Story Notes: Obligatory Disclaimer:
 
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

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Author's Note:
Here is a bit of a background and my initial plot plan to my fellow readers.
 
Seriously, read this first. How else would you know whether the story is to your preferences or not otherwise? This is the equivalent of the user’s manual.
 
Recently, most of the fanfics I’ve read where the characters have some future knowledge/get sent back through time always involved one of the main characters experiencing it. Which, once the whole thrown-into-the-past or waking-up-with-precognitive-memories was done, they can certainly do all in their power to fulfil because they have the powers and it’s their life, yes? Somehow, I wondered, what if it was just a random sod who had that knowledge? The person is practically a nobody, not a superpowered person and outside the Scoobies’ circle of friends. It would be an uphill battle and a half for the poor sod to get close enough to do something, much less to get the characters to do something else. They still want to do their own thing, after all.
 
So, I randomly wrote this. The OC is around 90% me. One of the things I’d like to unkink (unfuck) is Buffy’s messed up relationship with Angel. This is why I tried my hand at a Season 1 fic to see if it was possible to do some early damage control as an outsider. As much as I’m more inclined to see Buffy end up with Spike than Angel, he’s definitely not present at the beginning. Though I’m probably going to be impatient enough to make it that enough changes have accumulated from canon that Spike would drop in before his original-timeline arrival.
 
For those who don’t like OCs, once everything runs smoother and Spike gets into the story, the poor OC twerp is probably going to get involved with something that’s over his head and I’ll kill him. (Alright, depends on feedback. It's just that I'm determined to shift the latter perspective to Buffy's because it is her story).
 
There. You can go straight into the story without missing much. Or, if you’re still a bit more curious about my notes, you can read the last bit.
 
Lastly, this is really heavy on the OC’s side of the story (at the very least in the first ten-twenty chapters or so) because of that unkinking idea. Willow hangs around a lot too. The other reason is that Season 1 Buffy still has Angel on the brain, and do you want to be in Buffy’s head right then? I don’t know about you, but I don’t. Since Spike’s not around yet until some 45k words in or so (chapter 14-15, if you want to be precise), Buffy’s still attempting romance with Angel before that (as you do—that is how canon went, after all). Don’t worry, there’s no reason it would last too long or get too far.
 
Then we’ll have Buffy that’s already in the process of moving on from Angel and a Spike that’s more open to possibilities from the beginning.
 
Without further ado: