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Chapter 5: Seeking

Her green eyes stare into his blue ones and for a moment she's unaware that the world is shifting around them, after all it's been happening so often lately that there's no need to pay attention to the changes in her location. William's bedroom falls away and even the bed they lie on disappears. All the while her eyes are glued to his. When Spike breaks their gaze Buffy notices that they're now lying on the ground. They're in someone's front yard and its night. Grass is beneath Buffy's back and there is a small house ahead of them with its porch light on. Spike stands and Buffy follows suit.

"Where are we?" Buffy asks glancing around. She recognizes it as a residential street in Sunnydale, though not one she's walked often.

"Don' remember the street exactly," Spike says looking around, Buffy follows his gaze and then she sees him. Spike, another Spike, walking with a young woman with short blonde hair, she's cute, blue eyes, but heaver then herself, the Slayer thinks as she eyes up Spike's date. Buffy and Spike look on at the other Spike the one with his hands shoved in his pockets and who sports a jean jacket, that Spike is talking to the woman at his side. She smiles and they make their way up the porch steps. "I met her at this bar," Spike says. "Met a lot of girls there."

"Was she the first?" Buffy asks with a confusing mix of emotions. Jealousy twinges in her mind at the thought of Spike talking to other women, and then there is fear and sadness as well for the knowledge that Spike will kill this woman he's with; has already killed the woman she sees him with she amends in her head as she realizes that this is only a memory.

"Not sure… first I remember, and even then I don't remember so much." Buffy and Spike look on as the woman offers the vampire on her porch to come inside with a coy smile and shifting of her hips. "I turned her down, liked to talk, liked the conversations, but… anything more than that… after you, I just wasn't ready, I was gonna leave." They watch as the Spike on the porch goes to turn around but the woman grabs his arm and looks up at him with fluttering eyelashes, Spike leans in to kiss her. "An' this is the last I remember… but I know how it ends, don' remember it, just know."

The Spike on the porch moves his lips from the woman's mouth to her throat and as his kisses become hungrier Buffy can see his face change. Even though he is partially blocked by the woman's spiky blonde hair Buffy can see the bumpies appear on his forehead. The woman yells out as his teeth drive through her flesh and he grips her body tighter. Buffy glances to the Spike at her side and she can see the guilt on his face, she can see it welling in his eyes and eating him up inside. When she looks back to the porch the other Spike has pulled away from the woman's neck and licks his bloodied lips. That Spike looks ravenous and animalistic. He doesn't look like the Spike she knows; even in the days when they were mortal enemies Buffy can't ever remember him looking so much like a demon.

"What changed?" Buffy asks. "Something happened there, at the point where you don't remember anymore… what happened there Spike?" She looks to him and he drags his eyes away from the porch scene to look at her. His brow creases and he silently shakes his head back and forth.

"Dunno," Spike says. "I think it was talking to me, but I don' remember."

"Why do you think that?"

"It was talking to me in the basement," Spike says and his eyes get a glazed over look to them as he remembers standing on the dirt floor of the basement where he had tried to lead Buffy to her death.

Buffy looks around as the scenery distorts again. The yard where they stand starts to blur as if they were caught in a wind storm, the trees and house begin to shake and break apart; the grass and sky and street before her all smear like a watercolor painting with too much water and not enough paint. Everything becomes hazy, smeared, and unrecognizable. Buffy feels a bit of vertigo overcome her; then as it starts to clear up again and detail returns to her surroundings she sees that they are back in the basement with the dirt floor and Spike's chilids. She looks on as another version of herself fights with the vampires that swarm around her. She watches as her doppelganger swirls and kicks and takes out the vamps that rush at her. For a moment Buffy feels a bit of pride as she watches herself work.

"Hey, I've got some good moves," Buffy says with a chipper tone to her voice.

"There," Spike says and leads Buffy's sight to the other side of the room. There she sees Spike cowering in the corner, he's distressed and pulling at his hair, but he's not the only Spike she sees. There are two of him, three total if she counts the one at her side who looks on with her.

"I don't understand," Buffy murmurs. She looks on as the one Spike, the confident one with empty eyes, talks to the other.

"It can look like whoever it wants," the Spike at her side says. "It likes to look like me… or you."

"Why couldn't I see it before?"

"It didn't want you to see it… for a long time I thought I was just losing my mind, seein' things that weren't there an' all."

"But you weren't… it was just playing with you."

"Right you are about that… it likes to whisper, get in to your head and no matter what you do you can't block it out… it likes to remind you of all the terrible things you've done."

"The First," Buffy says with understanding for the first time. She remembers when it had done the same mind game with Angel years back, "I still don't get how…"

"It got me to kill again? Maybe it didn't maybe that was just me."

"Spike, no… don't even think that, you just told me this thing has been screwing with you, and I saw… I saw you change… it did something to you to make you kill those people, think Spike." His eyes move back and forth from the Slayer and the scene before them. "Come on Spike, it must have said something… done something, put you in some kind of trance." He looks down at her.

"I don't remember it doin' anything…"

"And you don't think that maybe that's a sign!" Buffy shouts. "Don't you think that if this was all just you that you'd remember killing these people?" Lines of confusion crease Spike's brow and he runs a hand through his hair, he looks around wildly for a moment and Buffy can tell that this is wearing on him. "Think Spike!"

Spike's head is spinning, pieces of broken memories come to light but nothing makes sense. It had said something; he remembers something, but what? His eyes lock on Buffy's and get entranced in her swirling green orbs. He remembers when it had taken on her from, but when it looked like her it never had that kind of life in its eyes like he sees in hers now. He remembers when it looked like her and he was in an alley with a young man, it did something then and Spike remembers feeling changed. He remembers feeling like he no longer controlled his actions. It did something, it said something, no… it sang something.

The world spins again, this time more violently then before. Spike's mind is trying to remember and trying hard. Buffy grabs on to Spike's arm as everything shakes and is pulled apart. Buffy feels like she's being pulled into a black hole as the basement dreamscape disappears. She feels weightless and uneasy. Slowly pieces of a new environment fall into place but it takes the Slayer a moment before she can process where she is. Once all the pieces are in place, the image of the puzzle is clear and once again Buffy finds herself in William's bedroom. She sighs. She thought for a moment that Spike's mind was reaching out for something, searching for the answer to explain how this thing from below can control him; but now they're just back here again. William plays with his marbles on the floor and Buffy and Spike look on.

Buffy looks to Spike, his eyes roam the room looking on with intrigue. He looks around as if he were searching for something and Buffy then starts to think that maybe there is something to being here. She realizes that his mind has brought him here for a reason. There is something here that explains why the thing had controlled Spike and made him kill. The reason is here and he's been trying to tell her that all along. William has been dragging her back here time and time again and she sees now that it's not just because he feels safe here, it's because this is where she'll find her answers. Then she hears it. Thud. Both Buffy and Spike's heads jerk to face the door.






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