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Author's Chapter Notes:
Okay, so this is the final of the three chapters added today.

If you haven't read the other two please read them.

Thanks for reading, and please enjoy!
The bedroom was eerily silent, except for the sounds of sobbing as Spike openly wept. Wavering uncertainly for only a moment, Buffy crawled forward, settling in Spike’s lap.



The peroxide blond raised a grateful tear-stained face to her and encircled her with his arms, pulling her closer. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and inhaled her familiar scent. She smelled like juicy berries and sweet vanilla to him.



It was so long since he had dredged up these old memories. For too long he’d buried them beneath layers of guilt and now they were pouring from him.



Buffy ran her hands up and down his back in an almost motherly gesture. It was a little weird to be comforting her stepfather like this, but right now he craved it and she would do anything to help him.



Taking her face between his palms he caressed her right cheekbone with his thumb, before moving forward and sealing her lips with his. He tugged on her bottom lip with his teeth and she moaned softly. However, this sweet embrace wasn’t about sexual urges. It was about comfort which both of them so sorely needed right now.



They rested their foreheads together for a moment, and Spike sighed.



“There’s more to tell you, Buffy. I need you to hear the rest. And then if you want to tell me to bugger off…”



“That won’t happen!” She exclaimed emphatically. “Whatever happened in the past won’t make me lo…care for you any less. Color me Miss Understanding.” She quipped to cover her faux pas of moments earlier.



Thankfully he ignored what she had almost admitted, and he took a deep breath.



“Well buckle yourself in kiddies.” He said with thick cynicism. “Because here’s where the ride gets rough.”



Los Angeles Five years earlier





The apartment air was smoky and thick like a death shroud for the damned. Surfaces that had once been pristinely cared for were now soiled with the residue of years of misuse and abuse, kind of like the people who lived there.



A single shaky figure was sitting on a tattered black leather couch that had seen much better days. But Spike was barely paying attention to anything else as he tightened a tourniquet around his arm with his teeth, grunting at the exertion. His bony hands were shaky from needing a fix and they trembled as he picked up the needle. He was so thin it was painful to look at him, but he rarely looked in mirrors these days unless he was doing lines off of them.



In the bedroom he heard rumbling moans from one of Darla’s johns as she performed whatever her sex act of the day was. Once upon a time it would have bothered Spike that his own flesh and blood was selling her body to lowlife strangers for cash, but now all he cared about was where his next fix was to be found.



And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t worked the streets a time or two to get money for what he needed. He did what he had to do.



The first time he did that he had scrubbed his skin raw afterward. But it got easier. The drugs made it easier. They took away the pain.



A lot had changed for Spike in the past four years, since he sniffed his first line on a whim. He was a man with an addictive personality and it wasn’t long before he was hooked on the coke. From there he moved to smoking rocks, smoking heroin and finally injecting it.



And beside him all the way, Angel had encouraged him, a demonic cheerleader for his downfall into hell. He’d hooked him up and pimped him out. Angel even used Spike himself, but a fix wiped away the burning shame.



Angel had systematically taken everything away from Spike in these past few years. First he had taken Darla away. His once kind and gentle cousin was now a hard-hearted bitch prepared to sell herself for drugs to anyone who offered her enough money.



Then he had taken Dru. Angel had no feelings for Dru, that much was always obvious, but the man was a master of manipulation and he loved to toy with the woman. She was a broken doll, molded to worship Angel. Spike only got a taste of the woman he loved when Angel was bored of her. But mostly she was a weapon for Angel to use against him.



And she let herself be used that way.



Spike hated her just a little for that.



But even though he lamented those losses, even worse Angel had stripped Spike of his dignity. He had made him do the most unthinkable things. Acts that Spike had committed because he couldn’t see any other way than the path Angel laid out for him. He knew they were wrong and yet he did them without question.



And Spike hated himself a lot for that.



A sudden commotion forced Spike’s eyes open and he watched a middle aged man career out from Darla’s bedroom through the living room at top speed.



He heard Dru let out a shriek and winced.



“She’s not breathing!” Dru screamed at Spike. “Why didn’t the pixies warn me? The stars are angry at their princess, just like the Black Knight. He didn’t know the horse would eat all his cakes!”



Trying to rouse himself into some kind of coherent state, Spike stood from the couch, wobbling unsteadily and made his way over to Dru.



“What’s wrong love?” He inquired.



“It’s Darla! She’s dead, Spike. She’s gone to play with the angels. Not Daddy though. He’s a fallen angel, naughty and bad.” She started barking and growling, but Spike was no longer paying any attention to her.



He ran past her into the bedroom, seeing Darla lying sprawled on top of a bundle of rumpled sheets, used needles scattered around her lifeless body. Lurching forward he kneeled at his cousin’s side, frantically feeling for a pulse. He eventually found a thready beat and sighed in relief that she was still alive.



If only just.



Without waiting any longer, he scooped her up in his arms, determined to get her to a hospital. His car was down in the parking lot, and although he knew he was doped up, it didn’t occur to him for a moment that he was in no fit state to drive.



All he was thinking about was that they couldn’t call the paramedics, because if they did, then their stash would be discovered and it would be confiscated.



His cousin, lying motionless and pale in his arms, had overdosed from those very drugs, and yet his thoughts were dominated by ways to preserve that stash.



He prepared to leave the apartment with the girl, but Dru blocked his way.



“We’ve got no bloody time for your games right now, Dru. I need to get Darla to the hospital, so get out of the sodding way.”



“Not without me!” The dark haired woman whined, pouting. Her skeletal face contorted into a mask of tears when he started to shake his head. “I want! I want! I want! The stars will punish you for being a bad boy if you say no to Princess!”



Groaning, he finally gave in and ushered her out of the door, still cradling Darla.



When they reached his old Desoto, the trio hustled inside and he sparked the engine into life, roaring out of the parking lot and onto the open road in the direction of the nearest hospital.



He blinked and shook his head, trying hopelessly to clear his vision as the glare of the streetlights blurred and fizzed in front of him. In his ears Drusilla’s endless wails reverberated and for a moment he screwed his eyes tightly shut against the onslaught battering his every sense.



Then everything happened before he knew it. The car started to weave violently but Spike couldn’t seem to regain control. His ears echoed with the panicked screams of Drusilla and he tried to block it out but he couldn’t shut it off.



Everything rippled from red to black.



The car started to spin out of control.



He didn’t even see the curb as the tire clipped it but he felt them launch into the air, tumbling over and over, before everything went dark.



When Spike opened his eyes, he figured he’d only been out moments, but a throbbing pain in his skull almost blinded him as he tried to focus.



The black Desoto was lying on its right side, Darla slumped against where the window used to be. He craned his neck and saw Drusilla lying still in the back, her limbs twisted at an unnatural angle.



“Bollocks!” He exclaimed. After a few minutes of trying to rouse Dru, knowing that Darla would not wake even if he tried because of the amount of drugs flowing through her system, he pushed open the driver’s door above him, and scrambled out.



His only hope right now was to try and run for help, and the night air hit him dizzyingly hard as he clambered out onto the deserted road.



Later he would go through every motion he made over and over, trying to figure out what he should have done differently. He would flog himself to shreds over the fact that he didn’t suspect that the gas tank was leaking, so he didn’t even try and pull the girls from the wreckage.



He set off in the direction of the main road, but even several yards away, when the explosion happened it blew him clear off his feet and on the ground.



It was like watching a movie scene unfold in front of him as he turned back to the car only to see fireballs sparking from it. The whole thing was ablaze. The part of him that had been the old Spike would have gone and risked life and limb to try and save the girls, but old Spike was dead and gone, buried under the junk he pumped into his veins.



Turning away, he ran.



The next few days were a blur for him. He spent them mostly hiding out in an old abandoned hospital in East LA. Funnily enough, he spent his time there half passed out in what used to be the psych ward, injecting a round of junk he somehow managed to buy along the way to getting there.



One day, long after, he would see the irony in that.



He found some supplies that weren’t exactly still good, but were acceptable to use and bandaged up the worst of his injuries. At least there were no broken bones or anything life threatening.



In truth, he didn’t know just how long he stayed there. Every moment blurred into the next and it all interspersed with flashed of Drusilla lying twisted and broken in the car, and Darla’s lifeless eyes as he saw her splayed on the bed.



He knew he shouldn’t have driven.



He knew he should have tried to get them out.



He knew that he should have saved them long ago before turning into the same kind of man that he despised his father for being.



Grief and pain mingled together and for the first time in a long time the drugs didn’t help the welcome numbness descend over his psyche.



Wetness coated his face and it was so unfamiliar a feeling that at first he wondered if he wasn’t still bleeding. But then he knew. Inside his heart was bleeding, crying for everything he’d lost and everything he could never get back.



Under the weight and burden of the guilt and grief, he felt something shift within him.



No longer could he live like this.



With new resolve, he headed back to the apartment that he had shared with two women he loved and one man he loathed.



He was sick of being Angel’s whipping boy. That man had taken so much from him. But now that was over and done.



Spike stuck to the small roads, not wanting to be picked up by the cops. He didn’t even know if they were looking for him in connection with the accident, but he couldn’t risk it, especially with the amount of opiates flowing through him still.



When he arrived back at the apartment, the smell of dirt hit him immediately.



Why had he never noticed just how grungy this place was?



Had he become so accustomed to living in this filth that instead of hating it, he’d assimilated with it?



Inside it was dark, but a voice rang out from the darkness before he could even flip a light switch.



“It’s been all over the news, what you’ve done Willy-boy.” Angel’s voice was low and menacing, but Spike refused to flinch. “To tell you the truth, boy, I didn’t even think you’d come back. You’ve never been the type to have the guts to face the music.”



“I’m not scared of you, Peaches. I don’t need to do a runner to get away from your sodding ugly mug. I can happily look you right in your tremendous forehead and tell you that I’m bloody well leaving.”



Angel cackled, and rose from the couch, the slither of moonlight peeking in from the opening in the drapes illuminating one half of his face. For a moment he reminded Spike of some kind of fictional macabre monster from children’s fairytales.



Strike that.



He was a monster.



And he was very real.



“So Willy decides to grow some balls, does he?” Angel mocked condescendingly, rubbing his chin with his fingertips. “I wouldn’t be too arrogant, boy. I know what you did, and the police might not be looking specifically for you right now, but I can point them in the right direction of the man responsible for the murder of those two poor girls.”



Spike had to physically restrain himself from launching forward and pounding the obnoxious crap out of the man in front of him.



“I didn’t murder them.” He hissed through clenched teeth. “What happened…Darla was sick…an overdose and the car went out of control…”



He paused, trying to compose himself. The last thing that he wanted to do was to burst into sobs in front of Angelus. Angelus was like a viper and any sign of weakness would be a reason for him to strike.



“Why do you care anyway, Angelus?” Spike spit bitterly. “You didn’t love them. You didn’t even care a bloody toss about those two birds. And now…you’re all grief stricken.”



Angel laughed heartily, flopping back down to the sofa.



“You…you think I’m grief stricken? Little idiot! I care because you’ve taken something from me. Darla was my best whore. She was making me money than any of the others, and that’s saying a lot considering how much of it went up her nose and into her veins. And Dru…my Dru…she was my favorite little doll. I know she was your princess or whatever trash the two of you spouted to each other. But she was my best fuck toy. Do you know how long it takes to break someone as well as I broke Dru?”



Many times in Spike’s life he had felt an uncontrollable anger well up inside him. He couldn’t count the number of bruised knuckles he’d suffered from punching walls.



But never before had he felt any kind of fury that equaled the one burning in his body at this moment.



With an animalistic roar, he cocked his fist back and drove it into Angel’s supercilious face. He’d never physically attacked the taller man before, and both of them were shocked.



However, Angelus was not one to let someone get away with that. He returned the punch and it turned into a mammoth tussle. They crashed through furniture, heedless of the damage they were doing to the apartment or themselves.



Somehow Spike managed to get the upper hand and straddled his opponent, vigorously driving his tight fist into Angel’s face until all that was left was a bloody mess.



Panting hard he climbed off the other man. He knew that if he had continued any longer he would have killed Angel. He hated the man, but he already had enough blood on his hands, and he wasn’t sure that he could cope with adding any more.



He never knew that one day he would wish he’d ended it right there and then.



Angel spit out a chunk of blood, coughing violently.



“I could have you sent to prison, you little fuck!” Angel yelled angrily. “You think you can do that to me? You’re a murderer, Willy. You should be punished for what you’ve done.”



“You’re the real scumbag here, you bloody ponce.”



Breathing hard, Angelus’ face contorted into a sinister travesty of a smile.



“You know, I don’t think I’m going to call the police on you right now, boy. That would be too easy. I’m going to wait, and dish out a little punishment of my own. You took something of mine, and that means you owe me a blood debt, William. But you won’t know when it’s coming. And you’re going to have to spend the rest of your pathetic existence looking over your shoulder for just when the ax is going to fall.”



To his credit, Spike held his gaze firm, before finally letting it drop away, lifting his chin and turning and leaving the apartment.



He didn’t know where he was going or what was to come.



But one thing was for sure.



He was done with the life he’d been living.



He could change things.



And although it would never bring back Darla and Drusilla maybe he could start to make amends for all the damage he’d done.



Chapter End Notes:
I hope that clarified a few questions about the history between Spike and Angel.

There are still lots of unanswered questions, I realize, but keep reading and the answers will come.

Hope everyone enjoyed, and please review this.



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