Snapshots of Eternity

Snapshots of Eternity
Chapter One:
"Open Your Eyes


She'd been crying for months. Sinking further and further into that void of despair. No one knew it wasn't really her in control. No one came to visit and no one doubted the excuses of her devoted assistant, the sister who was actually the daughter. The daughter now playing the mother, their roles effectively reversed. She'd learned how to do it from the enitity who was father.

Her genetic make-up screamed for the paternal being to come and make the mother being better. They were drowning in their sorrow and spells would only go so far to ease their suffering. Just ease a part of the ache and leave all the rest like open, bleeding wounds. The misery and the heartbreak was shredding their world and all that was left of their souls.

The sister/daughter sank to her knees in the deep creme pile outside the sister/mother's closed bedroom door. Her body shook violently as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. Six months since Sunnydale and each day they died a little more without him. Each night they clung to each other as they drifted off into fitful slumber. Just something to hold onto and get them through the nighttime...his time...when his kind roamed.

Her hand gently caressed her scars, fingers ghosting along the marred flesh. It was almost nothing; just skin that marked where his razor sharp fangs had pierced her delicate flesh at the bend of her left elbow as a claim of family and protection. No one outside of the three of them knew she'd been marked as his. Just herself and the parent beings, though false memories said otherwise.

She touched the marks, stretching, reaching, searching down that too long psychic tripwire linking the three of them together. The burning red from the sister/mother and the emerald green of the sister/daughter. On and on and down and out into that endless black spreading into forever in all directions. She was drifting through the black sea of nothing and everything, her consciousness fully submersing in the endlessness.

Ahh...there it is...

A wall. Mental and psychic shield like an ancient castle's impenetrable defenses. A moat with its ominous, lurking presense warning: DANGER! KEEP OUT! NONE SHALL PASS!!

The very oldest of magicks and rituals used to protect one mate if the other should perish.

But the shield has the tiniest of cracks. The faintest whisper of blue/purple light is filtering through. Essence! Friend/father! Impossible!

Pretty to think so.

The world outside has grown eerily quiet and she pushes back from the void, pulled out, dragged away and returned along the green and the red. She's stayed too long. She had to get back before anyone knew what she'd done. She'd used too much energy and would have to use even more to cover her tracks. Folding the layers of obscurity in case anyone came after and tried to track her signature to where she'd been.

She came back to herself with the sprig of Lethe's Bramble pinched between left thumb and forefinger. She cupped it and whispered one word: Forget.

She blinked, whiped the tears coursing down her cheeks. Why was she sitting on the floor outside Buffy's room with a piece of potpourri from the backet on the entry table? She stood with a sense of not-quite-right-ness, still able to hear soft whimpering from within the bedroom and felt helpless.

Should she start slipping sedatives into those herbal teas Buffy seemed to drink 24/7? Would sedatives help or would they push her further into depression? She'd pray to the Goddess for strength and guidance.

One last attempt at making herself feel better. Cold, fresh air on the terrace to drown out the lingering sound of her sister's anguish. Clear night sky with thousands of glittering stars twinkling merrily down at a sleeping city.

Snippets of long ago conversations in a sun dappled kitchen with yellow curtains fluttering in the soft summer breeze...

*********************
"What is it? Why does every chick I know nearly lose it over that guy? What's he got that I don't?" Xander asked in earnest.

"He's very manly and has a large penis. You can tell whenever he goes around Buffy in those tight jeans and leather pants he always wears. I bet he gives her lots of orgasms."

"ANYA!!!" Xander cried in mortification at his fiance's tactless and inappropriate observation.

Dawn, in support of her newly betrothed friend, as well as with sadistic glee at furthering Xander's torment, nods enthusiastically. "I think it's his perfectly heart-shaped ass!" Here, the Key provides a double-handed grabby motion for dramatic effect. "You could probably bounce quarters off an ass that firm!"

"Dawn! Not you, too?!"

Dawn shrugged. "'m just sayin'". Privately, she's ticking off the moments to find out if Xander's head will explode or if he'll pass out from all the embarrassment. After all, he's the one who insisted on hanging with the estrogen brigade instead of going to that seminar with Giles.

"Razor sharp cheekbones," Tara offered, delighted when the male in the room shot a dirty look her way. She let out an appreciative sigh. "And the eyes. They're like soothing pools of liquid sapphire." Slyly, she glanced at her girlfriend with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

"That mouth is what really gets me," Willow admitted with a dreamy smile. "Ooh, what I wouldn't give for just an hour alone with that mouth..."

Yep. Any second now. Combustible Xander right in the middle of the Summers' kitchen.

The basement door opened and Buffy emerged in wonderfully askewed clothing revealing more than it covered. Flushed skin coated in sweat, chest heaving as though she'd just run ten miles uphill at full Slayer speed. "It's the accent," she explained and reached into the freezer for a handful of ice. Her eyes are nearly crossed as she envisioned the naughty words he whispered in her ear in that deep, sensual baritone. "That bad boy Cockney, all rumbly growly rough anf tumble. All it takes is one little crook of the eyebrow and a few whispered naughties and I'm ready for him to throw me against the nearest wall and take me all the way to happyland." She grinned wickedly and did a sexy little shimmy, a la Faith, to further the visual.

Everyone was so caught up in Buffy's words they don't notice the shirtless vamp in question slipping out of the basement and approaching the blonde Slayer. He took the ice from her with a devilish smirk and an impish wink that made her knees weak. "Here, kitten. Lemme get that for you," he whispered in his sexy bedroom voice just loud enough for the whole room to here.

Oh, so slowly, he glided the melting cubes over her overheated flesh. Eyes locked to her as she softly whimpered at the contact, his fingers drew lazy patterns along the sensitve skin of her throat, across her collarbone, down between her breasts.

Four sets of eyes flickered to Xander in an attempt to guage his reaction to the erotic display before him.

Yep. Any second now...

The vampire's tongue followed the trail of water from the hollow of his love's throat up along her jawline to capture her lips in the kind of kiss you can only see on late night cable. Limbs entwine as they press closer and closer. One of Buffy's supple thighs wrapped itself around his denim-clad hip. Pelvises slid and ground against each other.

The Slayer emitted a long, lusty moan...

The vampire growled its excitement...

THUDD!!!

All action came to a sudden halt and six heads turned to an unconscious Xander lying atop the freshly waxed linoleum.

"I'll be damned, Slayer!" Spike grinned down at the supine carpenter. "Bloody well worked!"

Buffy beamed as she checked her watch and held out her hands. "I called twenty minutes! Pay up, guys!"

"Not fair," Dawn pouted as she handed over a wrinkled twenty dollar bill. "Isn't gambling illegal?"

"Yep," Buffy agreed as she counted her winnings to be split with Spike.

"Not fair," Dawn grumbled with the infamous Summers' pout in full affect. "We agreed no hands."

"'s all in how you look at it, Sweetbit," Spike explained to the sulking teen as he tucked his half of the loot into his pocket. "You said we couldn't put hands on Harris. Never said Big Sis an' I couldn't put hands on each other."

"Dammit," disgruntled and broke, Dawn wandered off in search of more people to swindle.

***********************************

Ahh, happier times, Dawn thought with fondness. The sun would be up in a couple of hours. Hopefully Buffy will have found some peace in her dreams. Maybe she'd even find a few happy memories of her own.

Head down, eyes closed, Dawn startled as a pair of strong arms enveloped her and pulled her back against an equally strong chest.

"Open your eyes, Niblet."

Oh, God!...His voice!...No! It can't be! He's...he's...he's...

....turning her around to see the truth with her own eyes. Beside him, tears of joy are falling from Buffy's eyes. Just as they'd been falling off and on since his arrival on their doorstep while Dawn had been at work.

Dawn was speechless for a moment as her eyes traveled from one blonde to the other. "Spike?"

"Yeah, Niblet?"

"It's really you?"

"It's really me."

"You're here with us? Not gonna go away again?"

"Never gonna leave my sweet, beautiful girls alone again," he promised as he pulled them both into his arms and held them for all he was worth.

Home.

He was finally home where he belonged.