"What were you like, when you were human?"
Buffy's question roused Spike out of a restless sleep. He opened his eyes to find her considering gaze on his face. He relized they would be stuck in this basement for a long while, barring a maricle. They needed something to kill the time, and they may as well talk, Spike decided. Besides, he felt the need to talk to someone.
"I...I was raised in a very poor area of London. Lots of crime, misery, and everyone went about with this look of defeat in their eyes." He began, pausing at the memory of his very human past. How long had it been since he allowed himself to remember? Spike knew it was a hundered years, at least. "I was born a bastard, and my mother died trying to bring me into the world. A large family took me in. We lived in a tenement, twelve of us stuffed into a tiny room not fit for a family of four. Stinking conditions, no baths or plumbing, threw the waste out the window. Spent my childhood playing in open sewers and the filthy streets of the poorest area of London. I grew up, worked on the docks, and I think I must have been twenty-one or so when I joined the ranks of the undead." Spike smiled. This part of his past was worth remembering.
"Angelus came out of the shadows, offered me a better life. And I took it. After that, it was all fun and games. He and Dru were wild, but I was worse. I think I was bitter towards life, and wanted to end as many lives as I could."
"Hence the name Spike." Buffy interupted.
"Yeah. Railroad spikes." Spike paused at the charming memory. "God, it was fun." he said, grinning.
"Why are you here?" Buffy asked. The question sobered Spike.
"To find Dru." he replied. "She headed up here for some reason." Spike leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. Buffy didn't want to drop the subject.
"Why...why do you love her so much?" she asked, intensely curious. Spike was definately not what he seemed. At first, he'd been ready to murder her, kill her friends, and take over Sunnydale. Then, he'd tried to kill Angel so he could restore Drusilla to full health. After he'd ended up in a wheelchair, he had changed. Become more bitter and cynical, she supposed. And less of a threat. Then, Angelus had appeared in his life, and Spike had been consumed by jealousy, watching his sire flirt with Drusilla. This much Buffy understood, but she really couldn't understand how Spike could go from sadistic monster to a Slayerette in a few short months. But then, she told herself sadly, a lot had changed in those few months. His motives for helping her defeat Angelus had been selfish, but why was he helping her now?
"I...I love Dru because no one else does." Spike admitted flipantly, his tone outweighing the serious words. "Angelus and she had a thing a long time ago. After he went soft, there was no one to take care of her. She was sick, insane, and very alone. I was too, I suppose. Afterall, me and Angelus had been tripping the light fantastic for a hundered years. It was lonley after he left. Anyway, I cared for Dru. For old times sake. And I suppose she grew on me." he admitted ruefully.
"And when Angelus returned, he wanted to continue his old habits, as far as Drusilla went?" Buffy announced softly, the words costing her much.
"Yeah. Look, Buffy, you need to understand something. Angel made me. He made Dru. We were tearing around Europe, having a terrific time. The three of us were a family. But whatever happened in Sunnydale really changed him. Sure, he was a true creature of evil, a vampire, but in Europe, he was fun! Not a touch of insanity. That's what was so great about him. He was almost human without having those annoying traits of guilt and compassion, but possesing greed, vainity, lust. That all changed, of course, with the curse. He became very human, and that distroyed Dru, made her insane beyond what he'd done to her when she was human."
Buffy was silent as Spike told his story in a flat, even tone. Angel had been torn by guilt about what he'd done to Drusilla, Buffy knew that much. "We didn't see him again for a hundered years. Dru and me, we had something special." To Spikes' utter horror, he felt his eyes burn with that unfamiliar sensation of...tears.
"Yeah, something really special." he continued. "We come to Sunnydale, I run into Angel again, and he's all soft and lovey-dovey." Buffy felt a tear trail down her cheek at the mention of Angel as he once was, the man she loved.
"That changed too, of course, and I think it was the shock of losing his soul again that made Angelus insane. His feelings for you, obsession, passion, made him crazy. He wasn't the old fun, devil-may-care Angelus, and he wasn't the Anne Rice tortured-soul guy you fell for. He was just...nuts. Not a fun guy to hang round, believe me. Kept at Dru to make me jealous, and what he did to you was beyond common sense. I would have killed you, but Angelus had a much more malicious punishment in mind. He wanted another Drusilla, I supposed. He wanted to make you crazy, make you his for eternity." Spike suprised himself with his romanticized words. Not like him at all. But then, he hadn't been feeling like his old self in a long time....
Buffy lowered her forehead so it rested on her knees. She had known, of course, that Angelus had been out to distroy her, but she hadn't expected that he would have tried to turn her into a vampire. She wondered why Spike was behaving so oddly. Maybe it was the shock of losing Drusilla that had done it, she mused. He'd been awfully patient back in Sunnydale, when Spike had approached her with plans of joining forces to stop Angelus. He'd been very nice around her mom, helping Buffy cover the slaying thing as long as possible. Spike had said he was doing it to get Drusilla back, and that he would miss the world if it was sucked into Hell. Buffy suspected those reasons hid a deeper motive. Spike had a heart, which was a shocker, considering he was a demon. He was actually acting like a nice guy. It gave Buffy a headache.
"What about you?" he asked, searching for a less-teary subject of conversation. "You never really seemed to be thrilled about the whole Slaying gig."
"I wasn't." Buffy admitted plainly. "I rebelled against my duty, refused to be a conventional Slayer. And I've payed for my mistakes." she said bitterly.
"What?" Spike asked, suprised. "You have been a great Slayer, I have to admitt. I mean, you've prevented the distruction of the world I don't know how many times. The girls I've killed couldn't even get rid of me." His odd words of comfort didn't even registure with Buffy.
"A more serious, conventional Slayer wouldn't have fallen in love with Angel." she said quietly. "If I had been more interested in my duty and less involved with trying to have a normal life, none of this would have happened. My friends wouldn't have been hurt or killed, and I wouldn't have disapointed Giles, or hurt my mother so much."
Even Spike was touched by the regret and sadness in her voice. He reached out to pat her arm in a guesture of comfort, but thought better of it. He still had his prinicples, after all.
"Hey, you can't help who you fall in love with." Spike widened his eyes in the dark. He should know. "And a more conventional Slayer would have been dead long before any of this happened. If you want my opinion, you haven't done anything much more terrible than....be human." he said, suprised when the words did not come out as scornfully as he'd meant them to. Buffy raised her head, and smiled at him in the darkness.
"Thanks." she replied. Buffy sensed this was a rare moment for Spike, and was suddenly very glad he was here. She closed her eyes slowly, and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep. Spike sighed, and let her lean her head against his shoulder.
"You're going soft, mate." he whispered to himself in the darkness. "But it sure is fun, isn't it?"
*****************************************
"Wake up!" The harsh order intruded into Buffy's groggy conscience, and she raised her head. It was morning. Sunlight streamed into the basement stairwell, let in by the museum guard who was holding the door open and looking very peeved. "What are you doing in here, girl?" he barked. Buffy stood quickly, looking for Spike. He'd vanished, probably hiding in the shadows to avoid the sunlight. The guard didn't wait for her answer and grabbed her arm, twisting it painfully. Buffy winced, but the guard looked suprised when she didn't make a sound. "Let's go." he said, sounding angry and disapointed. Buffy followed, looking for a chance to escape. She didn't see Spike slip out of the doorway after her, securly wrapped in a large black piece of cloth to protect himself from the light.
*****************************************
Time dragged in the Sunnydale library.
"Look, she's obviously not going to let us know where she is until she feels like it, and she's got some serious issues to deal with." Xander decided.
It was now almost the fifth day, and still no word from Buffy. Xander was almost talking to himself, as Cordelia had pasted a do-I-look-like-I-care? expression on her face. However, even that little effort suprised Willow. At least Cordy was trying, sitting with Xander, which was a *lot* more then any of the Slayerettes had expected, knowing Cordelia as they did. The self-proclaimed Queen of Sunnydale High had gone from cruely teasing Willow in the halls to befriending her. Willow sighed and leaned back into the comforting warmth of Oz's arms.
He'd been with her every night at the library, watching her watch the computers, which still ran the endless search for Buffy. And Oz had brought coffee in the mornings, and held Willow as she sobbed out her anger and frustration. Willow had never felt so useless in her whole life. Even her gift with computers hadn't helped, and knowing that maybe Buffy didn't want to come back hurt even more. The worst part of it was, it was all Willow's fault.
Oh, nobody had actually said it was, but Willow knew, just the same. If she hadn't pressed so hard, trying to get Buffy's permission to restore Angel's soul, this might have all been avoided. Buffy would not have been forced to send Angel to Hell. That was what had happened, Giles had decided. If it wasn't, and Angel and Buffy had wanted some alone time, they would have been back by now, or at least contacted on of the Slayerettes. It just wasn't in Buffy's nature to let everyone worry like this.
Willow looked at Giles, who was coming out of the office after checking on Buffy's mom. Joyce had refused to leave once she'd discovered there was some chance the computers would turn up a trace on Buffy's whereabouts. Mrs. Summer's guilt over this whole mess was even worse than Willows. Or Giles, Willow relized as she looked at the tired, defeated man. He actually looked...old. The hacker stood, and glanced back at Oz. He was asleep, but obviously having nightmares. She fought the urge to wake her boyfriend and went instead to Giles. Oz could wake up from his nightmare, while the Watcher couldn't.
"Hi." Willow said timidly. Giles looked up, setting down the book he'd been flipping through. Willow knew he hadn't been reading any of the words on the page.
"Hello." Giles replied, rubbing his eyes. "Nothing, I assume."
"Actually, there was a mention of what seemed to be vampire activity in the Mojave Desert." she reported. "A van full of drugged-out hippie kids was found, on the outskirts of San Francisco." Willow said with a shiver. She had always found it difficult to discuss death and/or the supernatural. Even with all she'd been through the past two years, Willow still had trouble dealing with the darker forces on the earth.
"Oh?" Giles asked, slipping in research mode. "They were dead, yes? Drained of blood?"
"Yes. There were six kids in the van, and they were all blood-free." Willow replied. "The killing wasn't brutal or anything. The offical police report said it looked like the kids had passed out due to excessive amounts of alcohol and marijuana, and whatever killed them did it while the kids were sleeping. Anyway, the van they were travelling in had Arizonia plates, and it had been spoted by a trucker two days ago in the Mojave Desert." Giles nodded. He really didn't think it was a lead. There were plenty of sick people out there, people who didn't have to be vampires to do that sort of thing to a bunch of kids....but after the things he'd seen, he couldn't really discount the theory that the killings were vampire-related.
"But the Mojave Desert..." he muttered. "Even if it was a vampire attack, how can we assume that it's somehow related to Buffy?" Giles asked himself. Willow grabbed a filefolder off the reasearch desk.
"The same trucker who remembed the van made an earlier report, via CB radio, of a suspicous car in the area. The driver of this car was speading, weaving all over the road, generaly not being a safe driver. And the description of the car matches the one Xander said he saw Spike and Drusilla using as a gettaway vehicle."
At this, Giles raised his head, put on his glasses, and rolled down his sleeves. "Spike and Drusilla are involved?"
"Looks like it." Willow replied, flipping through the folder. "And if they're in the neighbourhood..."
"So is Buffy." Xander finished.
CONTINUES