Knightcurse

By Starway Man

Author's Notes:
Warnings: There are some spoilers present for up to BTVS season 6 and Angel season 3, and some character death also present, I'm afraid.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Rayne's former site for script references, and Nick Midian for his input and advice.

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Part I: Tempus Fugit

Who in their right mind would have ever suspected that a former demon and a Zeppo, of all people, could have affected the fate of the world so much?

In the latter half of the 21st century a woman named Buffy Anya Harris was born, descended from Alexander Lavelle Harris and his wife, Anya Jenkins-Harris.

And 20 years later, she was the driving force behind permanently closing the mystical portal called the Hellmouth, located in Sunnydale, California in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Amongst other things, this resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of vampires in the world, as well as evil demons and other nasties in general.

Eventually, even the Powers-That-Be smiled in contentment, as the inhabitants of Hell were denied access to their favorite playground and humanity made its world secure.

Yes, the future surely looked grand.

Or so it would have been...

...if two witches, named Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay, hadn't succeeded in de-ratting a fellow Wiccan named Amy Madison.

***

Sunnydale, California. October, 2001

In a large room, Willow and Tara were surrounded by books, while the rat that was Amy ran around on Willow and Tara's bed.

"Argh!!" Willow growled, snapping her book shut. "I got nothing here. You?"

Tara looked discouraged. "Me too, o-on the zip factor. How long did you say you've been trying to do this?"

The redheaded witch sighed. "Since 1999. God, I can't believe it's been over two and a half years already..."

Tara tried to comfort her lover. "I have faith in you. We'll succeed eventually."

Willow smiled, giving a look of adoration to her beloved blonde companion. Then she turned back to her book, and found a passage that looked interesting...

"Look at this," Willow said, as Tara leaned over. The blonde Wicca looked at the cover of the book, before staring at Willow.

"Uh, 'The Curses of Hecate'?" asked Tara.

Willow nodded enthusiastically. "That was, like, Amy's favorite. I think we're onto something!"

Reading the rest of the passage, the young witch got up and started preparing some herbs and powders. A few minutes later, they were ready to begin.

"Goddess of creatures great and small, I conjure thee to withdraw!" Willow yelled, as her eyes turned black. "Hecate, I hereby license thee to depart!"

The rat on the bed stopped moving, as Tara burned the herbs and powder. "Amy Madison, let thy bondage be ended, and return to thy human form!" the young woman called out.

The rat's body started to glow with a bright yellow light, and two seconds later turned into the naked brunette form of Amy Madison.

"It worked! It worked! Finally!" Willow yelped, with the unmistakable sound of geeker joy.

***

Even though Amy was initially very confused, the joy of being human again quickly overcame her. "Willow?" she turned to her old friend. "You did it! I'm back!"

They briefly hugged, before Amy realized she was naked and tried to cover herself up. "Oh! Uh...nudity factor here, can I get some clothes?"

"Sure," Tara replied. "You look like mostly my size..."

A bit later, when she was dressed and presentable, the reborn human started peppering Willow with questions. "So what's the date? And who's your friend? Uh, and do you happen to know where my father is? And what about..."

"Amy, slow down!" the redheaded witch said. "One thing at a time here."

"She's right," Tara agreed. "Uh, I'm Tara by the way."

Amy smiled. "Nice to be finally introduced properly," she said to her fellow Wiccan. Tara just blushed, and looked away.

Willow then said, "Uh, Amy? The date...it's October 26th, 2001."

For the first time, Amy looked shocked. "But that's...nearly three years?! I've been a rat for that long?"

Willow nodded sadly. "And, uh, your dad? He thinks you died. He, he left town ages ago. I dunno where..."

Amy couldn't help it - she burst out crying. "NO! What-" she spluttered in disbelief.

Willow tried to comfort her, but Amy would have none of it. She then started sniffling and asked the other two witches, "Uh, could you guys give me a few minutes here?"

Willow and Tara nodded. "We, we'll be at the local Starbucks," Tara stammered, as she and Willow walked out the door.

A short while later, Amy came out of the bathroom, having dried her tears. She still didn't feel any better, though.

If anything, the young woman felt worse. The brunette was depressed about all the years she had lost along with her father, and basically didn't know what to do with her life now.

< I didn't even finish high school, > she thought miserably.

Amy sat down on the bed, and idly started looking through some books. When she suddenly snapped and screamed out loud to herself, "I SHOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN INVOLVED WITH WITCHCRAFT!"

The young witch then suddenly stopped, astonished upon hearing her own words. < Is it possible...? >

Amy then rummaged through the book collection furiously, until she found the volume she wanted. The book the young Wicca found was a treatise by Allenstein on the nether realm, a place beyond the physical world.

A place Amy had once visited, as an exercise in astral projection.

A place she could visit again now, to find her past self and convince her never to practice witchcraft...and end up a rat.

A short time later, Amy was sitting cross-legged on the floor and dabbed a streak of red paint on her forehead. The girl knew that what she was about to do was dangerous, but she didn't care.

The young brunette chanted four times, "The inward eye, the sightless sea...Ayala flows through the river in me..." as a mist of rolling light appeared from her hands, and formed into a circle around her.

Her breathing getting faster and faster, the witch collapsed backwards as the ritual progressed and the light dissipated. Amy was aware that it was completely foolhardy and insane that no fellow Wicca was there to be her anchor, and bring her back if something went wrong.

But then in her current state of mind, it made no difference to Amy Madison if she never came back to this place.

***

In the coffee shop, Willow and Tara were sitting at a table, talking over a cup of decaf.

"You think Amy's gonna be okay?" asked Tara timidly.

Willow shrugged. "I-I'm not sure," she said honestly. "I mean, it's like she's lost so much - especially maybe her father..."

And suddenly, reality blinked.

For maybe two seconds, Willow saw Oz - her werewolf ex-boyfriend, that had left her - sitting there, instead of her lover Tara.

Scared, Willow asked, "Uh, Tara? What...?"

Tara looked like she was freaking. "Willow! I-I thought I was back home with my family, for a second!"

Tara and Willow looked at each other. Then at the same time, both of them said, "Amy..." and rushed out of the shop.

At that moment, at the house located at 1630 Revello Drive, Buffy and Dawn Summers were engaged in one of their sisterly fights.

"Buffy, I did NOT take your sweater!!" Dawn shouted.

"DAWN...!!!" Buffy shouted back at her sibling, in a menacing tone.

Suddenly the younger sister switched tactics, and the brunette teenager smiled in a charming and heart-breaking fashion. "Have I told you lately, how happy am I that you came back from the dead?"

This tactic caught Buffy the vampire Slayer completely off-guard. Ever since her resurrection a few weeks previously, everyone had tried to avoid the topic after the initial celebrations.

After all, dying twice and coming back to life wasn't exactly your standard idle chitchat.

But whatever cutting reply she had in mind, Buffy never got the chance to voice it.

Because of the arrival of a vampire sired in the 19th century, who had once been a feared killer and was now the laughing-stock of the demon community, on account of a behavior-modification chip placed in his brain by the military.

As the peroxide-blonde demon known as Spike came up from the basement, he said to Dawn, "Nibblet. Don't even start - that line's never gonna work with big sis, and we all know it."

The young girl who had once been an ancient form of energy known as the Key groaned, "Spiiiiiiike..."

And then suddenly, Spike vanished.

The tall, dark-haired souled vampire known as Angel was standing there instead, in his place. He looked at the youngest member of the Summers clan and asked, "So, Dawn - how's school going?"

Dawn and Buffy couldn't believe what they were seeing. "Angel?" Buffy choked.

The man looked at his beloved, the eldest Summers daughter and asked, "Yeah, Buffy?"

"How did you-?"

And then Angel vanished, and Spike reappeared.

Dawn looked at Buffy and asked in amazement, pointing in Spike's direction, "Did you just see-?"

The Slayer nodded. "Yeah!" Then she turned to Spike. "Spike! What just happened?"

The blond vamp was almost catatonic. "I, I don't know," he stammered. "Bugger me if it wasn't just - it, it felt like I was a...a whole big pile o' nothingness, or somethin' for a while there..."

Dawn asked in confusion, "What does that mean?"

Buffy shrugged and said quickly, "We, we've got to talk to Giles about this!"

Dawn and Spike looked at one another. "Uh, Buffy," started her sister, "he's gone back to England now, remember?"

The Slayer looked annoyed. "Right," Buffy frowned, as she remembered about the Englishman's departure. "Okay. Well, we better get over to the magic shop anyway, try to research this or something."

And with that, the trio set off for the car.

In the central business district of Sunnydale, the ex-vengeance demon now known as Anya Jenkins was busy serving customers at the magic store she had inherited from Rupert Giles - the previous owner, and Buffy's Watcher gone back to England.

"Have a nice day, and please come back with more money!" she called to the two departing people.

Just as the customers left, her fiancé Alexander Harris - known more simply to everyone as Xander - walked in through the front door. "Hey, sweetheart," the dark-haired young man greeted his betrothed.

"Xander!" the blonde woman said in delight. Anya then walked up to him, and gave him a big kiss.

"Ah, sugar," Xander grinned in his own goofball way. "Honey, please, gimme some more sugar..."

Anya obliged, and the two kissed again, long and passionately. The deep and affectionate love between the business capitalist and the glorified bricklayer, was obvious to anyone who might have seen them.

"If you think this is good, just wait till our wedding night," Anya teased Xander gently, as their lips broke apart and then they disengaged from each other.

Xander grinned at her. "Did I tell you I have something...special planned for the occasion?"

Anya was intrigued. "What? What?"

"Oh, I don't want to spoil the surprise...use your imagination."

Anya got a funny grin on her face, as the 1120-year-old nymphomaniac indulged in her favorite fantasy: the one where two Xanders were making love to her.

"Ahn? Sweetheart, wake up!" the man once described as Buffy's White Knight said.

She who had been Anyanka, patron saint of scorned women snapped out of her fantasy. "Xander? What is it?"

Xander took her hand, and smiled. "Nothing. You know, I almost can't believe this is happening, that the old Harris curse hasn't caught up with me..."

Anya looked confused, so the young man explained, "You know, my previous luck with women. I mean, hey, look at my track record - Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Faith, the preying mantis lady, the Inca mummy girl...even Drusilla, that one Valentine's Day..."

Anya stopped him with a shake of her head. "None of that matters anymore. You're mine now, just like I'm yours."

Xander nodded. "I know." Then he paused, as if debating with himself whether to say something.

Eventually the Zeppo said, "Ahn, did I ever tell you about my dream - the one where the First Slayer went and ripped my heart all out? I was in the basement and my father said to me, 'The line ends here with us, and you're not gonna change that'. That's why I've been thinkin'...after we're married, maybe we could think of starting up a family."

Anya was touched. "Xander. I love you! And don't worry, everything's gonna be wonderful, for the rest of our lives together..."

Xander smiled happily, and was about to move in to kiss her again - when he spotted a green stone on a necklace, hanging around the young woman's neck. He looked at Anya's face, which was like a frozen mask.

The jewel then vanished, as Anya recovered and then screamed, "NO! NO! NOT NOW! NOT EVER! I DON'T WANT THAT ANYMORE!"

Xander was getting frantic. "Honey, what? What just happened?"

"I was - Xander, for a moment I was Anyanka again!!" Anya exclaimed in horror.

"Are you-"

"YES I'M SURE! I was a demon for over a thousand years! I'll NEVER forget what that feels like!"

Horrified, Xander asked, "How?!"

Anya started pacing, in fear and horror. "I don't know!!!" Freaking, she tried to think of an answer.

"I mean, my old boss D'hoffryn made it perfectly clear that neither he, nor anyone would help me get my powers back! And, hell, I don't want them back! I mean, it'd be impossible anyway - because Giles destroyed my power center, in that other universe..."

The blonde woman then broke off in terror. "What is it?" asked Xander, afraid of the answer.

"History must be changing," Anya whispered.

In a louder voice she continued, "I-I mean, somebody must be making things different - so that Cordelia never made that Wish, and I never lost my powers, it's the only thing that I-"

Xander had started to seriously lose it upon hearing those words, when Anya vanished and a demonic form stood before him - the green jewel glowing triumphantly around its neck.

Anyanka was back, and madder than ever - at the males of the species.

The vengeance demon looked around in confusion, then glimpsed Xander and frowned in disgust.

"WHO ARE YOU?" the hellish creature growled, before deciding she didn't care and vanishing out of the magic shop.

Xander yelled "NO!!!" as the timeline finally unravelled completely, his scream of anguish exactly like the one of a damned soul in the pits of Hell.

And even the higher powers mourned, as they abandoned their plans with the loss of the Harris lineage.

Part 2