Summary: 500,000 years in the future, The One brings someone back from the ancient past. Easily the strangest B/S story ever written... *COMPLETED, December 2002* PG13

Author's Note: This is easily the most bizarre thing I've ever written. I don't know what came over me, but this one just wouldn't go away. I guess I just had to take future fics to their most ridiculous extreme. So, in warning, this is strange, strange, strange, strange, strange! (How's that for a freaky disclaimer? ~_^)

The One closed her eyes, letting the valley breeze blow through her hair, enjoying the sun’s warm rays upon her skin. Across the field, two young Zaldrens pranced about, antennae flicking back and forth in the dance of friendship.

The One didn’t worry, though. They wouldn’t see her, couldn’t see her as long as she wished to remain hidden. True, there were a few instances where one or another had snuck up upon her when she hadn’t already concealed herself. But they had no interest in harming her. She was merely a curiosity, a relic of an era long past.

The One watched the grasses and the trees and river off in the distance, and she was pleased. And then she heard a slight cracking sound and looked down in alarm to see that the glass vial that had hung from her neck as long as she could remember had fallen to the ground.

It shattered into a thousand pieces when it hit the ground, the wind already starting to scatter the dust inside. The One calmly raised her hand, and instantly the wind stopped, obeying her commands just as all the elements did.

She studied the little pile of dust for a while, curious. This was the first unusual incident she could recall in...well, forever. She debated what to do about the dust. She knew it was important, although she had long since forgotten why. Should she just reverse time and restore the vial to its previous condition? Or maybe she should try to figure out why it was so important...

The second option seemed more interesting to her at the moment, so she knelt down over the dust to study it. There was presence there; she could feel it. It was very, very old, but something had once existed in that dust. Maybe that was what was so important...

She had been in a rather curious mood for the past few decades or so, so she decided to summon the presence. After all, it couldn’t do any harm. And, who knew, it might keep her occupied for a while.

A quick wave of her hand, and time rolled itself back around the sand, moving ever backward, backward... The sun rose and set a dozen times while she sought the dust’s source, but she didn’t even notice. It was nothing to The One, who had endured since before the Zaldren Era had begun.

At last, the presence in the dust began to grow stronger, and she saw images of a being, another one like her. She snatched hold of the solid form of the being – just before a wooden stake had been thrust into its chest; curious that that should kill it... – and restored the dust to its form.

The being appeared before her, and almost instantly its skin began to sizzle. The One found this mildly distressing for some reason and quickly put a halt to it, identifying the sun as the source of the problem and making the being’s body immune to it.

Burns from its skin quickly removed, The One settled beside the body, studying the face that now stared up at the sky. It was definitely a creature like her, and this alone was enough to fascinate her for many days.

There were differences, too, between her and it. Its shape was subtly different from hers. She generated a duplicate image of herself and laid the two side by side to study. This new being was definitely different. It was taller, for one, and its chest seemed to be a different shape, flatter and broader. The entire top half of it seemed, in general, to be thicker than her, while the bottom half was slimmer.

The differences in their heads were remarkable. She had not seen another face of one of her kind in eons, but she could still instinctively distinguish every nuance. It had a squarer jaw, higher and more pronounced cheekbones, eyes bluer than the sky itself, and a strange scare trisecting one of its eyebrows. Most surprisingly, its hair was snow white. She decided she liked its hair and touched it frequently.

The most astonishing difference, however, was the odd protrusion that jutted out from between its legs. There was something about looking at it that made her own body feel strange. She became curiously wet between the legs and discovered a hole there that she had long since forgotten about.

It hadn’t taken her too much longer to figure it out after that. It and she seemed to fit together in some way. She was a she – she knew that – so that meant that it was a he.

She took some time to absorb this fact and finally decided that she’d discovered everything she could from him in his current condition. It was time to wake him up. Placing one hand over his forehead, she restored the psychological aspects as well, which she had take from the second before his death. He didn’t move at first, and The One felt herself growing surprisingly impatient.

Then, slowly, he blinked his eyes once, twice. A look of recognition passed over his face, and then he opened his mouth and a strange yet indefinably familiar sound came out.

The One watched him curiously, knowing that many creatures used sound to communicate and wondering if this was what he was doing. She seemed to recall a distant memory in which this form of communication did not seem so alien to her.

He made another noise with his mouth and suddenly looked down at himself in alarm and then back up to the sun. He leapt to his feet, seemingly trying to brush the sunlight off of his skin. The One merely sat there and watched him curiously...
 
 

“Bloody hell,” were Spike’s first words when he woke up. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck. He opened his eyes to see his Slayer looking down at him, the most indefinable expression on her face.

It took him exactly a second to realize two things: 1) They were lying together in the middle of a sunny field, and 2) He was completely naked. He sighed. “Not that I don’ like wakin’ up next to you in th’ buff in all sorts of strange situations, Slayer—” he began. And then paused. What was that about the sun? “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, noticing that he was sitting right out in the middle of it with no hope of seeking cover.

He leapt to his feet in a futile gesture, but he had to do something. It took him a minute to realize that he wasn’t bursting into flames. An odd, comforting sensation came over him then, a feeling he could only interpret as: It won’t hurt you. You’re safe...

“Oh, god,” he gulped slightly, “’m human...” He felt for his pulse to test his theory and found none. Experimentally, he tried to vamp out and did so with ease. He breathed a sigh of relief. “Not human, jus’ not on fire as well...”

The One watched his face transform before her very eyes, his brow ridges thickening, eyes yellowing, canines extending. She took a curious step towards him and reached out with one index finger to stroke one fang up and down. He seemed to like the gesture, so she continued to touch him in that way.

There was so much she wanted to learn about him, yet she couldn’t understand a word he said. She wasn’t even sure he was aware of her own forms of communication.

“Buffy, what’s goin’ on?” Spike asked, his eyes still closed at the feel of her caressing his fangs. She didn’t respond, but her hands traveled down to his arms, his chest, not caressing so much as...testing? “Buffy?” he demanded, suddenly convinced that something here was significantly stranger than he’d at first thought. His face shifted back into its human planes. “Buffy, can you hear me?”

She frowned slightly. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she should be able to decipher the sounds coming out of his mouth, but they remained elusive to her.

He let out a weary sigh. She didn’t seem to be understanding a word he was saying. He decided to try for really simple. “Clothes?” he requested.

She frowned.

“Clothes.” He pinched the fabric on her own shirt between his fingers, holding it out for her see, before gesturing to his own completely nude body. “Where are my clothes, Buffy?”

Realization suddenly dawned on her. He seemed to want coverings for his body like the ones she generated for her own. She looked him up and down and decided she liked seeing his body this way. The protrusion of flesh between his thighs seemed to have gotten larger while she was touching him, and it now stuck out from his body slightly. Something about that sight made her skin feel like it was burning...but in a good way, in a very good way.

However, he seemed to want coverings – “clothes,” she gathered – so she would give them to him. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine him with clothes. For some, reason, the imaged of him wearing all black stuck in her mind, and when she opened her eyes, it was so.

Spike looked down to find that he was suddenly wearing his usual black t-shirt and jeans ensemble. He looked up at Buffy in amazement. “How’d you do that?” he asked softly.

He got no response, of course, just a worried look as she wondered if she’d done something wrong. He quickly reassured her with a smile.

The One gulped. There was something about that expression... It was good. It was very good. It made her feel all warm and happy inside. She suddenly wanted to do whatever she could to get him to make that expression again.

“Clothes, check,” Spike commented to himself. “Not burnin’ up in the sun, check. Right, then. Buffy, do you know who I am?”

She stared at him blankly.

Right, keep it simple... He pointed to himself. “Spike,” he said slowly, suddenly feeling in a strangely Tarzan mood. “Me, Spike,” he joked lightly. He pointed to her. “You, Buffy.” He pointed back to himself. “Me, Spike.”

She frowned for a second, making absolute sure that she was interpreting his gestures correctly. Then, she slowly reached out to touch his arm. “M-Mu-Meh-Me,” she stuttered with the syllables a bit at first, her voice having long since gone unused. It came back with surprising quickness, however. “Mespike!” she finally declared with a wide smile.

“No, no,” Spike put his hand over his in frustration. He looked at her once more. “Spike,” he said firmly.

The One furrowed her brow for a second, and the realization dawned on her. “Spike,” she repeated proudly, gesturing to him.

He flashed her a delighted little smile, and she felt her cheeks burning again. This was good. She would continue to decipher his words, and he would continue to smile, and she would get that warm, fuzzy, good feeling inside her again.

“Right, then,” he commented, “let’s move on then.” He pointed to her. “Buffy.”

She frowned. ‘Spike’ had felt right to her, but ‘Buffy’...

“Buffy,” he repeated. She didn’t seem to be responding. “You, Buffy,” he decided to elaborate. “Buffy, Slayer, the one bloody girl in all the world chosen to—”

“One!” she exclaimed excitedly, pointing to herself. “One.”

He raised one quizzical eyebrow at her. “Good enough,” he finally agreed with a small smile.

She basked in it, enjoying the little tingles that went down her spine. She suddenly had the overwhelming desire to touch him again and cautiously stepped forward to do so. He felt nice under her hands, even with his clothes on.

She continued to touch him while struggling in the back of her mind to remember something. It was something very important, something she had to do... The image of him wearing these clothes flashed back into her mind, and she realized that this was the scene she had seen earlier when she revived him, the scene right before he died...

Spike sighed against the feel of her wandering hands. They were sill more grabbing and poking than usual, but her touch burned him to his very core nonetheless. Slowly, he reached up to wrap his arms around her body as well, petting and stroking, vowing to himself that whatever had reduced his Slayer to this, he’d find a way to bring her back.

The One froze in his arms. The way he was touching her... It was better than anything. It made her body tingle all over. She slowly began to imitate him, touching him in the same way he touched her. He liked that, she could tell. She liked it, too. She liked connecting with this Spike, being close, intimate...

His lips gently brushed her temple, and she let out a little gasp. She was startled at herself; she never made sounds like that. What was happening to her? Whatever it was, it was wonderful...

Suddenly, their closeness wasn’t enough. She wanted more, faster. Her fingers trailed up to hi temple, desperate to fully connect with this amazing being, to communicate. She looked straight into his blue eyes and sent all the images she could remember over to him, starting with the scene where he died. That was very important, and maybe it would make sense to him.

Spike’s eyes widened when his mind was suddenly flooded with images. A dark alley appeared around him, the one he remembered from right before he woke up here. He watched curiously as he and Buffy fought the rather nasty gang of demons. His fell to the ground, mortally wounded, just as Buffy finished her own opponent. He was so intent on watching her that he didn’t even notice the dying demon behind him lift up its hand for one last blow, a jagged piece of wood clutched in its fist.

Buffy turned to look at him then, and her eyes widened in horror. “No!” she screamed, just as the stake pierced his heart. She ran to him, reaching out with her hand, trying to touch him one last time, but she was too late. He crumbled to dust just as she approached him.

“No, Spike,” she begged, tears streaming down her face, “you can’t die, you can’t. I-I haven’t told you yet. You have to hear, Spike. You have to hear me say that I love you...”

Willow cautiously approached her from behind, resting her hands on the heartbroken Slayer’s shoulders.

“You have to bring him back, Will,” Buffy pleaded. “You have to. I-I need him, I need to...”

“I don’t know how,” Willow said softly. “I’m not strong enough.”

“There’s got to be something you can do!” Buffy begged.

Willow bit her lip, and then a thought occurred to her. She removed an empty glass vial and held it out to her friend. “Put the dust in here,” she instructed. “Some day, maybe we’ll find a way to...”

“Yes,” Buffy agreed shakily, hastening to do as Willow asked. “We’ll find a way, Spike,” she insisted. “I’ll find a way, baby. I’ll bring you back, and then you’ll know how much I—” She trailed off with a sob.

The scene dissolved around Spike, and he was staring into The One’s eyes again. However, before he had a chance to respond, the rest came pouring into his mind...

She wasn’t aging. Something with the resurrection spell had gone wrong. She was immortal, watching her friends die around her...

The years continued to pass. With nothing better to do, she turned to the study of magic. She went from student, apprentice, master...so far beyond master that she wasn’t even conscious of the magic anymore. She was eternal, all-powerful, divine...

Slowly, the human species began to crumble around her. War, overpopulation, climatic change, famine, disease. Human numbers dwindled, dwindled, faded, gone...

Centuries, millennia since she’d seen another being like herself. She forgot about them, him. She forgot everything it meant to be a human in her loneliness. And, eventually, she forgot what loneliness meant as well...

Eons came and went. A new race arose. The world changed. She alone endured, the one thing in the world that remained constant, The One...

“Oh, Buffy, my love,” Spike sobbed when the montage of images finally faded. He began peppering soft kisses all over her face, trying to offer her some form of comfort. “Luv, I’m so sorry. I love you, I’m here, sweet luv, beautiful luv, luv, luv, luv...”

The One sighed against his touch and his words. For she, too, had taken something from his mind during their exchange. It was just the most basic understanding of his form of communication, just some basic vocabulary and word order. It would take many more joinings for them to fully realize the other.

However, it was enough for her to fix that nagging feeling that she needed to do something the she’d had ever since he appeared. She slowly pushed him back so that she could look right into his beautiful eyes. Slowly and precisely she began to speak...

“One. Luv. Spike.”

He smiled at that, that wonderful, warm smile that made her feel alive again and made every beat of her heart seem deafening. And then, his lips slowly pressed against hers, and everything else was forgotten.

Yes, this was definitely what she had secretly wanted all along, this and the more that was still to come...

“Mommy, mommy,” the two excited Zaldren children ran up to their mother. Those weren’t the words they said, of course, since the English language wasn’t even a memory or a memory, but the meaning was the same.

“We saw a human, Mommy!” One of them exclaimed.

“We saw two!” the other said excitedly.

“Ffffmxt! Zrncht!” the mother Zaldren scolded, “I’ll not have you making up stories!”

“But we saw them, Mommy!” Zrncht insisted. “A mommy human and a daddy human!”

The mother couldn’t help but be charmed by the image for a minute. After all, she’d had fun little fantasies of the same sort when she was a pupa. But then her expression hardened again. “Humans have been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years,” she informed them matter-of-factly. “There’s no way you saw one. Although,” she added with a kind smile, “if there’s the one, it’s nice that there’s a second one, too...”

o.O I. Have. No. Fucking. Clue. Whatever I was on when I wrote this, it must've been pretty strong stuff. ~_^ Seriously, I think this story started as a story idea I had when I was sick. I hate a fever of, like, 101 and my dad was watching the new version of The Time Machine in the other room. And, then, the stupid question got into my head: "What if Buffy was like the Loch Ness Monster?" Yes, I actually do think about these things from time to time. Yes, I know I'm probably certifiable. ^_^ So, this was the result. I fully expect dozens of e-mails all saying 'WTF?!', so please send them. ~_^