Summary: Set directly after the events of Same Time, Same Place. Buffy realizes that she's probably left Spike in the basement for too long and hauls him out. Her attempts to get the First to stop tormenting him don't go quite as planned, however. Then again, when do spells on the Hellmouth ever work right?
Author's Notes: I may be a minority, but I thought the First was about the lamest villain ever. How do you fight something like that? It's impossible. And besides, it's philosophically and logically insupportable that you'd have the First Evil and not a First Good of some kind. I'd give you the logical argument, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm treating the First as the S3 episode Amends treated the First—like some ghost that could be chased away by some fast talk and the light of day. I'm ignoring the rest of S7 canon pretty much. Oh, and the title is taken from a Christina Rossetti poem I thought was appropriate.
Rating: PG-13
"'Should one of us remember,/And one of us forget,/I wish I knew what each will do—/But who can tell as yet?'/'Should one of us remember,/And one of us forget,/I promise you what I will do—/And I'm content to wait for you,/And not be sure as yet.'" ~Christina Rossetti, "He and She"
William was relieved to find himself out under the sky, even if the sun was absent. Willow had been right in that his burn was already half-healed, but he had no desire to risk immolation again. He wondered idly how long it had been since he'd seen the sun, and thought briefly about asking Buffy.
He discarded the idea just as quickly. William didn't know what to think about the woman. One minute she was looking at him as though she liked him—really liked him. The next minute she seemed cold and distant, almost rough.
Tonight, however, she seemed to be back to being careful in her speech and manners, and William had no desire to jeopardize the fragile truce.
Although, he had no idea what might have happened between them to cause her to react in that manner.
William glanced over at her briefly, catching her staring at him. She quickly looked somewhere else, but he was quite sure she had been staring. He went back to looking around at the houses and yards, so much more open than London had been. It was warmer too, and he wondered what season it was. He couldn't really tell.
Buffy was staring at him again.
"Is something wrong?"
She started, as though her mind had been elsewhere. "No! Nothing's wrong. Why would you ask?"
William hesitated, wondering if he ought to be polite and not press. In the next moment, he decided to discard propriety entirely. It wasn't as if anyone else seemed to have much use for it. "You're staring at me."
"No, I'm not," Buffy quickly denied.
Good manners had been bred too deeply into his bones for William to just toss them out the window. He allowed Buffy her polite fiction.
Until about thirty seconds later when he caught her watching him again. "You are too staring," he insisted, catching her eye.
Buffy realized that there wasn't a way out this time. "Sorry."
Apparently, that was all she was going to say. William bit back a sigh and shoved his hands in his pockets. Any other day, he would have been in the clouds over being invited on a stroll with a pretty girl, but not today. It didn't feel right.
"It's strange," Buffy said out of the blue. When he turned to look at her again, she explained, "You look like Spike, but you're not. It's—hard."
His shoulders hunched up. "I am sorry to have taken your friend's place. I understand how that might be distressing."
William had the same look on his face as Spike had when she rejected him—it was all hurt and vulnerability, but this time there was no tough-guy veneer to gloss over the top. Buffy realized that it was easier to pretend with Spike because he did it all the time. She could fool herself that he wouldn't let her harsh words bother him.
With William, there was no pretense. Everything was right there on his face—he wore his heart on his sleeve, just as Spike had, but without the Big Bad persona as a mask.
Buffy couldn't help herself. She placed a hand on his bare forearm, feeling the coolness of his skin, the strength of his sinew. "It's not your fault, William. I know you think I don't want you here, but that's not true. It might not feel that way, but I want all of you here."
"I don't know this other man you keep speaking of," William said, sounding a little angry. "You keep talking as if he is me, but he's not."
Buffy bit her lip. He was Spike, though—or Spike was him. "There's a lot of you in Spike," she finally said. "That's—" She had been about to say that Spike was the guy she was in love with, but stopped herself. William was not the person to whom she wanted to confess her feelings. Spike should be the first to know.
At the same time, she wanted to say something that would comfort him. "If—when Spike comes back, you won't go anywhere, William," she finally said, trying to reassure him. "It'll be just like you got all your memories back."
William wanted to ask, "What memories?" If he didn't have them, he couldn't very well miss them. "Do I want those memories back?"
Buffy flinched as though he'd struck her. She hadn't even thought of it from his perspective. Wasn't this better for him? William was confused, sure, but Spike had always been a fast learner. In time, William would find his place in her world. Wasn't it better for him to not have all those memories that had been driving him crazy?
Was she just being a selfish bitch again?
Buffy opened her mouth to reply and then saw the vampire rising from the grave. They had made it to the cemetery, and it looked like it was time for her to go to work. The fledgling was an easy kill, as they usually were, but she heard a muffled cry from behind her.
She whirled to see two vampires grabbing William. Buffy wouldn't have had to worry about Spike. He'd have taken care of the two vamps with aplomb. William was flailing around wildly.
The Slayer bit back a sigh. Maybe it was selfish, but having Spike back would make her life a little easier.
Suddenly, there were three more vampires, and Buffy felt a thrill of fear. Five wasn't a lot, and it would have been perfectly doable with Spike at her side, but William was the one by her side tonight. She could hardly count on him to take care of himself, let alone give her any help.
She had to get them both out of there as quickly as possible. Buffy looked around for an escape route, moving closer to William, who had broken free from the two vampires somehow. Buffy heard another noise from him, and she glanced back to see that he had hit one of the vamps in the nose and was staring at his own hand in disbelief.
"Can you fight?" Buffy demanded.
There was still a part of William that wanted to tell her that gentlemen didn't fight. He wanted to tell her that he preferred to keep his mind on the higher virtues. He was scared, and if he'd still been capable of it, William was certain that he would have fainted by now.
At the same time, he knew they were fighting for their lives. A gentleman didn't allow harm to come to a lady, especially not one who had taken him under her protection. "I can try."
She smiled at him then, and there was a fire in her eyes that made the breath catch in his chest. "Good. We're going to run home. You know the way?"
William nodded. At least he thought he did, but he had no plans on leaving Buffy's side anyway. She broke into a flurry of motion, and William realized why they called her the Slayer. She was grace incarnate, her golden hair flying around her in a cloud.
The lines of poetry entered his head without him searching for the words. "'She walks in beauty like the night,'" he murmured to himself, getting lost in the moment as he had so often done before.
His life had never really been in danger before.
The vampires had tightened their circle, and Buffy found her movements hampered by their proximity. Had she been alone, it would have been a simple matter to evade them and head home. She would have come back later with reinforcements, or managed to take them out herself. With William there, however, it wasn't possible, and he looked as though he'd been nailed to the ground with fear.
Willow had been right. She never should have brought William with her on patrol. It had been stupid and dangerous, and if something happened to him she would never forgive herself.
It seemed that she couldn't help but hurt Spike, in whatever incarnation.
One of the vampires grabbed her around the neck, and when she tried to kick back a second vampire grabbed her leg, catching her off-balance. Two other vampires were back to going after William, and Buffy knew they would have him in a moment, since he wasn't obviously wasn't paying any attention to them.
"William! Run!"
For a second, Buffy thought he hadn't heart her. In the next moment, he was at her side, having evaded his own pursuers, a well-placed punch causing the vampire behind her to let go. Buffy twisted and kicked with her other foot, catching the vampire holding her leg in the face. She managed to get a stake in that one and then grabbed William's hand.
Buffy ran, keeping a tight hold on William. She hesitated to head right back home, since she wasn't sure if they were following her and had no desire to find them waiting outside her house for her some night.
Thankfully, William's vampire-status meant that they didn't have to stop and rest until she was tired, and they wound up in his old cemetery, leaning against the side of his old crypt.
Buffy's feet had carried her there out of habit, and she flushed when she realized it. "You okay?" she asked once she had her breath back.
"I should ask you that," William replied, turning to face her. "That monster had you by the neck."
Buffy didn't bother telling him that he was a monster too. It would be a lie because William was anything but a monster, whatever his undead status might be. "I'm fine," she assured him. At his doubtful expression, she hastened on. "Really, William. I'm fine. It takes a lot to hurt me."
"I hurt you," he said softly. Buffy looked surprised. "Dawn told me—a little. I asked her why you were—why you had—"
He couldn't find the words, and so she supplied them. "Acted like such a bitch?"
William's eyes widened as he stared at her. "I would never—"
"I said it, you didn't," Buffy reminded him. "Besides, it's true. What did Dawn say?"
William looked away uncomfortably. "She said that we had fought and I hurt you, so I left town."
Well, that was true enough, and Buffy had to give her younger sister points for getting to the heart of the matter without going into details. She had the feeling that if William knew exactly what he'd done, he would probably fall on his own sword or something equally as honorable.
And stupid. Neither of them needed to do any more stupid things.
"That's pretty much it in a nutshell," Buffy replied. "I'm really sorry."
"So you said," he replied, still refusing to look at her. "It's quite alright. I understand that this must be difficult for you. I'm not—I'm not him."
Buffy sighed. "No, you're not." It would have taken a blind person not to see the hurt on his face, and she quickly added, "That's okay."
William didn't reply, and Buffy decided to grab the bull by the horns. He deserved to know why she was having trouble adjusting, why she kept snapping at him. "You did good back there," she said standing, reaching out to pull him up with her.
"I froze," he replied bitterly. "I am not a brave man, Buffy."
"Yes, you are," she contradicted. "You didn't run, and you popped that guy in the nose. That's not something a coward would do."
The sincerity in her voice startled him. "Do you mean it?"
"Of course," Buffy replied quickly. She was taken aback by the wonder in his eyes, as though she had just handed him the moon. Or as if no one had even given him a compliment before. "I lied before," she confessed.
William blinked. Her words weren't what he had expected. "Lied about what?" he asked, confused.
"About us, our relationship," Buffy replied. "We weren't just friends."
"You—and I were..." William trailed off. That didn't seem right. She didn't treat him as a lady treated her paramour. Unless, of course, the fight they'd had that ended in him leaving had also ended their relationship. William still didn't understand, however. He would never break off an engagement. No matter how much he had changed.
Buffy frowned, unsure of how to phrase it so that she didn't induce maximum wig. "We were close."
"We ended our engagement?"
The Slayer burst out laughing; she couldn't help it. Her and Spike engaged? At the look on William's face, Buffy quickly sobered. "I wasn't laughing at you," she said. "It was more at the idea of Spike and I engaged. I—we—didn't have that kind of relationship." Unless there was a spell involved, Buffy silently added.
William's eyes widened in horror. "I—I would never! No matter how much I might have changed, I would never do what you're suggesting!"
Buffy's heart sank. So he'd guessed, and now they'd have to put him on suicide watch or something, and then what was she going to do. They couldn't be with William all the time.
"I would never use a young woman so! If we didn't have an agreement, I would never have—" he exclaimed, almost beside himself with horror and shame. Surely she wasn't suggesting that he had treated her like a prostitute, a whore. She was no such thing, and if he had—
"You didn't use me, William," Buffy said, realizing now what he was afraid of. "I—" She couldn't say it. She couldn't tell him that she had been the user in their relationship. "You—Spike loved me very much."
She could admit that now. She could admit to William what she had never said aloud to Spike. The relief was evident on his face until another suspicion entered his eyes. "You didn't love him back."
It was a flat statement, made by a man who had all too much experience with such things, and Buffy wondered what had put that emotion into his voice. "William—"
"Don't lie to me."
He said it the way Spike would have said it. It was the same inflection, the same tone, the same raw emotion under the words. It would have been a mercy to lie, Buffy knew.
She couldn't. "No."
William nodded once. "I see. That makes a great deal of sense, I suppose." It didn't, not really. She hadn't loved Spike, perhaps, but William knew himself—or at least he thought he did. He knew what he did with rejection; he ran away in tears.
What had he done?
~~~~~
The darkness was supposed to be a friend to him, but William got no comfort from the silent basement. Noises he hadn't noticed through his tears the night before had come alive. He could distinguish the smells of the various occupants, hear their heartbeats. Earlier, William had realized he could sense the blood rushing underneath the Slayer's skin.
He could sense it, and it all made him feel slightly sick.
Neither he nor Buffy had said anything until they had reached the house. She had put her hand on his arm and said, "William, when Spike left I missed him a lot. If I seem short or angry or anything it's because I still miss him. He was—he was very important to me."
It was nice to know, in a way. Apparently, there was at least one woman who'd had feelings of some sort for him. Still, William was not Spike, and the corollary to her words was that he had taken Spike's place.
He had taken Spike away from her. And he was not nearly as important.
Perhaps it was selfish, but William wanted her to see him for what he was. He wanted Buffy to know who he was. He also had no desire to lose himself again.
William didn't know anything about being Spike.
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