Title: After
Author: Holly
Era/season/setting: Post-Chosen
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The battle’s done, and they kinda won. So where do they go from here?
Author’s Note: I’ve had two fic ideas that are owed to the Elysian Fields Facebook Group and our Meta Monday posts. This one is loosely based on a Spuffy essay written by the_royal_anna all the way back in 2004. In that, what would have happened had Spike not died in Chosen and had Sunnydale not turned into a crater. This fic is complete; just sharing the first part today. It was supposed to be a one-shot, but wouldn’t adhere to EF’s 15k word limit, so now we’re at three. The rest will be shared on EF and AO3.
Many, many thanks to bewildered (who helped smooth out the ending), Niamh (who helped me figure out where to split this up), and Kimmie Winchester (who was the first to reassure me it doesn’t suck) for betaing; to OffYourBird for posting the meta that got stuck in my head (so stuck; seriously, she posted it on October 19, 2020, so this has been percolating for a while); and to teragramm for the banner I snagged during the Spring 2021 round of seasonal_spuffy and then became an absolute pain about. This fic was originally this title, then a few weeks ago, I decided I’d retitle it to a Season 7 reference, then decided last week that the original title was better after all. teragramm made me variations of each, and I so appreciate it.
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