Deja Vu - the updates
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AtS AU/AR › Slash - Male/Male › Angel(us)/Spike(William)
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Category:
AtS AU/AR › Slash - Male/Male › Angel(us)/Spike(William)
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
52
Views:
4,095
Reviews:
2
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Angel: The Series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Chapter 67
Deja Vu
Pairing: Angel/Spike
Rating: NC17
Author: Jane Alexander
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. The characters belong to Joss. I’m just borrowing them. I’ll try and return them undamaged, honest!
Document version: 21 November 2004
Feedback: janealexanderxxx@hotmail.com
Archived at: http://www.foreverfandom.net/viewstory.php?sid=4394
This story is AU and is a sequel to The Guy in Question.
Warning: includes character death.
Chapter 67
Angel’s apartment - later the same day
*******************
“How you feeling, Pet?” Spike asked, finding Wesley in the kitchen filling the kettle.
“Much better, thank you,” Wesley said. “I’m making tea. Is Angel with you? Can I get you both a cup?”
“He’s upstairs with Cordy discussing the ethics of invoicing the helpless for his services. They’ll be at it for hours. Don’t mind if I do though,” Spike replied. “Could do with a cuppa after spending the afternoon traipsing around that bleedin’ hotel.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table as Wesley spooned the tea into the pot. Spike smiled. Had to be the real thing for our Wes. None of your Typhoo tea bags.
“Hotel?”
“Yeah, we’ve bin over to take a gander at the Hyperion.”
“Oh, I see,” Wesley said. “Milk?”
“Think time travel might have caused me to develop a taste for lemon?”
“I didn’t like to presume,” Wesley said, huffily.
“Sorry, Pet. Yeah, milk is fine.”
Spike watched as Wesley poured a small quantity of milk into both cups. He brought the cups over to the table and set them down.
“No, it’s me who should apologise, Spike. I shouldn’t have snapped at you… I’m just feeling a little out of sorts today.”
“Out of sorts?” Spike chuckled. “I should bleedin’ well think so, Pet. Hah! That has to be the understatement of the year.”
He pulled his chair back and put his feet up on the edge of the table before continuing.
“The world ends and you get sent back in time four years with a broken rib - and covered in bruises, I’d wager - and you feel a little out of sorts… You know what? I blubbed like a baby every night the first week after I got here - couldn’t stop. It’s gonna take time, Wes. If you wanna talk about it… if it’d help to have someone to shout at when you get angry… or a shoulder to cry on… you know where to find me.”
“Thank you…” Wesley began, any further comment he’d been about to make being interrupted by the kettle coming to the boil at that moment.
Spike looked on as Wesley switched the kettle off, poured the water into the tea pot, replaced the kid and covered the pot with the tea cosy Willow had given Angel.
“There’s a packet of McVitie’s Digestive in the cupboard,” Spike said, pointing to the wall cabinet above the kettle. “The local seven eleven gets ’em in for me specially.”
“Milk or plain?” Wesley asked, opening the door and removing the biscuit barrel.
“Neither, sorry. Just the regular sort. I polished off what was left of the chocolate ones last night,” Spike said, getting to his feet, “But I could nip out and get you some.”
“Sit down, Spike,” Wesley said, as Spike felt a hand on his shoulder urging him back into the chair. “It’s very flattering that you and Angel seem to want to cater to my every whim but I assure you it’s really not necessary. I’m all right. Really I am. I’ve had much worse than a cracked rib and few bruises in the past. I’ll survive. Indeed, that’s rather the point. I’m thankful to have survived… and to find that I’m not alone…”
Wesley placed the tea pot on the table between them and took the seat on the side of the table at right angles to Spike’s.
“But you’ve lost so much…” Spike began.
“No more than you have,” Wesley said. “We’ve both lost our home, our jobs, and, most of all, those dear to us…”
Spike nodded. Couldn’t argue with that.
“… but it’s not over, Spike. We’ll be reunited with them one day.”
Fuck! Spike knew it. Wesley had lost his marbles. Now he’d got religion.
Wesley laughed.
Spike realised his shock must have shown in his face.
“Don’t you see? All we have to do is wait. We’ll go to Pylea just like we did before and find Fred…”
Spike relaxed.
“Oh, right. I’m with you now,” he said. “Only trouble with that plan is this version of Angel hasn’t a clue how to find her.”
“The spell was in a book we found in the library where Fred used to work. I know exactly where to find it…”
“Yeah, but what about when we get there? Our Angel said she was living in a cave when he found her but he didn’t say where. This Angel won’t know where to look.”
“No, but I do. She talked to me about it. She even drew me a map. I think I can find her… but I’ll need your help.”
“Sure, Wes. You can rely on me.”
“It should be brewed now,” Wesley said, picking up the pot and pouring the tea.
Spike took the cup Wesley handed to him and took a sip.
“Mmm, you make a good cuppa. I’ll give you that,” he said.
They sipped their tea in silence.
Spike was reasonably confident they’d be able to rescue Fred provided Wesley knew how to work the spell to open the portal. There was nothing to stop them having a crack at it next week. The doctor had said Wesley would be right as rain after a few days. Yeah, Wesley was right, all he had to do was wait and he’d have Fred back in his arms… back in his bed. If only he could be sure of how things would turn out with Angel. What if Willow never became powerful enough to work the magicks required to anchor Angel’s soul? Course, if she didn’t, Spike knew he had only himself to blame. He was the one who’d told Giles all about her addiction to magic. Nah, with his current run of luck his relationship with this Angel was gonna remain at the platonic level indefinitely…
“Why do you think he never made it?” Spike asked.
“Hmm?” Wesley murmured around a mouthful of digestive biscuit.
“Angel - why didn’t he get thrown back in time like we did?”
“What makes you think he didn’t?”
“Well, duh! In case you hadn’t noticed, the Angel you had dinner with last night is the twentieth century vintage.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that…”
“You’re here. I’m here. So what happened to Angel when Illyria went supernova? Was he standing too close? Did he get sent somewhere else - the future maybe? Or, was he simply dusted by the blast?”
Wesley looked thoughtful for a moment.
“No, I don’t think he would have been dusted. If he had been, the same thing would surely have happened to you… I hadn’t considered the future though… It’s possible but somehow I rather doubt…”
“Then what the bleedin’ Hell happened to him?”
Spike thumped the table, slopping his remaining tea into the saucer.
“There’s no need to raise your voice.”
He stood up and began to pace.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you, Wes, but it’s driving me crazy not knowing what the fuck happened to him. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this…”
“Spike, calm down. Please.”
Spike sat down again.
“You said that logically he should have arrived first as he was standing closest to Illyria when it happened,” Spike reminded Wesley.
“Did I?” Wesley said, frowning. “I don’t recall…”
“Well, not you exactly. Wesley Mark One. Same difference.”
“Ah, I see,” Wesley said with a smile.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny ’cos I’m not seeing the joke…”
“No, you misunderstand. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at myself for making such an obvious mistake…”
Wesley took another sip of his tea.
“… but then, I seem to recall, I was making rather a lot of mistakes in those days.”
“Wesley, if you don’t start explaining in the next three seconds I swear I’ll do something we’re both gonna regret…”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Wesley said.
Spike was pleased to detect a quickening of Wesley’s pulse. It wouldn’t hurt him to be scared for a bit not that he had any intention of doing him any real harm.
“It seems I was overlooking the basic principles of superstring theory,” Wesley began.
“Meaning?” Spike prompted.
“I believe it’s much more likely that the determining factor is relative mass…”
Spike picked up the tea pot and held it up as if to suggest he was about to pour the contents over Wesley’s head.
“Spike, put that down, please. I can’t concentrate if you threaten me.”
Spike growled softly and put the tea pot back on its stand.
“Thank you,” Wesley said before resuming his explanation.
Wesley took a deep breathe and pushed his shoulders back before continuing, assuming what Spike had come to think of as school teacher mode. It was the style he always adopted for long explanations, especially on subjects about which Spike and Angel knew very little.
“I would have expected the distance we’ve travelled in time to be inversely proportional to our mass - weight.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know what mass is. I’m not uneducated.”
“Of course not. Forgive me,” Wesley mumbled. “That would explain why you arrived first, being the lightest of the three of us. Of course, there’s no way of knowing for certain what the exact mathematical equation is with only two experimental results…”
“Fuck! Angel’s half as heavy again as me and I got thrown back four and a half years. Doesn’t that mean he’ll have only gone three years? Or, is it eighteen months? Bugger, I never was any good at mental arithmetic. Either way though, he’ll be a bloody long time getting here.”
But at least he was on his way. That was what Wesley had implied, hadn’t he? Or, had he misunderstood?
“What do you weigh?” Wesley asked. “About ten stone?”
Spike nodded.
“Yeah, give or take.”
“Then it can’t be quite that straightforward or I wouldn’t have arrived until the Spring,” Wesley said.
“P’raps you weren’t supposed to. That thing the Oracles did… warping time and space. Could it have caused you to arrive earlier?”
“Anything’s possible where the Oracles are concerned but, the fact is, it didn’t. If you recall, you said the first time I’d arrived a week ago so their intervention served to delay my arrival by a few days. It didn’t advance it.”
“Bugger! So much for that theory.”
“However, if we assume an object’s particular acceleration within the time continuum is inversely proportional to the object’s mass, relative to the time distortion experienced, and were the Oracles able to isolate and eliminate a particular moment, without interrupting the travel of energy, then one would expect the same rules to apply ie…”
“Yeah, yeah. Enough with the technobabble or my head’s gonna explode.”
Spike stood up and began to pace again.
“I’m sorry. Let me try and explain it another way. If I was scheduled to arrive at a later date than you, Spike, it seems plausible that I could have been affected by the fold in time in such a manner that I was compelled to travel the extra time after the Oracle’s intervention occurred ie I was made to arrive after they wound back the day instead of before. It seems likely their actions would also have affected the timing of Angel’s arrival but I can’t be certain how.”
“So, what you’re saying is we know bugger all about when he’s gonna turn up?”
“Yes,” Wesley admitted. “I’m afraid my knowledge of mathematics isn’t quite up to the task. There are so many variables. If only Fred were here…”
“Well, that settles it then, Pet. We’ll go get Fred and she can do the math.”
Once she’s gotten over the crazies…
****************
Pairing: Angel/Spike
Rating: NC17
Author: Jane Alexander
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. The characters belong to Joss. I’m just borrowing them. I’ll try and return them undamaged, honest!
Document version: 21 November 2004
Feedback: janealexanderxxx@hotmail.com
Archived at: http://www.foreverfandom.net/viewstory.php?sid=4394
This story is AU and is a sequel to The Guy in Question.
Warning: includes character death.
Chapter 67
Angel’s apartment - later the same day
*******************
“How you feeling, Pet?” Spike asked, finding Wesley in the kitchen filling the kettle.
“Much better, thank you,” Wesley said. “I’m making tea. Is Angel with you? Can I get you both a cup?”
“He’s upstairs with Cordy discussing the ethics of invoicing the helpless for his services. They’ll be at it for hours. Don’t mind if I do though,” Spike replied. “Could do with a cuppa after spending the afternoon traipsing around that bleedin’ hotel.”
He pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table as Wesley spooned the tea into the pot. Spike smiled. Had to be the real thing for our Wes. None of your Typhoo tea bags.
“Hotel?”
“Yeah, we’ve bin over to take a gander at the Hyperion.”
“Oh, I see,” Wesley said. “Milk?”
“Think time travel might have caused me to develop a taste for lemon?”
“I didn’t like to presume,” Wesley said, huffily.
“Sorry, Pet. Yeah, milk is fine.”
Spike watched as Wesley poured a small quantity of milk into both cups. He brought the cups over to the table and set them down.
“No, it’s me who should apologise, Spike. I shouldn’t have snapped at you… I’m just feeling a little out of sorts today.”
“Out of sorts?” Spike chuckled. “I should bleedin’ well think so, Pet. Hah! That has to be the understatement of the year.”
He pulled his chair back and put his feet up on the edge of the table before continuing.
“The world ends and you get sent back in time four years with a broken rib - and covered in bruises, I’d wager - and you feel a little out of sorts… You know what? I blubbed like a baby every night the first week after I got here - couldn’t stop. It’s gonna take time, Wes. If you wanna talk about it… if it’d help to have someone to shout at when you get angry… or a shoulder to cry on… you know where to find me.”
“Thank you…” Wesley began, any further comment he’d been about to make being interrupted by the kettle coming to the boil at that moment.
Spike looked on as Wesley switched the kettle off, poured the water into the tea pot, replaced the kid and covered the pot with the tea cosy Willow had given Angel.
“There’s a packet of McVitie’s Digestive in the cupboard,” Spike said, pointing to the wall cabinet above the kettle. “The local seven eleven gets ’em in for me specially.”
“Milk or plain?” Wesley asked, opening the door and removing the biscuit barrel.
“Neither, sorry. Just the regular sort. I polished off what was left of the chocolate ones last night,” Spike said, getting to his feet, “But I could nip out and get you some.”
“Sit down, Spike,” Wesley said, as Spike felt a hand on his shoulder urging him back into the chair. “It’s very flattering that you and Angel seem to want to cater to my every whim but I assure you it’s really not necessary. I’m all right. Really I am. I’ve had much worse than a cracked rib and few bruises in the past. I’ll survive. Indeed, that’s rather the point. I’m thankful to have survived… and to find that I’m not alone…”
Wesley placed the tea pot on the table between them and took the seat on the side of the table at right angles to Spike’s.
“But you’ve lost so much…” Spike began.
“No more than you have,” Wesley said. “We’ve both lost our home, our jobs, and, most of all, those dear to us…”
Spike nodded. Couldn’t argue with that.
“… but it’s not over, Spike. We’ll be reunited with them one day.”
Fuck! Spike knew it. Wesley had lost his marbles. Now he’d got religion.
Wesley laughed.
Spike realised his shock must have shown in his face.
“Don’t you see? All we have to do is wait. We’ll go to Pylea just like we did before and find Fred…”
Spike relaxed.
“Oh, right. I’m with you now,” he said. “Only trouble with that plan is this version of Angel hasn’t a clue how to find her.”
“The spell was in a book we found in the library where Fred used to work. I know exactly where to find it…”
“Yeah, but what about when we get there? Our Angel said she was living in a cave when he found her but he didn’t say where. This Angel won’t know where to look.”
“No, but I do. She talked to me about it. She even drew me a map. I think I can find her… but I’ll need your help.”
“Sure, Wes. You can rely on me.”
“It should be brewed now,” Wesley said, picking up the pot and pouring the tea.
Spike took the cup Wesley handed to him and took a sip.
“Mmm, you make a good cuppa. I’ll give you that,” he said.
They sipped their tea in silence.
Spike was reasonably confident they’d be able to rescue Fred provided Wesley knew how to work the spell to open the portal. There was nothing to stop them having a crack at it next week. The doctor had said Wesley would be right as rain after a few days. Yeah, Wesley was right, all he had to do was wait and he’d have Fred back in his arms… back in his bed. If only he could be sure of how things would turn out with Angel. What if Willow never became powerful enough to work the magicks required to anchor Angel’s soul? Course, if she didn’t, Spike knew he had only himself to blame. He was the one who’d told Giles all about her addiction to magic. Nah, with his current run of luck his relationship with this Angel was gonna remain at the platonic level indefinitely…
“Why do you think he never made it?” Spike asked.
“Hmm?” Wesley murmured around a mouthful of digestive biscuit.
“Angel - why didn’t he get thrown back in time like we did?”
“What makes you think he didn’t?”
“Well, duh! In case you hadn’t noticed, the Angel you had dinner with last night is the twentieth century vintage.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that…”
“You’re here. I’m here. So what happened to Angel when Illyria went supernova? Was he standing too close? Did he get sent somewhere else - the future maybe? Or, was he simply dusted by the blast?”
Wesley looked thoughtful for a moment.
“No, I don’t think he would have been dusted. If he had been, the same thing would surely have happened to you… I hadn’t considered the future though… It’s possible but somehow I rather doubt…”
“Then what the bleedin’ Hell happened to him?”
Spike thumped the table, slopping his remaining tea into the saucer.
“There’s no need to raise your voice.”
He stood up and began to pace.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you, Wes, but it’s driving me crazy not knowing what the fuck happened to him. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this…”
“Spike, calm down. Please.”
Spike sat down again.
“You said that logically he should have arrived first as he was standing closest to Illyria when it happened,” Spike reminded Wesley.
“Did I?” Wesley said, frowning. “I don’t recall…”
“Well, not you exactly. Wesley Mark One. Same difference.”
“Ah, I see,” Wesley said with a smile.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny ’cos I’m not seeing the joke…”
“No, you misunderstand. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at myself for making such an obvious mistake…”
Wesley took another sip of his tea.
“… but then, I seem to recall, I was making rather a lot of mistakes in those days.”
“Wesley, if you don’t start explaining in the next three seconds I swear I’ll do something we’re both gonna regret…”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Wesley said.
Spike was pleased to detect a quickening of Wesley’s pulse. It wouldn’t hurt him to be scared for a bit not that he had any intention of doing him any real harm.
“It seems I was overlooking the basic principles of superstring theory,” Wesley began.
“Meaning?” Spike prompted.
“I believe it’s much more likely that the determining factor is relative mass…”
Spike picked up the tea pot and held it up as if to suggest he was about to pour the contents over Wesley’s head.
“Spike, put that down, please. I can’t concentrate if you threaten me.”
Spike growled softly and put the tea pot back on its stand.
“Thank you,” Wesley said before resuming his explanation.
Wesley took a deep breathe and pushed his shoulders back before continuing, assuming what Spike had come to think of as school teacher mode. It was the style he always adopted for long explanations, especially on subjects about which Spike and Angel knew very little.
“I would have expected the distance we’ve travelled in time to be inversely proportional to our mass - weight.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know what mass is. I’m not uneducated.”
“Of course not. Forgive me,” Wesley mumbled. “That would explain why you arrived first, being the lightest of the three of us. Of course, there’s no way of knowing for certain what the exact mathematical equation is with only two experimental results…”
“Fuck! Angel’s half as heavy again as me and I got thrown back four and a half years. Doesn’t that mean he’ll have only gone three years? Or, is it eighteen months? Bugger, I never was any good at mental arithmetic. Either way though, he’ll be a bloody long time getting here.”
But at least he was on his way. That was what Wesley had implied, hadn’t he? Or, had he misunderstood?
“What do you weigh?” Wesley asked. “About ten stone?”
Spike nodded.
“Yeah, give or take.”
“Then it can’t be quite that straightforward or I wouldn’t have arrived until the Spring,” Wesley said.
“P’raps you weren’t supposed to. That thing the Oracles did… warping time and space. Could it have caused you to arrive earlier?”
“Anything’s possible where the Oracles are concerned but, the fact is, it didn’t. If you recall, you said the first time I’d arrived a week ago so their intervention served to delay my arrival by a few days. It didn’t advance it.”
“Bugger! So much for that theory.”
“However, if we assume an object’s particular acceleration within the time continuum is inversely proportional to the object’s mass, relative to the time distortion experienced, and were the Oracles able to isolate and eliminate a particular moment, without interrupting the travel of energy, then one would expect the same rules to apply ie…”
“Yeah, yeah. Enough with the technobabble or my head’s gonna explode.”
Spike stood up and began to pace again.
“I’m sorry. Let me try and explain it another way. If I was scheduled to arrive at a later date than you, Spike, it seems plausible that I could have been affected by the fold in time in such a manner that I was compelled to travel the extra time after the Oracle’s intervention occurred ie I was made to arrive after they wound back the day instead of before. It seems likely their actions would also have affected the timing of Angel’s arrival but I can’t be certain how.”
“So, what you’re saying is we know bugger all about when he’s gonna turn up?”
“Yes,” Wesley admitted. “I’m afraid my knowledge of mathematics isn’t quite up to the task. There are so many variables. If only Fred were here…”
“Well, that settles it then, Pet. We’ll go get Fred and she can do the math.”
Once she’s gotten over the crazies…
****************