Spike woke the next day with the distinct feeling that he was being watched. It didn’t exactly tax his vampire senses to figure out it was Andrew hovering with almost palpable anticipation at the top of the cellar steps. Spike lay still and kept his eyes closed. There was a heavy sigh and the sound of the cellar door closing. Spike smiled, pulled the blankets closer around his ears and went back to sleep.
The next time he woke, it was to the metallic smell of blood and the sound of rustling. “Hands off my money.” He opened his eyes to a startled Dawn, busy counting the pile of notes on the table.
“Where did you get all this from?”
“Went down the World’s End last night.”
“Appropriate.” Dawn snorted.
“There’s a nice little demon gambling club down there, been there years. Did quite well as it happens, and they play for coin of the realm over here, not moggies.”
“Moggies? Kittens? No, don’t even…” Dawn held up her hand. “Here. I brought you some breakfast.” She pointed to a mug on the table, the source of the strong smell of blood, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You didn’t have to do that.” Spike sat up, the sheet falling away from his chest.
Dawn blushed and tried not to gawp. “Oh… um… it’s OK.”
Spike smiled ruefully, picked up his t-shirt and shrugged it on. ”So – where’s the rest of the gang?”
“Giles took Buffy over to the Council.” Dawn recovered her calm. “He’s gonna leave her there and come back in an hour or so. Willow should be here by then, so we can get this mess sorted out.”
The door to the cellar flew open. “Spike!” Andrew couldn’t have looked happier. “You’re awake!”
Dawn winced. “But sadly, he left Andrew.”
Spike grabbed the sheet and pulled it up over his chest nervously. Andrew sauntered across the room with studied cool, made to sit next to Dawn, misjudged the height of the bed and fell backwards, banging his head on the wall with a yelp.
Dawn rolled her eyes. “I’ll leave you to it. Gotta go straighten out Willow’s room.”
“You sure you don’t need help?” Spike jerked his head at Andrew who was whimpering quietly and rubbing his head.
“No! Please! Keep him from under my feet!” Dawn stood up quickly. “OK - so. Upstairs when you’re ready?” She stopped at the door and grinned mischievously at Spike. “You boys have fun, now.”
Spike shook his head, frowned at Andrew, then picked up the mug and took a sip of the rapidly cooling blood. Andrew watched curiously. “What does it taste like?”
Spike sighed. “More or less what it smells like. Kind of salty and metallic.”
“Pennies.” Andrew pulled a face. “Yeww. How can you drink that stuff?”
“Well… vampire?”
“Oh, yes. Vampire.” Andrew narrowed his eyes and nodded wisely “I know of the vampyr…”
“Please don’t.” Spike frowned at him. “Actually, it’s not so bad. You can add things that help. Bit of Burbur weed’s good. Weetabix gives it a bit of texture. End of the day though, it’s only pigs blood. Not much you can do about that.”
“Pig, huh?” A memory surfaced. That’ll do, pig! Andrew shuddered and resolutely put the thought aside. “Does it taste better… you know… direct?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never bitten a pig.” Spike held the mug out to him. “Wanna try?”
Andrew blanched visibly. “N-no. Thank you. I’ve already eaten.”
Spike shrugged and emptied the mug in one long swallow. “OK – well, I need to get dressed now.” He raised an eyebrow at Andrew pointedly.
“Right. That sounds like a very good plan.” Andrew nodded wisely. “It would probably be best not to face this trouserless.”
Spike waited. Andrew smiled benignly. Spike sighed. “You know, some things a guy’s just gotta do alone.”
”Oh! Right. Got it. You're a loner... you walk alone…”
“I dress alone.”
“No problem, brother. You're a troubled hero.”
“Andrew…”
“Creature of the night. El creatro del noche.”
“Please stop.”
“Living by his own rules. Unafraid of anything or anyone...”
“You know, I will bite.”
“The panther prowling the dark, mean streets…”
“Will you just bugger off and let me get dressed!” Spike growled in exasperation.
“Oh! Right!” Andrew stood up quickly. “You sure there’s nothing…” He looked vaguely around the room.
“Just go before I have to kill you.”
“Oh, you don’t mean…” Andrew gave a disbelieving smile, which quickly faltered at the sudden flash of feral yellow in Spike’s eyes. Seriously unnerved, Andrew opened his mouth to speak, decided against it, smiled weakly and left Spike alone.
Spike grinned. Hated scaring the boy, but… hell, what was he thinking? Loved scaring the boy. Good to know he still had the big bad touch. He frowned. Never know when he might need it.
******
When Spike finally made his way to Giles’ sitting room, he found Willow standing alone, leafing through a small, leather-bound notebook. She looked up as Spike came into the room, put the book down, and smiled nervously. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Spike paused. She looked pale, he thought, and even thinner, if that were possible. Her eyes still shone with intelligence and that strange, slight otherworldliness that dabbling in the magicks brought, but they were ringed with dark shadows. Spike frowned. All was not well in Red’s world. “Thought you were whooping it up in Rio with Kennedy?” he said eventually.
Willow looked away. “Not so much with the whooping – at least, not together. Kind of didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” She shrugged. “Turns out I’m a one girl girl. Not ready for the moving on thing. You know?”
“Yeah. I know. Well, apart from the being a girl bit.”
Willow gave him a lopsided smile. “You look well – I mean for someone who went all pillar of flame.”
“Pfht. Nothing to it. Apart from the skin and muscle burning away from the bone and the melting eyeballs. That stung a bit.” He looked at her, head tilted. “But you don’t look so good.”
She gave a snort of laughter. “Oh, thanks. Crush my girlish confidence under your size nine boots, why don’t you?” She sighed. “Just kind of tired. Been working with the coven and all. Turns out the inner goddess is pretty demanding.”
“They treating you right?”
“They’re wonderful.” She gave a soft smile. “It’s not them. There’s so much to learn, you know? More I learn the more I see how much there is out there, and what I know is just touching on the true magicks.” There was a fire of enthusiasm in her eyes that touched on obsession. “I need to know.” She gave a helpless shrug. Spike sincerely hoped that Giles and the others saw how narrow was the knife edge that Willow walked, how easily she could slip back into addiction. Given past experience, he had to wonder.
Dawn appeared in the doorway with a tray. “Hey, guys, you’ll never guess! Giles had marshmallows!” She put the tray down and handed out the hot chocolate. “There’s hope for him yet!”
“Where’s the boy?” Spike looked nervously at the open door.
“Oh, I sent him for marshmallows.” Dawn looked at him over the rim of her mug, smiling innocently.
“But you already have marshmallows.” Willow gave a puzzled frown.
Spike grinned at Dawn conspiratorially. “You can never have enough marshmallows.”
******
A little later, Giles joined the others. The atmosphere in the sitting room was tense. Andrew was persuaded to go and collect lunchtime pizza on the promise that nothing important would be discussed while he was away.
“Right.” Dawn turned to Willow as soon as she heard the front door close. “Where have Buffy’s memories gone and how do we get them back?”
Willow sat forward with a sigh. “They’ve not gone, exactly. I mean, memories are kind of hard-wired in the brain – you can’t actually get rid of them. Well, not without actually getting rid of the brain and that would be icky… and just… wrong.”
“Well, what happened?”
“OK – you have two basic spells. The easy one uses Lethe’s Bramble and the crystal and is pretty non-specific and honestly it’s sort of… amateur.” Willow blushed. “And more often than not it messes up. Then there’s the clever way, and whoever did this was clever. If you’re good enough you can sort of selectively deprogram, undo some of the links to specific bits. The memories are still there, you just don’t have access to them.”
“Well, that’s good.” Dawn smiled with relief. “So we can put it right!”
“Umm… did I mention ‘good news, bad news’ situation here?” Willow frowned. “Bad news is – it’s kinda more straightforward to do the disconnecting thing – you just find your focus and follow it along, snip-snipping as you go. But reversing it – remaking all the missing connections… that’s not so easy. You’ve got to find them and get them all back in the right places or… whoops! Instant memory mush. At least,” she gave a self-depreciating grin, “that’s what we can make out from the manuscripts. There’s no actual record of anyone trying to do it. Oh, except that once…”
“And?”
“Umm… let’s just say it wasn’t a success. To do the reconnecting you have to sort of get inside the other person’s mind. Thing is – the person who tried to undo the spell never got out again. Not to the good.”
“Oh.” Dawn’s face fell.
“Oh, but the witch who did this? Really low level. I mean this is the girl who used rosemary instead of marjoram in a love spell!” Willow laughed. Everyone else looked at her blankly. “… it’s a… it’s just if you used rosemary it would…” She grimaced. “Sorry, witchy type joke.”
“But you’re, like, super-witch! You could do it! You could put it all back and no brain mush!” Dawn turned pleading eyes towards her. “Willow?”
Willow frowned unhappily. “I don’t know, Dawnie. Messing with people’s minds. I… my history’s not so good…”
Dawn turned to Giles. “You tell her! Tell her she has to do it!”
Giles shook his head and sighed. “I wouldn’t presume to tell Willow what to do. What you are asking is fraught with difficulties. If anything goes wrong, the consequences simply do not bear thinking about.” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Besides, I’m not altogether convinced that giving Buffy back those… particular memories… is the right thing to do.”
“What?” Dawn looked at him in disbelief.
“Think about it.” Giles frowned. “Remember how she was. All that she went through. Look at how she is now.”
Dawn frowned in puzzlement. “How she is now?”
“She’s…” Giles hesitated.
“Normal.” Spike’s voice was bitter. They all turned to look at him. He sat slumped in his chair, disregarded, head bent, staring at the floor. “He means she’s got no memory of me – of us. Way it should be. She’s not in love with the evil undead anymore.” Giles winced as Spike looked over at him. “That’s right, isn’t it, Rupert?”
Dawn looked at Giles in horror. “But… you can’t just…” She looked back at Spike. “Spike! Tell him! She loves you!”
“No she doesn’t. She doesn’t know me.” Spike’s eyes were locked with Giles’. “And she’s better off without me, right?” His voice was brittle with hurt.
“You have to see that your relationship was hardly healthy – for either of you.” Giles looked away. “You know that the two of you have no future. You are a vampire. You will be as you are for the rest of her mortal life. She will age...”
“Don’t you think I fucking well know that?”
“Yet still you’re here.” Giles’ voice was hard.
“Giles!” Willow gasped.
“Well, guess what?” Spike glared at Giles. “You’re gonna have to get used to it.”
“We need to do what is best for Buffy.”
“And that’s your call?”
“It’s a call someone has to make.” Giles sat down, and pressed his fingers to his temples. “Look. This isn’t helping. Given the circumstances I propose that we don’t just rush into anything. In my opinion it would be better to wait, to see what transpires, and to give Willow a chance to look into this further.”
“Wait and see.” Spike stood up, fists clenched. “You really are a watcher, aren’t you?” He glared back at Giles’ steady gaze. He bit down on his anger and frustration and shrugged. “Somethin' else you should all know. The Immortal warned me that the spell might've made things unstable; messin' with Buffy's memories, even tellin' her... he said it could be dangerous. So - maybe this time you got a point, huh?" He shook his head and stalked out of the study. "I need a fag,” he growled, and slamming the door behind him.
Dawn turned to Giles, eyes flashing with anger. “Well, you handled that well.”
“Dawn, I have Buffy’s best interests at heart.” Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. "And after what Spike just told us..."
“And what about Spike?”
“What about him?”
“Don’t you even care what this is like for him?”
“Frankly?” Giles looked up at her. “No.”
Dawn felt tears of frustration prick her eyes. “Then you’re an idiot.” She turned and ran from the room.
******
She found him sitting in the shade at the bottom of the basement steps, cigarette in hand, and sat down next to him with a sigh. “Can I have one of those?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Since when did you smoke?”
“I don’t. Just kinda feel now might be a good time to start.”
“Never is a good time to start. If sis ever found out…” He frowned and looked away.
“Are you OK?”
He drew hard on his cigarette, shrugging.
“Giles is an idiot.”
“No, he’s not. He’s so far up his own arse he can see the back of his own teeth sometimes, but he’s not an idiot.” He grimaced and looked at the cigarette. “You know, I gave these up because Buffy couldn’t stand the taste. Turns out neither can I anymore.” He ground it out beneath his boot. “He’s right. No point in rushing into anything, much as it goes against the grain.”
“So, you’ll stay? You’ll wait?”
“Dawn…”
“Spike, promise me you won’t go away.”
A part of him wanted to do just that – go. All in all he was getting bloody tired of bouncing back time after time when the Fates once again screwed with his life. Maybe he’d go back to LA and get his kicks annoying the hell out of Angel. Or maybe just travel – see what few bits of the world he hadn’t seen yet, put the whole bloody lot of them behind him. Forget about Buffy and the never-ending complications of it all, and go back to simpler times, when it was all about the fists and fangs and the call of the blood.
He turned to look at Dawn, at her unhappy face and beseeching eyes. Oh, bloody hell! What was it about the Summers women that he couldn’t refuse them one damn thing?
“Not going anywhere, pet.” He was rewarded with a smile that tugged at his heart. “Besides, the watcher wants me gone – which is good enough reason for me to stay.”
Who was he kidding anyway? He was never going anywhere, because fool that he was, any hope was better than no hope at all right now. And she’d loved him - Buffu had loved him - and those few days were the best of his whole existence and he wasn’t giving up on that. He sighed as Dawn leaned against him. Just call me rubber ball man.
“Guys? The pizza’s arrived,” Willow called from the basement. “And so has Buffy,” she added nervously.
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