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thanks to those who reviewed. glad you are enjoying.
‘What was your first memory of childhood?’ Buffy asked. It was time to get on with the counselling; much as she’d enjoyed just chatting, she was here to work.

‘My red trike, I can remember playing on it when I was about 3 years old, just going round and round the pond in our garden.’

‘How did it make you feel?’ Buffy asked again.

‘Happy. I always remember the sun on my face and my mom laughing with me - not at me, but with me.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘He was different then. He laughed and joked, played around, that was before he started drinking: he drank a lot later. After she died. I supposed it deadened the pain.’

‘What was she like, your mom?’ She kept probing.

‘Beautiful, elegant, she always looked smart, and in every photo I have she’s laughing. She was always laughing. I remember that very well. Even when she was so sick she was cheerful.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Cancer, the evil ‘C’, never smoked a day in her life, and got cancer. She fought hard every day, she would listen to me, talk about what I did in school, listen to me read, she loved to listen to me read. I suppose that’s where my love of Shakespeare came from. She loved the classics and I think I read the complete works to her three or four times before the end. She died when I was 14 and dad went off the rails. He ignored me for days. I ate what was in the house or the garbage. School was my refuge for a while ‘til it got hard and I acted because I could hide from being me. Like the drink I suppose, and the drugs, I could hide from being me.

Spike thought for a moment ‘How come I say it here, I mean I’ve had counselling before and I clam up, don’t say anything. Just give ‘em all a hard time’

‘Simple, I cheat. I’ve used a little bit of suggestion to get you to relax and talk, not a lot so you’re out of control, but enough so you feel like talking.’

‘Doesn’t telling me about it sort of negate the effect, pet?’

‘No, just means I don’t lie.’ Laughed Buffy.

‘OK then, if you say so.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you William, that’s not my job. Anyway, enough for today: you fancy a swim?’

‘Don’t have a costume, pet.’

‘Neither do I but the water’s not that clear, come on,’ and Buffy raced away laughing. She had made a breakthrough, but William had to work that out for himself. And they needed some fun. She ran all the way to the lake and hid behind a bush stripping down to bra and panties and quickly dived into the water. Spike arrived in time to see her resurface. Her hair was all over her face and she looked like a water nymph, golden and beautiful. He stripped off his tee shirt and jeans, and with just his boxers followed her in. Buffy thought she’d never seen anyone so beautiful in her life and watched as the water dripped down his alabaster torso. The rest of the evening was spent laughing and playing in the water. Just like a couple of kids, Spike thought. It became even more chaotic when that blasted elephant turned up, filled his trunk with water and showered the pair of them. Then Buffy climbed up onto his back and slid down the trunk.

Spike watched in amazement as the woman continued to use the elephant as an organic water toy. Up and down three or four times before he simply had to have a go as well. He cautiously swam over to the pair and found himself with a trunk wrapped securely around his waist as he started to climb up the offered leg, up onto the elephant’s head and down. It was the most amazing experience of his life. It was getting dark when they swam back to the shore to find their clothes. It was chilly and Buffy was shivering.

‘Come back to my place for cocoa, I’ve got marshmallows?’ Asked Buffy.

‘Your place?’

‘Mhm, I have a house here.’

‘Love to, pet.’

Spike followed her along a path to a small cottage where she opened the door and went in. Spike wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but this wasn’t it. It was modern, very modern inside. Plain white walls with terracotta velvet curtains at the windows. A music system, TV, books everywhere, and art stuff out in one corner.

‘These paintings are good,’ he noted as Buffy handed him his cocoa, complete with little marshmallows.

‘I do them as a stress reliever. You should take up something: you write poetry, don’t you?’

‘Badly…’

‘That doesn’t matter, practise makes perfect, especially here.’
Anyway, what about your childhood, then?’

‘Normal I suppose, ‘til my mum died: I must have been about ten when she got ill. I was a bit of an outsider, liked English and poetry, acting, all that in everything I wore, everything I said, the way I said it, It showed I didn’t belong. Dad hated me, I wasn’t good enough or man enough for him. Used his belt on me. I remember the beatings they went on for hours sometimes. He used to lock me a cupboard and open the door just to hit me. I actually became afraid of the light. Because the light meant he was coming back. He was a sick, abusive bastard. Aren’t you going to tell me I should love him and such, just because he’s my dad?’


‘No I’m not, I will never tell you what to do like that: life is choices. One day you will be strong enough to face him, then he’ll have to apologise to you, won’t he.’

Spike snorted: the thought of Ethan Rayne apologising to anyone was really funny. He thought about the man for the first time in years.
‘You know, I think he got off on hitting me, he really was sick in the head, that or evil.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Prison, tried hitting someone else, they nearly died and he got 15 years.’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘Safe, really safe, and guilty . Know he can’t get me, especially as he tried bullying the wrong person inside and now will never walk again.’

‘That must be hard for you to accept.’

‘In what way?’

‘That the nightmare is over in life, but not in your head. Until you let go you live it every day, but he’s not here to take the blame. Tough.’

‘Yeh, well, I feel guilty for not feeling guilty, you know? It’s hard, he’s my dad, but he’s horrid. You’re supposed to love your dad but I can’t love mine.’

‘I do understand but think of it this way, would you feel guilty if it hadn’t been your father that attacked you but a stranger and he’d ended up paying for his crime? I bet the real answer is no. He made his choices William, he follows his path, you must do the same.’

William looked into her eyes and felt the chains around his heart start snapping. He felt he could breathe freely for the first time in years.

‘Then what happened?’ asked Buffy.

‘Things went bad again for me when I met Cordelia. She went to my junior high. Met her in my senior year and was love struck, she was gorgeous. I’d follow her around quoting poetry at her, when I finally asked her out, I was such a ponce, and only 16, she told me I was beneath her and told everyone about it. So the jocks beat me up. Wasn’t safe at home, wasn’t safe at school. Spent the next couple of months hiding from everyone, then found a local gym that taught self defence, and I loved it, I was good at something. Got better and better, black-belts and everything.

By the time I left high school I was very good, but I was a bit of a troublemaker. Funny really, without her I wouldn’t have left home for New York and gone to Juliards. With her I damn near killed myself.
Without her I would have been stuck in a small town doing nothing, working at a garage fixing cars. With her I’m a working actor with stage success.

‘Met Dru, she was into the drugs and blood play, thought she was a vampire…’

‘So all in all meeting Cordelia was a good thing?’

‘Yes I suppose it was; I always blamed her for how things turned out but I guess without her I wouldn’t be me.’

‘Why the drink and drugs then, don’t you like the way the world looks when you’re clean and sober?’

‘It helped me cope. My Dad was an upstanding citizen. Ethan Rayne, he didn’t like his wimpy son, he did however like his belt, used it frequently. I still carry scars on my back and legs. He used to hit me with it what ever I did. If I failed to tidy my room, was out, came in at the wrong time, what ever I got hit. I was a real wimp’

‘I don’t think you’re wimpy, wimps don’t save strangers from a beating at school.’

‘You know about that?’

Buffy nodded.

‘I suppose Giles told you?’

‘No, I watched on the Akashic record, it’s like a video of your life and when Giles asked me help you, I went and looked up the incidents that were highlighted. I know a lot about you, Mr. Atherton,’ she said with a laugh.

‘Don’t know if I like that: my whole life laid out for someone to go and read whenever they want.’ Spike was worried, there were things in there he would prefer no-one saw, let alone Buffy.

‘It’s not like that, you have to have a special reason for going, I only went in for half an hour and asked to see the highlights about you. I needed to know those so I could remind you. It’s not like down there: there you’re protected a bit from any hurt you give, those bodies don’t always feel everything. Here there is no protection. If you hurt someone it really hurts, if you make them happy you can feel that happiness roll off of them, and I didn’t want to hurt you. Anything you want to share I’m here, but I didn’t want to go blundering in with foot in mouth disease if there was anything that would really hurt.’

‘That was kind of you, pet.’

‘Yep, well, I’m good like that,’ Buffy added with a smile. ‘Anyway, enough of the serious for tonight: fancy a drink?’

Spike started laughing, he was supposed to be getting help off the drinks and drugs, but they still seemed to end up in the pub.

Buffy gave him that look, the one that said she’d been reading his mind again. ‘You might end up in a pub but you only have one or two at most, you enjoy the drink, not abuse it. You don’t want to give it up forever do you?’

‘No way. I don’t think I could do that.’

‘Good, I enjoy a drink here, don’t drink down there, Buffy and alcohol are very unmixy, I go all blah and cave Buffy, you know: fire bad, tree good becomes a major sentence.’

Their laughter carried them all the way to the Bar and on into the night.

When he woke up Spike Atherton recorded everything he possibly could remember about his dream in his diary. He re-read it time after time.

‘You’re one hell of a woman Buffy, just wish I could meet you down here as well.’





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