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Alone again in the darkness, cool and pleasant. All around, the world fell silent. Normally the ambient sounds of traffic from the next block, a siren downtown, or white noise from a nearby television set would drift into his ears as the witching hour settled over town. Not tonight. For once the stupid sods of Sunnyhell had given heed to the warnings and cleared out. Must really be the end of the world. Only this time there was no convenient little loophole or forgotten prophecy to save the day. Humanity’s only hope rested on a group of pimply-faced little girls about to face the biggest bad that ever was. Time seemed to drag with unbearably slowness—the night stretched on around him, simple and quiet. Dreamtime. It felt like playing chess with the Devil. The world was ending. He would die—again. They would die. She might die. And all he could do was wait for the dawn.

He sighed shakily, forcing himself not to dwell, not to think. He’d never been a thinker, after all. Not since the bloody soul came back to burn him from the inside out. The spark—the piece of himself that he’d lost so long ago. Even after a thread of his sanity returned, he continued to agonize over it day and night; not only over the things he’d done—the unbearable guilt would naturally always be there to torture him—but it was the meaning behind it all that truly consumed him. What was a soul, anyway? Was it guilt itself, like a conscience? Self-imposed torment for all the lives he’d taken, polluted, corrupted? Was it William Pratt, the bloody awful poet returned to reclaim possession of the body that had become an animate, bleached, and fairly athletic corpse? Or maybe the spark—the soul—was simply the part that remembered.

Flicking the chrome Zippo with his thumb, he lit the tip of a fag between his lips. Orange light smoldered in a tiny flash as the sweet familiarity of nicotine filled his lungs. He drew his legs up beneath him and leaned against the chilled cinderblocks of the bare basement walls while he took simple pleasure in a long, slow drag.

Don’t forget. Those tiny words still plagued him incessantly. It began when the demon touched him, snapping the missing piece back in place. At first it was all light and pain. Felt like someone had hurled his mangled body out into the desert under the cruelest midday sun imaginable. But once the pain rolled back, once his own screaming faded dully in his ears, he began to see pictures in that light. And throbbing in his head like his nonexistent pulse were those two words. At first he couldn’t discern the fragile, fading voice that spoke them so softly. But after turning them over in his mind, listening to their broken echo, he realized he knew that voice better than his own. Within that haunting sound lay a vast array of fragmented, scattered memories. Initially he experienced the recollections as pure sensation: warm, soothing, like the sunshine he only dimly remembered.

As he listened more closely, the words came alive. Heated breath whispered against the hollow of his throat. Her fine golden hair, tangled and drenched with rainwater, gently caressing his cheek. Don’t forget. Of course he knew her. The feel of her breath, her warmth, the sweet smell of her hair…the goddess. His goddess.

Truth be told, it had started impossibly long ago when he was still just a man. The dreams. Before Dru, before Cecily…a faceless woman haunted him. She never spoke, but the feel of her, and the knowledge that he loved her, comforted him in the darkest days. Through the taunting and the teasing and the worst nights of his mother’s illness, she had stayed with him, kissed his eyelids as he slept, and urged him to pick up his pen and scratch out his first awful, nancy-boy excuse for poetry. Naively he thought she was a muse sent to earth to guide and inspire him. Even after fate intervened, transforming him into a creature of darkness, she remained hidden in his deepest thoughts and fantasies. Despite all the vile things he’d done, she stayed with him. Surely no angel would linger to comfort a vampire. A demon.

Throughout his life he searched for her, believing beyond reason that he was meant to find her somewhere in this world. When Drusilla stumbled upon him in a darkened alley and gave him the gift of second birth, he felt certain that he’d solved the mystery. But it was all horribly wrong. Drusilla was velvet and porcelain, bitter red wine and black roses, cold and lifeless. His goddess lived in the sunshine, in a place where the trees swept overhead in an emerald canopy, where water glittered black and ravens crowed. She was the color of baby’s breath, tasted of honey and lilac, made of smooth satin and fine lace. She was delicate and strong, proud and uncertain. She was Buffy. No, not Buffy—a piece of Buffy. She was the part of Buffy that remembered.

He knew that now. In quick flashes, he’d seen everything—pieces of a life that had somehow given him a vague understanding of the whole story. In that previous existence, he had loved her. Most importantly however, she’d loved him back. Initially the floodgate of moments and memories twisted his sanity; and with the First’s involvement, he could no longer differentiate dreams from visions, memories from wishes and hopes. But after she freed him from the dank confines of the Hellmouth and the enemy’s clutches, the fog in his mind slowly cleared; and it all began to make a strange sense.

Once he realized what he was seeing, he soon became tormented by the struggle to understand it all. What was it, exactly, that enabled him to see these things? Could it be the Spark, the Powers…God? He would never know for certain, at least not in this lifetime. Drove him bloody mad that he’d never know why some higher power had chosen to bestow such a curse. All he knew for certain now was that his goddess, his angel, his muse…had a face. It was a face he had known for quite some time now. A beautiful face that he had struck with his fists in mindless rage, a face that when contorted in pain, had brought him cruel, delicious satisfaction. Part of him longed to believe that it was all because of the demon—what he had done was reprehensible and sickening, but it wasn’t truly him…was it? Surely no part of William the man had committed these heinous acts. Perhaps he would never know the full answer to that either. Regardless of who or what was at fault, the shame formed a gaping wound in his conscience that he would bear forever. He knew he deserved death—he had craved for it, begged for hellfire and punishment; but he also knew that he had to go on until he could manage to do at least one damn good thing with his pathetic little life.

He stubbed the smoke out on a piece of old, rusted patio furniture that was pushed up beside the cot. His eyes briefly fell to the floor, where he’d left the sparkling blue medallion she had given him. Lifting the heavy gold chain, he tested its weight in his hand before allowing it to dangle before him. And he laughed at the absurdity of it all. No one would believe any of this. She would never believe him—would she? Hell, he could hardly believe himself, what with his sanity being a fleeting thing as of late. "So Buffy, we used to be different people a few hundred years ago. You loved me and I loved you. And we had a baby. And come to think of it, I’m wondering where he is now, our baby, and if we’ll get to see him again someday, and oh, I didn’t know all this until I got my soul back and went completely insane". Uh huh.

He flinched when the door at the top of the stairs suddenly creaked open, spilling a sliver of yellow light across the cold, grey wall.

“Spike?” she whispered, “Spike, are you awake?”


Chapter End Notes:
So I doubt the original followers of this story are still around. It was originally published, what, 7 years ago? Better late than never? Ha. It always bugged me that this fic was left incomplete, and after re-watching the series, I was inspired to go back to it.

I've taken the ideas behind the story and am currently working on an original trilogy, which hopefully will be finished one day. But I had to give the Spuffy version it's fair conclusion!

It has been a lot of fun for me to read back over this, especially now that I have my own baby Elijah, just like Elizabeth :)

Hope you enjoy, and maybe this story will reach some new readers!



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