Savage Beauty

Summary: AU, everybody's human, no vampires. Buffy is the Prime Minister of Iceland. Spike is a Jivaro head-hunter in the Brazilian rain-forest. Can they get together?

Chapter One

Rupert Giles called out a greeting as he approached the village. The children clustered around the anthropologist as usual, aiming their toy blowpipes at him, and making humorous gestures signifying cutting off his head and shrinking it.

The chief's son emerged from his hut and gave him a beaming smile. His white teeth flashed below the bamboo rod that ran through the septum of his nose; the facial decoration that had led Giles to give the young man the nickname of 'Spike'.

"Hi, mate," the head-hunter greeted. His English, learned from a drunken trader, was fluent but idiosyncratic and studded with profanities. "Come on in, pull up an anteater, and call the ocelot a bastard."

"Hello, Spike," Giles replied. "I trust you are well. I have brought the latest shipment of magazines along for you."

"Sodding brilliant!" Spike exclaimed. "You get them out while I brew up some maté and chuck a couple of guinea pigs on the grill."

Giles slipped his pack from his shoulders and unfastened the straps. As he was taking out the package of magazines a slim feminine figure glided gracefully into view.

"Hello, Rupert," she said sensuously. "The spirits of the jungle, Curipuri, told me that you would come. I heard it in the cries of the howler monkeys, and saw it in the patterns made by the ants as they foraged."

Giles raised his eyes to the forest canopy. "Drusilla, you know I always call in on Fridays."

"Only because the spirits will it," said the tribeswoman. Giles had named her after Caligula's sister because of her capacity for extreme violence, her tenuous grasp on reality, and her apparent desire to copulate with her brother Spike. She was a fascinating subject for anthropological study; but frankly she scared the shit out of him. "If the spirits were against it, a jaguar would devour you as you walked along the sacred path."

Giles tried to ignore her, although that wasn't always a safe course of action, and went on with extracting the magazines. He handed Drusilla a copy of 'Cosmopolitan'; his luck was in, and she squealed with delight and wandered off to read it. Giles sighed with relief.

Spike emerged from his hut again bearing two guinea-pigs impaled on skewers. He set them to grill over the village cooking fire, and his silent and sickly mother put a pot of water on to boil ready for the maté, herb tea.

"Pass me a magazine, mate," Spike said, and Giles gave him a copy of Newsweek's International edition. Spike glanced at the cover with little interest at first, and then his eyes opened wide. "Beautiful!" he exclaimed, and babbled excitedly in his own language for a moment. "What a sodding lovely bird! Never seen anything like her."

Giles looked at the cover. It bore a picture of the new Prime Minister of Iceland, Buffi Sommersdottir; a striking Scandinavian blonde, whose extreme youth for such a high position was the main reason for her featuring in the magazine. "She is rather remarkable, I suppose," he conceded.

"Bloody right," Spike said emphatically, and his penis sheath twitched. "I've got to have her. She's just made for me. How far is it to Iceland?"

Giles groaned, and began to explain to the Jivaro head-hunter the absolute impossibility of him even getting to meet the Icelandic Prime Minister.

"I could get Sting to introduce us," Spike suggested confidently.

"I suppose you could," Giles said doubtfully. He began to feel uneasy, and the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise. He turned around and saw Drusilla staring at the magazine, with a murderous expression on her face, and toying with a poison dart.

To be continued …

The characters in this story do not belong to me, but are being used for amusement only and all rights remain with Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the writers of the original episodes, and the TV and production companies responsible for the original television shows. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER ©2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer trademark is used without express permission from Fox.