Apocalypse Past (PG: Mild Coarse Language)

[Altoz]

Part 1: Resolutions Made...

Westbury 1999: Watchers Council:

"Please! Please come to order, please!"
"With all due respect, Mr President, you are responsible for this state of affairs. First, you unilaterally scheduled a Cruciamentum for the current slayer, with little warning and preparation for her, despite the practice falling into misuse. Then, by a narrow margin of available Council members, you dismiss Rupert Giles as her on duty Watcher, replacing him with Wesley Wyndham-Price, who turned out to have inadequate supervisory training for his role and was sacked in his turn, without any counselling or financial support to adjust to his new roll, or retraining opportunities at the Institute. As if that wasn't enough, you fail to provide adequate support for the novice slayer Faith Lehane, who is unable to adjust to her elevated responsibilities and goes off the rails. The last few months have frayed the Institure's patience and collaborative focus to the point of no return. Either you accept collective responsibility amongst the Council members or you will be sacked in your turn. Do I make myself clear, President Travers?" For a small woman in her forties, Dr Alessandra Norton, Director of the Watcher's Institute, could be quite compelling and forceful when it came to protecting her charges.
"Doctor Norton, may I remind you that you and other Watchers Field Agents were attending to the Budapest Wanderer Mummies incursion until a month ago, even if that is outside the Watchers core mission-
"That is a matter of interpretation, given that a previously unmapped horde of them were responsible for the premature death of Buffy Summers' predecessor India Cohen. They were attacking a major East European capital precisely because they had not been subjected to systematic intervention and disposal beforehand. This has been a year of several consecutive disasters. You took advantage of my absence to harangue the other Council members into making a string of lamentable decisions. As the Council has already decided, there will be several remedial measures undertaken. One is the informal establishment of Council ties with Rupert Giles to provide de facto oversight of Buffy Summers slayer duties. The second is the abandonment of the Cruciamentum for all slayers henceforth. The third is that decisions about the employment ot Watchers are to be made by unanimous Council decision."
"There is no question of any dissent from this, Doctor Norton, let me assure you. Is that all the business that we have this afternoon? Thank you for your Auditors Report, Doctor and I appreciate the usual diligence and commitment to the welfare of the Council and its slayers that drives you." Alessandra Norton glared daggers at Quentin Travers as she gathered her papers, inserted them into her briefcase and stormed out of the Council chamber, into the foyer and toward her waiting colleagues.

"How did the meeting go, or shouldn't we ask?" Father Chris Lonnergan said as Doctor Norton, Doug Mercer and he entered the lift in the Watchers Institutes main atrium:
"I made sure there'll be no more Cruciamenta for future slayers. We've formalised our working relationship with Rupert, and we're trying to contact Wesley, Doug. I'm sorry, I know you two were friends."
"He may have been old school, but he wasn't given a fair chance. In civilian life, he would have been given an employment tribunal hearing to state his case. Instead of which, he's been scapegoated for what happened in the 'Dale this year. Seriously, 'Lessa, I came that close to quitting myself when I heard how badly they'd been treated. Okay, so that's the goodish news. What about the bad?"
"I know you tried to talk Wesley's father Roger around to supporting his son, but he voted against rehabilitation for Wes. At the Council though, his response was that he valued and strongly respected your wisdom, commitment and expertise, he even wished that someone of your calibre had been appointed to oversee the slayer. However, despite that personal respect for you, he did not intend to descend into nepotism for the sake of his son."
"So that's it, then? We just cut Wes off? We leave him high and dry, without even so much as counselling and severance payment or rehab opportunities? Or support from his own father? Damn it, Doc. This isn't what I joined the Institute for."
"Don't worry, I let dear Quentin know full well that this was his final warning, if he ever acted with unanimous Council sanction again. "
"Aye, well, this whole year has been bloody abyssmal. Dougie, mate, go an' work it off in the gym. Good. Now, Doc, about that other contingency plan that we were working out."
"The Ark Project? Don't worry. I made sure that in the event of anything happening to the Council premises and their stored knowledge, it's been copied and stored here."
"An' Gwen Post?"
"Quentin managed to quash any investigation into how that woman got appointed Faith Lehane's Watcher, despite being under investigation by the Institute for possible corruption, later borne out by her attempted abuse of the Glove of Myhnegon. Thanks to her, Faith Lehane may have gone dark. Instead of being an additional asset as a vampire slayer, she poisoned the relationship between the Watchers and our second called. Ah, enough. While Doug is demolishing another punching bag in the gym, I need a good stiff brandy."
"Whiskey for me, ta. Don't worry about the lad, he's gold-plated Watcher material. He won't walk."

"Pompous. Incompetent. Self-Serving. Old. Git!" Doug Mercer said in staccato phrases, as he pummelled a punching bag with his fists, legs and mind, hard. Unfortunately, at the last phrase, the bag shattered and its anchoring chain and peg to the ceiling broke:
"Well, at least he's done some good motivating you," said a familiar voice, "although isn't that the third punching bag you've demolished this year?"
"Rupert? C'mere, you!" The Watchers Field Agent hugged his former mentor, who stood back:
"You look good, Doug. Quite a bit of Field Agent experience under your belt now too. You're not the broken sixteen year old lad who got med-evacuated here three years ago."
"Sorry about Budapest. It meant that for most of that year, we couldn't get over to the States to intervene in Travers' reign of error. Instead of which, Wes got scapegoated for everything when they should never have dismissed you in the first place. And he needed at least another year's training before he got sent out as a Watcher. What a bloody mess."
"Don't apologise. I take it I'm welcome back in the fold again?"
"Hey, have you seen Wes?"
"After his sacking, Wesley moved to Los Angeles. I think he's acting as a thaumaturgic consultant. I tried to talk his dad around to supporting him, but-"
"You an' me both, mate. Honestly, if it wasn't for Alessandra and Chris, I'd have gone the same route when we got back and heard about this. So how long are you back at base for?"
"Long enough. Come on, let's go off to the pub and you can show me how your darts practising is going."
"You know you'll thrash me again?"
"You do get to be less than excellent at something, you realise? You are allowed."
"Isn't it bad enough that I flunked Gay 101 apart from the looks department? I can't cook, I'm crap at interior decor, I have to be told to get a new wardrobe, and I'm hopeless at show tunes. My GI rating is perilously close to non-existent."
"This reminds me of a conversation that I had with Alexander Harris, otherwise known to Buffy and her colleagues as "Xander," In his case, the self-reproach is directed at himself for supposedly not being 'manly' enough for a heterosexual. The exact opposite of your plight."
"I mean, people keep mistakin' me for a straight bloke, Rupert. It's bloody embarassin'!"


TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Altoz]

Part Two: Chaotika: 1980

Wadi Kena, Egypt.
A helicopter was fueled, with a reserve detachment of fuel necessary for its extended mission took off for distant Iran. Several hours later, it set down in South Khorasan, where a covert airfield had been constructed. Due to rigorous maintenance and acclimatisation for desert conditions, a seven helicopter strike force with one hundred and eighty soldiers avoided detection, detaining any unsuspecting Iranian civilians who chanced upon the site. Although humid, the night was clear and calm. No storms or duststorms disturbed the unholy solitude of the desert as the choppers lifted off, intent on their target- Tehran, On April 25, the troopers disembarked, capturing Manzariyeh Airforce Base several hours later as C-130 Starlifters brought in additional army personnel. A covert convoy then drove up to the US Embassy in Tehran and gunfire was heard from the area for twenty minutes afterward. By that point, the US Army intervention team had rescued the hostages from under the noses of the newfound Islamic Republic. Furthermore, there were only three armed forces casualties as the hostages were evacuated from Iran, to safety onboard the USS Nimitz. America celebrated, and President Jimmy Carter was applauded for his daring plan and its successful execution.

1981:

Unable to secure even the safety of its capital, the Islamic Republic of Iran collapsed several months later. However, the event touched off a civil war, during which time the Red Army consolidated its hold on Afghanistan, absorbing it into the Soviet Union. Seeing a chance to secure foreign capital and technological prowess as the new regional surrogate, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq offered transit routes for the United States and its allies.

1982:

Successor regimes in Tehran came and went at bewildering speed. However, Iranian communists secured a northern redoubt and covert Soviet supply lines were established. In return, a Soviet airbase was quietly constructed. But then, a US surveillance satellite detected the distinctive thermonuclear configuration that powered the bases reactor,

March 1983:

The United States demanded that the Red Army withdraw from Northern Iran. Stubbornly, an ailing Leonid Brezhnev refused to allow it and on May 23, the first nuclear weapons were used in human combat since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thirty eight years beforehand. From that point, events began to spiral out of control. The Red Army responded by bombarding the US Army detachment with its own tactical nuclear ordinance and two hours later, Red Navy forces attacked the USS Nimitz with its own tactical nuclear devices. The Soviet Union ordered closure of road routes to Berlin, while NATO and Warsaw Pact forces assembled across the East and West German borders. All it would take would be a single mistake and a powderkeg would ignite.

September 1983:

Finally, at Serupukhov-15, a Moscow military district connected to the Oko Soviet early warning nuclear defence system, it happened. On September 26, 1983, Red Army Major Stanislav Petrov was greeted by an unfamilar female figure. She unexpectedly produced a silencer-equipped pistol and shot him through the heart, then dragged the body away. In other timelines, Major Petrov would be able to detect a malfunction in Oko's mainframe and avert what could have been the onset of a devastating nuclear holocaust. Without Petrov, the apocalypse happened.

September 23, 1983: Doomsday:

Petrov's duty replacement lacked his dead colleague's expertise and panicked, informing the Kremlin that it detected an oncoming fusillade of nuclear ICBMs high above the frozen wastelands of Siberia, reaching their apex before arching downward to target most major Soviet and Warsaw Pact cities. Brezhnev gave the fatal order and, guyed by error, he ordered the launch of the Soviet Union;s own nuclear deterrent against the United States and NATO. By the time they realised the magnitude of their error, it was far too late. NORAD detected the incoming Soviet ICBM array as they crossed into North American airspace and President George H.Bush gave counter-orders. In the ensuing nuclear holocaust, an estimated three thousand megatons were expended. Much of the United States and Soviet Union were rendered uninhabitable for millennia to come. Howard and Joan Summers could only watch as their two year old daughter Elizabeth Anne (Buffy) Summers died from radiation poisoning after drinking contaminated milk. Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris died when the downblast winds from the destruction of San Francisco slammed their kindergarten van into a disintegrating bridge pylon. Doug Mercer died from third degree burns when Wellington was incinerated and the flash set alight buildings in Upper Hutt across the bay. In Northern England, Rupert Giles and Alessandra Norton sheltered in a remote Scottish farmhouse. It is estimated that four billion people perished from the immediate nuclear holocaust, either incinerated or irretrievable, leaving them to die from their broken bones, secondary infections, or contaminated food or drinking water, Of the remaining seven hundred million, two hundred million died from delayed radiation poisoning and subsidiary loss of food supplies. An estimated one hundred million further casualties were lost to petty civil wars over minuscule patches of barely arable territory. The world lurched back to medieval standards of technology and the shell-shocked adults who had survived the holocaust had little or no time for the handful of surviving children. Stillbirths and mutations grew in magnitude.

Although smaller in population and magnitude, Earth's paranormal species also suffered. Vampire populations were exterminated in their thousands across Europe, Russia, the former United States and China, given that they had preyed and fed on concentrated urban humanity for the last three centuries since the growth of cities. Werewolves fared variably, but the onset of nuclear winter provided an opportunity to escape the tyranny of the lunar phases. However, they were affected by the mass extinctions that resulted as the biosphere roiled under chill winter, a devastated ozone layer, and lack of animal food. Some took to anthropophagy. Witches found their green lifestyles thrown into chaos by the destruction of traditional vegetation sources, the murderous weather and spread of epidemic disease.

October, 1999:

Alessandra Norton, Rupert Giles and Doug Mercer materialised in a dessicated forest of dead trees, where there was no bird song or animal noise, amidst sere yellow grass. Almost at once, their personal wards activated:
"Huh? What the hell happened? We should have appeared in Islington, in the Smoke. Did our teleport spell get disrupted somehow, or were we hijacked?"
Giles shook his head: "No, Doug. Lessa, where does the GPS say we are?"
"It's non-operational. But I know this area, It;s Westbury Forest."
"It can't be. I know the area too, but I can't remember anywhere like this. Look at the state of this place. It's been dead for quite some time. And why are our wards on full strength? Why aren't our cellphones working? Hey, that path looks familiar anyhow. Come on. We'll walk down to the village and..." When Doug rounded the corner, he stopped.
"What is it?"
"I think both of you had better see this." Below them, there was a wasteland of ruined buildings, burnt and derelict cars and overturned trucks and human skeletons.
"What happened here? Are we in the future?"
"Guys?" Alessandra knelt down and took a leather bound volume in her hand, but one whose cover was blackened, cracked and distorted, It read:

FORL CIVIL DEFENCE AUTHORITY OFBATH: RELEASE AUTHORISED IN EVENT OF NUCLEAR WAR. (C) MINISTRY OF DEFENCE: 1983.

"So, are we in the future?"
"No, Doug. Something is terribly wrong. This isn't the future. It's today, October 15, 1999. This is Westbury, near Wiltshire in Bath. "Lessa, do you have a geiger counter?"
"I think you'd both better see this." In the sudden silence, the device began a clicking crescendo.
"What. there's been a nuclear accident?"
"No, Doug, I only wish it were that simple, or manageable. Devastated town, human remains, burnt cars, dead vegetation, high radioactivity and the absence of bird or animal life. There's been a nuclear war here- and it happened almost twenty years in the past. Someone has changed history while we were in transit....:

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Altoz]

Part Three: The Twilight After Doomsday:

Abruptly, a pistol shot shattered one of the dead trees behind them:
"Looks as if this area isn't as dead as we thought." Doug brought up his hand, but then realised that the usual feeling of power within and among was absent from him. "Yes, I was afraid of this. Your abilities are based on resonance with the Earth..."
"Which has been weakened by a nuclear war. Which explains why I'm a drained battery at the moment. Probably just have enough power to maintain the ward and that's it. So what? I'm more than my magick." Doug said, unsheathing his samurai sword from his backpack and holding it in the autumn sunlight.
"Well, that's a sight you don't see very often."
Giles stepped out into the sunlight: "Is that you?"
"Hello, Rupert. I thought you were still in New Scotland." From the shelter of the trees came a particularly unexpected person. His accent and demeanour were familiar, but he looked different. Although he was only in his mid-twenties and six years older than Doug, there was grey in his hair, wrinkles around his eyes, and an ugly scar across his neck. But it was still unmistakably Wesley Wyndham-Price.
"There's something you really should know, Wesley."
"That you're not from around here? Yes, I did gather that. Eric here spotted you in the forest and let me know. I wasn't aware that the current condition of the Earth's noosphere permitted teleportation, and you all look suspiciously well fed. So...where exactly are you from?"
"Wesley, there's something terribly wrong here. This isn't history as we know it. Something's gone seriously off-kilter with it- in our own world, there was no armed confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in September 1983 and certainly not any nuclear exchange." Alessandra Norton said, having assayed the age of the destruction from dead wood and foliage samples through a portable bioscanner.
"As there's no way that technology is from this world, I have no choice but to believe you. Who's this? Your bodyguard?"
"Douglas Mercer, Watchers Field Agent. Except we never met here, did we? Sorry, you look so much like my good friend Wes, except... hell, I guess living through a nuclear war and its aftermath and the psychological and physical stresses involved must age you considerably."
"What you said earlier, Wesley... I take it this world has a roughly medieval standard of technology and population level?" Giles commented.
"From the surviving surveillance satellites in Earth orbit, the Watchers Realm estimates no more than five hundred million or so are still alive. Epidemic disease, suicide, rampant banditry and piracy, political repression, civil wars, starvation... they all take their toll. In Britain alone, there are about seven to twelve million, and that is rapidly declining. By twenty years from now, we estimate the human species will be extinct." Wes said bleakly.
Meanwhile, Eric was eyeing Doug ardently. Doug raised an eyebrow, aware that Wes' (ward? offsider? foster child?) was gazing up and down at the tall, muscular Watcher. Wes had noticed:
"Eric, perhaps you might want to tend to the dinner? We have no fine liquor, but there is chilled orange juice from Spain. We have some trade from adjacent surviving nations or successor states. I'm currently the Second Lord Watcher for Southeastern England, or what's left of it."

The meal was mostly vegetarian, although fulfilling. Lord Wesley, Alessandra, Giles and Doug sat and talked into the night, at which point they broke up for bed. Doug was unsurprised by a hesitant rap on the door and said: "Come in, Eric."
"How'd you know..." The young redheaded man was dressed in nothing more than a pair of half-longjohns, held by knotted shoestrings:
"You were checkin' me out all through our first encounter and the dinner."
"But you don't do men, right?"
Doug leant back: "Actually, I do. Hey, how old are you, mate?"
"Seventeen. I was born about a year before the war broke out. Lord Roger and Wesley gave shelter to my mother and I and kept us safe though most of the anarchy and chaos that followed the war."
"You're only about two years older than me."
"I'm getting a little cold over here."
Doug grinned: "Okay, then. Drop the drawers and we'll get more comfortable..." Hardly had Doug finished the sentence then Eric had stepped out of his underwear and padded toward the bed.

Several creaks of the bed, sighs, moans, gasps and much panting later, Eric lay in Doug's arms, feeling the muscles on the other's chest, arms and six pack:
"Hell, you're stacked."
"Guilty. I live a very physical life."
"I haven't seen anyone like you- well, around our age anyway. Not many babies or small children survived the war. Those that did.. we call them "apos", short for apocalyptic. Because the war destroyed so much, and the weather's packed up, very few elderly people or babies or toddlers lived through the first few winters. There were no schools, family life was non-existent, there was hardly enough to eat. They don't wash, they're barely verbal, they're psychologically stunted. When I admitted to myself I preferred fellers, around a year ago, Lord Wes was quite understanding. He's not into men himself, Most of my tussles since then have been blokes in their early or mid twenties. It's not exactly hard to find if you know where to look."
"I can think of better places for a gay utopia. Mmmm. Anyone tell you those green eyes of yours are an utter knock-out?"
"You like redheads, too, right?"
"Also guilty. So tell me, what's life like in this world?"
"Nasty, brief and short. America has had it, so has Russia. Inland China and India survived due to numerical strength. Britain's a patchwork. France got severely collateral damage because of fallout and EMP shock from Germany. Africa fell apart without its Soviet and American sponsors, but Spain and Portugal weren't as badly hit. Korea isn't there any more, Japan's gone back to medievalism, Indonesia is warring kingdoms and emirates, Australia had too many US bases to survive. New Zealand seems to have got off without being hit. Are you a Kiwi? You're built like an All Black.
"Ah, now that definitely is the way to a New Zealand man's heart, straight or gay." Doug kissed Eric and held him closer, stroking his hair:
"And there are the vampires."
"What?! There are leeches here? Surely most of them must have gone up like fireworks when the nuclear exchange did for the cities?"
"Yeah, most of them. But some of them were more traditionalist and kept away from cities, holing up in castles or other barricaded areas. They took advantage of the nuclear winter and helped themselves to the survivors. The slayer line of succession is absolutely buggered as you might guess. The current one is in Japan, and unfortunately, there's a Hellmouth in Sapporo now. Akiko keeps fairly busy with that. So, as you might guess, there was a major population crash when they ran out of human food. Ultimately, they might become extinct. However, there are the Northlands."
"Oh, of course. the Arctic and Antarctic winters. Six months of the year with no sunlight. It'd be perfect for them. So do they carry on like pirates and vikings, then?:
"Yeah. Shit. Those scars, on your back...?"
Doug nodded: "When I said I led a physical life, I wasn't kidding. Eric, you seem to have a good education. Is Wes thinking about you taking over?"
"I'm more or less his foster son. And as you may have noticed, this sort of world doesn't do you any favours. Back during the first dark ages, people were usually dead by the time they were forty. Lord Wes thinks it's more like thirty to thirty five now. He's got about ten years left or so, if that."
"It's not enough."
"It'll have to do us." They talked some more, made love a great deal more, and finally fell asleep at about midnight.

As the hazy autumn sun rose, Doug pulled on his underwear and jeans, and padded down the corridor to where he'd heard other ...interesting... sounds down the corridor. Okay, he knew Doc Norton and Rupert had been an item in the past, and both of them weren't exactly decrepit. Which explained the noises and passion, he supposed. He knocked on the door and Alessandra answered:
"We need to talk. Eric the redhead and I..."
"Hah! I knew it! Pay up, Rupert." Barechested and grumpy, the older Watcher placed a roll of pounds in his companion's waiting hand
"Anyhow, as I was saying, we made considerable pillow talk. There are vampires here- they infest the Arctic North and probably Antarctica as well. They rule some sort of pirate or neo-viking slave states and raid outlying human survivor settlements.:"
"Now that has to be more than coincidence. There's someone co-ordinating this, possibly an elder vampire like Vlad Tepes..."
Suddenly Doug shivered: "Or something else. I just got the feeling someone was doing a remote telepathic probe here. There's a powerful darkmage out there somewhere, I just felt him or her inside my mind. Then he or she realised what I was, and hurriedly retreated."

In Novalya Zemlya, thousands of miles to the north, a black fur-clad figure scowled as she withdrew her hands from a scrying crystal and scowled. Amy Madison was unhappy at this. Everything she had constructed here over the last decade would fall apart. How the hell had he survived anyway? He had died as a child during the war, she was sure of it. She thought she'd erased them all from existence- Summers, Rosenberg, MacLay, MacDonald. But no, Mercer had to turn up. Whatever. She would make sure he never left this newly minted and reshaped world of hers alive. And if Giles and Norton were killed in the crossfire, that was just as well. This world was her domain. She would never let them transform it back.

TO BE CONTINUED

:

 

[Altoz]

Part Three: Into the Fury:

Doug lurched over to the side of the boat and threw up his dinner:
"Remind me never to travel by sea, ever again after this is all over."
"There's no other way to get there, I'm afraid. And the North Sea can get rough." Giles commented.
"So okay both of you, spill. Who is this character running the vampires?"
Alessandra hesitated: "Back home in the way things should have been, Rupert filed a report on one of the local Sunnydale paranormals- a young hereditary witch named Amy Madison. When last seen, she'd transformed herself into a rat and has stayed that way ever since."
"But if she's that inexperienced..." Doug asked.
"This is not the present day Amy Madison. We think it's a future self when she's regained her human form and becomes a significantly powerful darkmage. She may be the one responsible for hijacking this timeline. In doing so, she obliterated not only Buffy and the others in Sunnydale, but everyone else we knew at the Watchers Council and Institute, apart from that divergent version of Wesley."
"So why not us?"
"Chance alone, Doug. We were in midtransit teleport when history changed around us."
"But on this scale?"
"I think her intention is probably to finish us off too so this timeline remains intact and then rule it herself."
"But then she's been responsible for the murder of billions of people. Why would anyone sane do that?"
Giles shrugged: "She may be in the employ of a dark entity that feasts on human souls and lifeforce. In the case, we'll have our work cut out for us."
"You were telling me about Buffy's friend Cordelia Chase and Anya Emerson's interdimensional travel device or time sorter. Could this be the same artifact?"
"I'm afraid not, Doug. If it is an artifact, it is several magnitudes higher in effect to have achieved something like this. What is it?"
"Trouble." Acrpss the horizon, a black repurposed Soviet naval vessel had appeared and was fast closing on their position. Giles noticed something else about it.
"There are no visible windows or portholes. I think we"re looking at a vampire naval vessel." Brandishing binoculars, Alessandra scanned the vessel.
"The hell it is. How could a naval vessel's guidance and targeting systems have survived all the war's Electromagnetic Pulses?" Doug asked, as his hands began to illuminate themselves with the enhanced ward he would need to deflect the attackers. As he did so, his outline seemed hazier and Giles realised what it must mean:
"Doug, please stop. You're endangering your own survival doing that."
The Field Agent shook his head: "No, sorry, Rupert. It's endangering both 'Lessa and you and I'm more experienced at defensive wards."

Several thousand kilometres to the northeast, Amy Madison nodded; "Any moment now..."

It wasn't a simple matter of one or two items of naval ordinance and Doug was visibly tiring and fatigued as he kept warning the projectiles to one side, but fighting the bombardment was taking an obviously heavy toll on him Ultimately, the toll was too great and he slumped to the deck. A launch shone a spotlight on them:
"We have rifles trained on you. Do not move."

But Giles had recognised the voice: "Spike...?"

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Altoz]

Part Five: ...Revolutions Won

"How can you be serving that woman, Spike? You at least show signs of moral development and maturity." Giles said as the trio were escorted on board the vessel.
"She cured Drusilla, Rupert. Can you imagine what it's like to have her sane and whole at last, for the first time in her existence?"
"You do realise that this is a stopgap, don't you? Given what Madison has done to this world, humanity will become extinct in a matter of decades. Don't delude yourself that after nuclear holocaust, severe ecological damage and totalitarianism, that isn't inevitable. You may be farming humans now, but this planet is irredeemably poisoned. And when the last of them has died, what happens to the last surviving vampires then? Extinction for your kind as well, fighting for yourselves for the last scrap of meat on the planet, then slow starvation until you can't take it any more and stake yourself. That is your future, Spike."
"Don't you think I know that, Norton? I know she'll be long gone before then, that she's using us."
"This whole timeline needs to be aborted, Spike. This isn't the way things have to be. It wasn't, until she interfered with the course of history."
"This is a vampire paradise. No more slayers, ever. No more vampire persecution."
"This is not a paradise, Spike. It's hell. Billions of people died because of that madwoman. Innocent children. Help;less, vulnerable elderly people. And why? For the sake of whatever stygian creature from the pit she serves. You're not that short-sighted, surely."
"Who's the kid?"
"Douglas is a Watchers Field Agent and a damned promising one at that."
"Oh great. I'm in command of a battleship with two vintage Watchers and the gay answer to Action Man."
"C'mover 'ere an' say that, batfeatures." Doug retorted weakly from the bed.
"That was a compliment, you berk."
"I've got more cojones than an action figure." Doug slumped back on the bed, unconscious again.
"But not necessarily more batteries, I see." Spike grinned wryly.
"We need to stop him reading all those Alyson and GMP adventure novels, Rupert, they're obviously having bad effects on his behaviour. "
"I'll admit he looks dangerous and bad to know. What d'you mean I side with the slayers in this other timeline?"
"You're falling for this particular slayer."
"Never." But as Giles said it, Spike somehow realised it was true.
"What else is stopping you?" In silence, Spike showed them a somehow intact cellphone. On it, an image was played- of a shrieking Drusilla, traumatised and diving through a plate glass window, and catching aflame as the sunlight hit her:
"This is what happens to Dru if I step out of line. The madness returns and Dru ends herself. Forever."
"And then what would you do?"
"I don't even want to think of that day, Norton."
"There is every prospect Madison will do this to both of you anyway. "
"Are you suggesting I go out in a blaze of glory?"
"If it means stopping her, then this whole aborted timeline will never have existed. She will be unable to stop us as we reverse the changes she made to history as it should have been."

Several hours later, atop a throne carved incongruously from perished dinosaurs and ammonites millions of years extinct, Amy Madison snorted:
"So, Spike, you think you can betray me with impunity, do you?"
"No. don't..." But before the madness descended on Drusilla again, the vampire turned to her childer and whispered to him: "I can see what happens when this is set in effect. Don't worry. Metamorphosis will embrace us both."
"I'm not strong enough to do this, Dru."
"Sorry, lover, you'll have to be." Then the madness closed in on her once more, she turned and threw herself out of the glass window they'd seen. Madison sat back and laughed maliciously from her pretentious throne, until Spike turned and stalked toward her, intent on snapping her neck or disembowelling her or another such appropriate end. She focused the sun streaming from the window onto him, but although he caught alight and his body almost buckled with the pain, Spike kept moving toward her, inexorably. In that distracted instant, to her horror, Alessandra Norton took her enlarged timeshifter and stamped it to pieces beneath her feet. Madison cursed them as she faded from the world she had created and now abandoned, in malignancy and rage at her defeat.

And suddenly, the world began to dissolve around them. In distant Westbury, Lord Watcher Wesley held onto his foster brother Eric as they faded into non-existence and their lived experiences of tragedy, sacrifice and pain since the Third World War guttered out like a candlestub.

In 1979, Operation Eagle Claw failed as it should have done and the Islamic Republic of Iran did not fall that year, nor for some decades to come.

In 1980, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, but after nine years of failure and increasing drug dependency, the communist superpower withdrew.

In 1983, the destruction of her time travel device meant Amy Madison could never assassinate Stanislav Petrov before he returned to his post, recognised that the apparent USAF first strike was the fault of an aberrant mainframe and cancelled the red alert.

In 1984, President Brezhnev died, followed by Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, his hawkish successors, leaving Mikhail Gorbachev in charge of a chastened and exhausted Soviet Union. Although it would take time to convince the hawks in the Red Army, eventually Gorbachev succeeded. Afghanistan was abandoned, then the Warsaw Pact.

The slayer succession continued as it should, with Buffy Summers called and in position as Sunnydale's night-time champion and vampire dispatcher in 1999. but in Westbury, a whole and recovered Doug Mercer stood atop a lonely hill within the Wiltshire Cemetery. Not quite whole, as part of his heart was missing. Giles and Alessandra held their younger charge up as he sobbed at the discovery he'd made after they had returned home.
"Why...?"
"Not everything achieves a perfect symmetry or resolution, Doug. Eric Wyndham-Price may have been a magnificent young man with great potential, but that was in the world in which he and his mother were rescued from the nuclear war in 1983 by Roger and Wesley. But here, his mother and three year old Eric were killed in a car accident with a drunk driver on the way home from Eric's under-five football practice. I know it's senseless, I know it's wrong, but..."
"No, " Doug said shakily ."it's okay. The Eric I knew would understand. Even if this dead kid never lived to become him, he would have, given the chance. I loved you, Eric Stonestreet. Come on, let's get out of here. This place is full of ghosts. After everything we've been through over the last few days, I think we're entitled to some respite from the dark."

In silence, the three of them walked from the grave as the sun rose.

THE END.