's a shame I missed it," Spike admitted with a bit of a frown, though it was a playful one.

"That's what you want? To send us all back where we came from?"

"Don't you?" Fred asks him, "We all got brought here against our will. People who want to go home should be able to make that choice."

Nobody liked to be trapped, least of all Fred.

"'Course I do. But the world was set to end bloody, when I left. Buffy'd run off with that pounce, The Immortal, and you... Well, let's put it this way, as caged as we all are, here, I can't say that I'm geared up to let the demon back in. Gotten used to it just bein' me, in 'ere," he said, tapping a fingertip against his chest.

"But I suppose we've all got work to do. The island's keeping us from all that."

"There was an apocalypse on the way when I left," Fred replies, remembering the prophecy she'd helped figure out. Maybe having an article published in a scientific journal had been a nice distraction, but there hadn't been any doubt that there was something big and scary on the way.

"I'm just saying, people who want to leave should be able to."

"Have a feeling you averted that one, love. I came from a good year or so after you, and the world had found itself rattling through a shiny new throes of death," Spike, though to be fair, he was convinced it was all one long slide into fiery hell, broken up by rare moments of calm.

"No argument there. Given the choice, I'd go back. I'd go back in a heartbeat. My very last heartbeat, since we all know this lapse into humanity's only going to stick while I'm here."

"Maybe," she says, humoring him more than anything else, "Or maybe things don't go the way they're supposed to on account of me not being there."

They come from different dimensions. There's a very good chance that what happens in his dimension doesn't necessarily happen in hers, so whether or not the crisis is actually averted back home is up for debate.

"So, you go back, and you save the world. Hopefully sooner, rather than later."

They all went back, eventually, but he did believe that if anyone could think their way out of an apocalypse, it'd be her.

"That's the plan," Fred replies. Well, hopefully, anyway. It's all incredibly theoretical, even down to the going back part. As promising as a working portal on the island may be, there's still an inordinate amount of work to be done.

Of course, the idea of going home comes with a lot more baggage than did a year ago. Going home means leaving a lot more behind than she wants to admit.

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