You never knew the real me.

Those Shoes

“These shoes so don’t go with this dress!”

Robin was beside herself with frustration. It mattered none that her blood-red dress and designer heels were stolen off her last meal – a streetwalker, no less – she hated how they looked on her.

The dress fit fine, hugged every curve on her undead body and showed just enough cleavage to lure in her next tasty treat. But the shoes? Oh, no … they were all kinds of wrong. So wrong Robin considered just ditching them entirely.

If not for almost every bar’s “No shirt, no shoes, no service” policy.

Robin was a vampire; what the hell did she need shoes for?

Spike could still feel the African blend coffee coursing through his veins, mixing with his blood. It was a strange sensation, a physically dead body hopped up on concentrated caffeine. For a moment, the Champion remembered why he wasn’t one to ingest caffeine, but it was for a good cause.

After all, it wasn’t every night someone in need of helping just fell into one’s lap, so on the rare occasion it happened, the hero types were supposed to do their part and lend a helping hand.

Spike wasn’t sure if Chloe was helpless, but she needed – and more importantly, wanted -- help, and who else but Spike to provide it?

Certainly not Buffy or Angel. Which was the crux of the whole matter, wasn’t it?

Robin smiled as a prime cut walked out of the nearby bar. Los Angeles bars were so trendy and predictable; depending on what the sumptuous brunette wanted, she could decide where to go. If she was in the mood for rich and preppy, it was a simple trip to Beverly Hills for whatever joint Paris and friends went to. Young and wannabe? Well, that was pretty much every bar from Hollywood to Santa Monica.

And if she decided Hollywood was her style of the night, maybe she’d get lucky and pluck out some hot young thing. Back in the day it would’ve been someone like Lindsay Lohan or Hilary Duff; these days, she was thinking more along the lines of a Casey Affleck.

On this particular night, Robin was in the mood for someone young and somewhat hip. Her destination: Four-Alarm in Santa Monica. Trendy, but not too stuffy … just the kind of place young co-eds love to meet up on a Saturday night. And one such – a tall and lean 20-something with blond highlights in his hair, walked by her, completely oblivious to the curves and legs that followed.

“You have the time?” she cooed as she pulled even with the young man, lightly touching his arm. She pouted slightly as his eyes went from where her hand rest to her pale face, widening once they saw the full red lips and striking blue eyes.

“Umm,” the man stammered, a shaky wrist checking a knock-off Timex. “Little after one.”

Spike checked his cell phone, sighing at the voicemail Corbett left him. It figured … when he left town on a “pilgrimage,” there was some choice fighting going down in southern Nevada. He figured he probably had time to swing by and lend a hand once the fireworks really got started, but then he’d have to abandon what he came to Los Angeles for, and right now his personal growth and well-being were more important than some bastard pet of the Corruptress.

Though the mere thought of Elfleda sent an unsettling chill down the vampire’s back; he hoped Faith and Corbett would be alright. Faith for obvious reasons, but Spike still had things to say to the Watcher.

Most notably, “I’m sorry.”

The wind changed direction, and Spike’s nostrils flared. The scent was coming from the east, away from the ocean. The moon hung high and full in the Santa Monica night sky, but the Champion ignored it as his senses registered what his nose was picking up.

A young man frightened.

Another sniff.

And for good reason.

Spike checked over his shoulder before slinking into the nearby alley, his form getting lost in the pitch-black shadows. Moonlight slowly filtered into the alley the farther he went, his boots finding puddles along the way. It was hard to tell where all the water came from – mostly since it hadn’t rained any in the three weeks Spike had been in town – but that wasn’t Spike’s concern.

The man cowering against the brick wall was. Eyes wide, his body shaking. A female form hovered over him, wearing a hip-hugging red dress and shoes that almost made the vampire snicker in amusement. He quietly produced a stake from his jacket, shaking his head as he took another step forward.

The bint was a vampire, no doubt there. He just wasn’t sure she was a smart one.

“You know those shoes don’t go with that dress,” he cracked, his cheeks sucked in.

Robin growled as her head whipped around to see who’d been rude enough to interrupt her post-midnight snack. Her feral eyes relented some once they settled on the male figure draped in black leather, her fangy snarl transforming into a sadistic, almost cheery grin.

“Well, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllll,” she drawled out. “William.”

Wonderful, Spike thought. Another fan.

“What brings you out to Los Angeles?” Robin drawled out, ignoring her would-be meal and approaching Spike. She ran a lithe finger over his chest as the young man with the highlighted hair smartly bolted off into the night, leaving the two vampires alone in the alley.

“You weren’t patrolling this alley, I hope,” she pouted. “Wouldn’t want to infringe on a legend’s property.”

Spike gave an exhausted sigh. The only thing more annoying than a member of the Spike Fan Club was a member whose membership card hadn’t been renewed since 1999. This bitch was obviously behind on her history of William the Bloody, and it was clear the only update she would need was a stake to the heart.

Because, frankly, Spike didn’t want to talk about it.

“Say,” the brunette continued. “Where are the others? You know, those three you hung around with? Drusilla and Darla … and what of poor Angelus? Has he recovered from that pesky little curse the gypsies gave him?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Spike countered. “Though I hear gypsy curses are kinda permanent.”

Without another word, the vampire struck Robin in the nose with his elbow, growling as the woman stumbled on her feet, one of the heels on her shoes snapping. Robin snarled, her feral eyes igniting once they laid on Spike.

“What the fuck?!” she bellowed, blood trickling from her nose.

The Champion shrugged his shoulders, twirling the stake nonchalantly in his hand. “Sorry, love,” he said. “Not a fan of the groupies.”

With a growl, Robin lunged at Spike, managing to tackle him as her shoes flew off her feet and onto the damp pavement. She drove the Champion into the ground, grabbing him by his coat and holding him with her legs. One hand scratched his cheek, causing him to grunt as blood spilled onto his face.

“Thought you were one of us,” she growled, grabbing Spike’s coat again, spitting in his face. “You know how long it took me to find a meal as good as that?”

Spike chuckled to himself, shaking his head and wiping the spit off his face. “About five seconds,” he mused. “You saw him walk out of the bloody club … walking Abercrombie & Fitch ad, tasty morsel, that.”

Robin stood, letting go of her hold on the vampire. Her eyes followed him as he rose, Robin’s needless breath methodical and steady. “What gives?” she asked. “Way I hear it, you’re the second most brutal vampire to ever live. Got your name ‘cuz you used to jam railroad spikes into peoples’ heads.”

“Yeah,” Spike nodded, shrugging his shoulders. “Key words: used to. Not my game anymore.”

To accentuate his point – without actually coming right out and saying it, because honestly, he was getting tired of that – the Champion lunged forth, grabbed a tuft of Robin’s hair and brought her face down on his knee. He heard her nose crack, tossing her surprisingly-light frame across the alley into a pile of trash and debris.

He could only imagine the terrible mess he’d made of her dress.

And to that point – what was with this whole “second most brutal” bit? Okay, so Angelus got all the mystical props as “worst ever,” big deal. So Angelus would’ve been high and mighty in ESPN spread its base to the supernatural. SportsCenter highlights of his latest torture-and-kill, even.

But Spike residing in Captain Forehead’s shadow? Again?! Oh, hell no.

“Things change,” Spike added, twirling the stake in his right hand as his left reached for Robin’s hair again, raising her to her feet. Snarling, the Champion’s face shifted to its demonic visage, ridges and bumps where none should ever be. He grinned, bearing fangs under the moonlight.

“Not everything. But some things.”

A quick flick of the wrist, and Robin felt the stake in her chest. She grunted at the pain, her eyes widening as her face shifted back to its human form. Beautiful blue eyes stared into Spike’s animal ones, her entire frame losing its strength as flesh faded into dust.

Spike pocketed his stake once the dust cleared, pausing to light another cigarette. Clacking his Zippo shut, the vampire took his first drag, his face returning to what passed for normal. His eyes danced around the alley, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Just trash and puddles, typical alley stuff.

But as he left, he did notice the shoes. Navy blue high heels, the left heel snapped in two from its shoe. Spike gave an audible smirk, flicking cigarette ashes to the ground as he went about his not-quite-merry way.

He was right: those shoes were terrible.

[NPC vampire Robin written by Jeff.]

Head and Heart

Wolfram & Hart was surprisingly quiet at one in the morning.

Spike figured a firm with the reputation this one had would be at its busiest at this hour. With so many clientele keeping hours of the night, one would think the evil, multidimensional law firm would cater its hours to serve those needs.

Come to think of it, Spike didn’t much care for a quiet Wolfram & Hart. He preferred the noisy one of late, the one bustling with activity. Sure, it was evil activity, very demonic and possibly apocalyptic in nature, but it was noise. And distracting.

Distracting at this point was something everyone could agree on.

“You grieve,” a hushed, deep voice spoke from behind. “You, of all creatures. The human I understand. He is weak. But the vampire?”

“It’s complicated, love,” Spike said, keeping his gaze on the Los Angeles night sky. It really was a pretty town; at least, the view from Angel’s office was.

Even nicer when Bossman himself wasn’t in.

“Why?” Illyria asked, her head cocking sideways. It looked as if the former Old One was still getting used to its new shell, figuring out how all the parts and pieces worked. Illyria walked with an awkward limp, limbs not quite hanging right. Her eyes were wide and her speech was stiff.

If Spike didn’t know any better, he’d swear the demigod had been brought down to Earth. Just too bad it had to land in that body.

“The soul, for one,” Spike said, still doing his best to avoid Illyria’s gaze. “Side effect of having one … actual bleeding emotions.”

Illyria nodded once, seemingly all she could muster in her new frame. “You have a soul. Peculiar.”

“That’s one word for it,” Spike chuckled despite his grief. Fred died nearly two weeks ago, and everyone close to her was still on-edge about it. Angel hardly talked to anyone – Spike didn’t think he could get any broodier. Gunn was on a massive guilt trip, Lorne became even more fond of the Seabreeze and Wesley looked as if he was on the verge of snapping.

But for Spike, it was different. The Champion didn’t get the best of receptions when he poofed his way into Wolfram & Hart; the obvious static with Angel, the humans looking like they wanted to grab their stakes and Harmony … ugh, Harmony.

Why couldn’t Illyria have infested her?

But Fred took to him almost instantly. Claimed to see what the others didn’t; Spike’s potential as a hero, that he was worth helping. She tried her best to re-corporealize him and even though she failed, Spike never forgot how hard she tried.

In a way, having Fred fight for him like that gave Buffy’s efforts more validity. Almost like … it was one thing for one person to try and save Spike, but if two people tried? Well, then there must be something there.

“Fred was … she was a friend,” Spike said, finally moving his head to look at Illyria. He saw no holier-than-thou demeanor, he saw nothing in the Old One’s eyes to suggest she was better than the insignificant maggots she was forced to share land with.

He saw uncertainty. Probably the same uncertainty that led Illyria to ask Wesley to show her the ways of the world. Probably the same uncertainty that led to Wesley saying yes.

“A friend,” Illyria repeated, mulling that over in her all-too-human brain. “An ally? A fellow warrior?”

Spike nodded once, sucking in his cheeks. “Something like that,” he offered, sitting in the chair across from Angel’s admittedly-expansive desk. “She wasn’t much for the fighting, that Fred. Well, not fisticuffs. She used her brain, figured things out while me and Angel did all the heavy stuff.”

“That is why she was important to you,” Illyria surmised. “This … shell aided you in your quests.”

Spike cringed and growled under his throat. He hated how Illyria would refer to Fred as a “shell,” nullifying her humanity and making her out to be nothing more than a pawn in her endgame. For a moment the Champion considered attacking, but taking on an Old One – even one with diminished powers – wasn’t a good idea.

Spike would be dust and the office would be trashed.

“She believed in me,” Spike said with surprising candor, lighting a cigarette and taking a long first drag. “Made me feel important.”

The vampire was never really one to talk about such things. Mattering, feeling important. Even when he was in love – first with Drusilla, then with Buffy – Spike never dealt with those thoughts. Granted, he didn’t have a soul for much of that time, but even when he did, the Champion never found himself yearning to matter to someone.

That sort of thing was never what kept Spike going.

But with Angel mocking his hand in saving the world in Sunnydale, and with the others in his little Fang Gang being skeptical at best, Fred’s attitude that he was worth something was refreshing, and Spike was glad to know someone other than Buffy thought enough of him to feel that way.

It just proves what I’ve been saying all along, she told him after Matthais Pavayne nearly dragged Spike to hell. That you’re worth saving.

Fred didn’t make him feel like a sidekick.

“Emotion,” Illyria said in response. “Frailty. Humanity. Weakness. A stench on the reality of existence”

“Right, true,” Spike said through another drag. “Only not so, pet. Emotion is what makes humans as bleeding strong as they are. Feel like they have something to fight for.”

Illyria nodded, her awkward gaze turning to the skyline. “So humans are cunning and emotional,” she said, taking a wavering step toward the necro-tempered window. “They use their minds and their hearts where my kind used its force and its brute strength.”

Spike nodded, another drag smoked. “Age-old question, Blue Thunder,” he added. “Cavemen or astronauts, who would bloody win?”

Illyria’s gaze turned again to meet Spike’s. The vampire had to force himself not to look away, still taken aback by how much of Fred he could still see in the Old One’s face. The hair was blue and the eyes were demonic and the voice was … otherworldly, but that was still, in many ways, Fred.

Her small frame, her long locks … what would be a bright smile if Illyria even knew what that was. That was Fred standing before her, only … she wasn’t anymore. Something rooted its way in there, dug her out and set up shop, ending a life all too soon and ruining a promising relationship just as it finally got off the ground.

No wonder Wesley was on the brink of insanity.

Illyria might have negated Fred, but the Old One would never negate what Fred was to everyone, what she meant. Nothing Illyria could do would make Angel or Gunn or Lorne or Spike forget who Fred was, what she meant to them. Let Illyria harbor delusions or resurrecting the Old Ones and returning the Earth to their employ – Winifred Burkle’s spirit would live on.

Spike, the Champion, was going to make certain of that.

“You no longer grieve,” Illyria spoke, her gaze discerning.

“No,” Spike said, standing and putting the cigarette out in a nearby ashtray. “I still grieve, pet. Probably always will. Grief never goes away. It just … changes.”

If Illyria’s brows could furrow, they probably would at this point. “Changes.”

“Don’t expect you to understand, being an Old One,” Spike continued, walking past the demon and heading out of the office. He could hear the footsteps behind him, knowing without looking Illyria was following. “But when someone we love dies or leaves, we’re sad. Sodding miserable. Then, over time, we remember the person and we’ll smile. We’ll remember who they were and what they meant and we go about our lives with that in our heads.

“And our hearts.”

“Head,” Illyria repeated, looking down at her chest. “And heart. The shell – Winifred – she is in your head. And heart.”

Spike nodded. “Yeah, and I don’t like you calling her a shell.”

For a moment, Illyria’s eyes flared, and Spike wondered if maybe he’d said the wrong thing and was about to be on the receiving end of a massive ass-whooping. Yeah, that’d be a fun one to explain to Angel in the morning. Sorry, boss … I was talking to Illyria about Fred and I had the bollocks to tell her what to do. So now I’m wearing my trenchcoat in my ass.

But the anger faded, leaving the Old One standing for several moments in silence, mulling over what Spike said. Eyes darted to and fro, Illyria examining her own frame as if she’d never seen if before. “Fred,” she said to herself.

Her eyes then met Spike’s again before she turned and rushed off to the other side of the building.

The vampire sighed, lighting another smoke and watching Illyria walk off, probably to Wesley’s office. Knowing the bloke, he was still there. He probably didn’t even bother going home anymore.

Why bother? What was there to go home to?

Wreckage

So this was Los Angeles.

Again.

Pfft, whatever. Spike wasn’t impressed the first time he found himself in this dump of a city, and he still wasn’t impressed now. In fact, he was so bored, so dreadfully bored, that the vampire started to think maybe he was better off turning around and heading back to Searchlight.

But no … there was a reason Spike went on this little venture of his. He wasn’t quite sure what the draw was at first, but now, he thought he had an idea.

One of the side effects of standing somewhere that was once a pillar of so many memories. Hindsight had this annoying way of making things a lot clearer.

Seven years ago, Spike helped bring down the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart. Seven years ago, the two vampires with souls banded together with a pair of humans, an empath demon and a resurrected Old One to bring down one of the strongest weapons evil had in its arsenal.

Two dead humans and an MIA empath demon later, the instrument of evil had been brought down. Angel, Illyria … unaccounted for. Spike, for some reason, still alive. A lot of demons slain and a long-standing part of the Los Angeles landscape destroyed.

One would’ve expected Wolfram & Hart to have cleaned up the mess by now.

Oh, sure … a new L.A. branch had been built and was now fully operational – just somewhere else in the vast city. The original site, the ground that was once de-consecrated with the blood of serial killer Matthais Pavayne, it was as big a pile of junk and rubble as it was the night the battle with the Black Thorn went down.

Why? Spike couldn’t for the life of him figure it out. Wolfram & Hart didn’t strike him as overly sentimental, so the Senior Partners couldn’t be keeping the rubble intact to constantly remind themselves of what used to be. The vampire couldn’t help but wonder what little tale the firm told the press when it came calling, asking why such a large building with such a hold on the community suddenly just … tumbled.

But more than anything, Spike remembered saving the world. Well … helping save the world. For the second time in a year’s span, Spike played second-fiddle to someone’s thwarting of the Apocalypse.

First Buffy, then Angel.

So if nothing else, the remains of the original Wolfram & Hart Los Angeles served as a reminder for Spike … a reminder of why he came out on this little journey in the first place. The vampire hadn’t fared so well on his own in the years since he found himself without the blonde Slayer or his ensouled undead counterpart. Sure, Spike had him a nice little crypt in Nevada, a fuck buddy who just so happened to be another one of the super-powered good guys and a soul that left him much time to make with the heroics and wax poetic about his deeds as a nefarious beast.

But in the years since Spike found himself in Nevada, he’d hooked up with Drusilla, killed again, fucked around with a Wolfram & Hart lawyer, killed again, found himself as a frightened six-year-old stuck over 200 years past his time, and generally had a feeling of listlessness.

Spike wasn’t sure who he was. He knew he was a vampire, and he knew he had a soul, but beyond that, the Champion was uncertain.

Was he really the hero Buffy, and Fred, thought he was capable of being? Or was he a monster just hiding beneath the façade of a conscience? Or was he nothing more than an annoyance, so insignificant that Angel thought nothing of him?

“Bloody hell,” Spike muttered to himself as he lit a cigarette, taking the first drag as he found himself unable to tear his eyes from the wreckage of what was once Wolfram & Hart.

When he was evil, Spike had to answer to Angelus. Even when he broke free of Angelus, Spike still had Drusilla to lean on and look up to – sire’s pet and all.

Then came Sunnydale … and Buffy.

Then Los Angeles … and Angel.

Then … nothing. Just … wreckage.

“Hey,” a male voice called out from behind, causing Spike to drop his cigarette as he whipped around to see who – or what – was talking to him.

The vampire’s brow furrowed when he saw a tall black man standing in a nice gray suit, holding a leather briefcase and smoking a cigarette of his own. Spike’s eyes narrowed, gaze focused on the briefcase until he saw the inscription.

“Ah,” he said with a sigh, sucking in his cheeks. “Wolfram & Hart. Joy.”

“I … I know you,” the man said, taking a cautious step forward. “Well, I don’t know you, but … I know who you are. I … I recognize you.”

“Fantastic,” Spike replied with a sharp sarcasm, rolling his eyes. “So … let me guess. You caught sight of the Big, Bad Spike, now you’re off running to your Senior Partners to give them the blood good news. ‘What’d you find in the well, Lassie? Oh, what’s that? Timmy’s back from the well, looking to finish the job he started seven years ago?’

“Please …”

“Actually … no,” the young attorney said with a forced gulp, taking a step backward. “I … I’m not gonna report you at all.”

Spike scoffed, lit another cigarette. “Right,” he said in a dry tone, “and I’m the bloody Prince of Wales.”

“No, seriously,” the man pleaded. “You’re not the one the Senior Partners wanted. It was Angel … ya know, the one they gave the keys to the kingdom. Trusted him with one of their most valuable assets and he turns it into … well … that.”

Spike followed the man’s finger to the rubble, again thinking back to the events that led up to the branch’s destruction. The vampire gave a small grin, glad he was able to make the most of his situation and, in some way, exact some vengeance on the place for taking Fred away.

“I just … well,” the lawyer continued, “I saw you standing here and you … you looked familiar. I thought for a second you might’ve been the sidekick and …”

“Hold on,” Spike growled, again dropping his cigarette and grabbing the lawyer by his suit. “Sidekick?! Who the bloody hell do you think you are calling me a …”

The vampire paused, took a deep breath. Sniff. Sniff sniff. Snarl. Spike growled, his face changing into its demonic visage.

“Vampire … should’ve bleeding known.”

The lawyer shrugged, his own face contorting, eyes going feral. “You got me,” the creature said, extending a hand. “Lydecker’s the name. I’m looking for some new clients if you’re interested.”

Spike stared at the hand Lydecker offered, growling as he grabbed the wrist and pushed it to the side, breaking the bone and leaving the hand at a 45-degree angle from the arm. Lydecker yelped in pain, falling to his knees and grabbing his arm.

“Don’t need a lawyer,” Spike said, grabbing a hunk of wood from the wreckage. “And, even if I did, I’d fry in a Hellmouth again before signing on with you chumps.”

“Geez,” Lydecker said between labored breaths. “All because I called you a sidekick …?”

Spike paused for a moment, giving the question some thought. Which was it … beating on a vampire for being a vampire – and being a Wolfram & Hart employee – or because he had the audacity to call Spike what he had been?

He was a sidekick – not TV show-leading material. Yeah, Spike was there when the Hellmouth went down, but Buffy, Willow and the Slayerettes did all the work. And sure, he saw the fall of Wolfram & Hart L.A., but Angel and his Fang Gang again pulled around most of the weight.

Spike just saved a baby and made with fisticuffs.

Still, being called a sidekick didn’t help with the identity crisis. “How d’you know who I am?” he asked Lydecker. “The firm got some big sodding file on me?”

“Well,” Lydecker coughed, “there is that. But … I was with the firm back then … you know, when it was – well, here. I saw you walking around a lot, talking to Angel and his people.”

“So,” Spike replied, “you got all nostalgic and decided to say hi. Touching.”

Shoving the wood into Lydecker’s chest, Spike took pleasure in the vampire’s scream as he faded into dust. Shame about the suit – it looked really nice. But that was one less vampire in the world, and one less employee infesting Wolfram & Hart’s new digs … wherever they were.

Part of Spike wanted to find the new branch, scope it out. But he didn’t plan to be in Los Angeles for too much longer, so if they wanted to bust his chops over the dead employee … they’d have to come to him.

Sighing, the vampire dropped the plank of wood, lighting yet another cigarette. Taking the first drag, the Champion stared at the wreckage, shaking his head and smirking.

“Starting already,” he mumbled before turning and walking off. “Bloody hell …”

By Sunrise, No Doubt

For whatever reason, Spike couldn’t leave Nevada soon enough.

Part of that could’ve been issues stemming from Corbett’s unwanted visit a few months back and Spike’s recent stint as a six-year-old boy. Part of it could’ve been Mallory’s lecture the night before, about not being a jerk and how part of being a Champion meant apologizing when one was wrong.

On some level, Spike knew that, but he wasn’t quite ready to full acknowledge that. Hopefully this trip would address that flaw.

Though the map said most of the trip to Los Angeles would take place in California, it seemed to take forever for Spike to reach the state line. Miles upon miles of endless desert passed, oblivious to the anxiousness that filled the vampire behind the wheel of a dilapidated 1974 Chevrolet Camaro.

How the car still ran after all these years was beyond Spike; all that mattered was whether or not it would last him to L.A. and back. He didn’t really know why he was going to L.A. or how long he’d be there, but the trip seemed like the thing to do. Something in his undead gut told Spike this trip was necessary, something to eventually help him sort out his lot in unlife.

It made perfect sense, in a way. Spike had been a nomad of sorts since the battle with the Black Thorn several years back. Without either Buffy or Angel to tag along with, Spike was finally forced to be his own man, an experiment that, up to this point, had been a failure.

No sooner did Spike reach Nevada, he hooked back up with Drusilla and killed a few people. Once he was done with that, Spike ran into Corbett, someone hell-bent and convinced he killed Teresa – despite repeated utterances of the otherwise truth.

Only difference between Corbett and Dana? Corbett hadn’t lopped off any extremities … yet.

So given his recent bout of William, This Was Your Life, Spike figured a little getaway was in order. He drove with the driver’s side window down, partially because the AC in the Camaro was busted and partially so his cigarette smoke could filter out into the night.

Spike may have been a vampire and a slob, but he didn’t want his car smelling of Marlboros.

With the radio sort of on the fritz – and nothing on short of loud-as-you-can-scream sports talk radio and an inexplicable Barry Manilow marathon – Spike spent much of the drive in thought. Specifically, what Lorne told him several months back about an adventure and a group of allies that would come to Spike’s aid.

No adventure and no allies yet, aside from a promiscuous Slayer who wasn’t talking to anyone, so the Champion wondered if the Green Piano Man was off his rocker when he said what he said. Then again, Lorne and Drusilla were usually pretty in-tune with things, so if they both said Spike was in for an adventure, then dammit, he was in for an adventure.

But when? No clue … Spike was glad he wasn’t a Slayer. As much as he hated cryptic bullshit, those Watchers would’ve really gotten on his nerves.

Finally, Spike saw it – the California state line. He smiled as he crossed it, tossing a smoked cigarette butt out the window. The smile soon faded, though, as Spike’s ears caught wind of a mysterious noise in the car – a buzzing sound, soft at first, but growing in volume and intensity with each passing second.

Spike first checked all the mirrors, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. The dark tint in the windows did make it hard to see, but even Spike’s enhanced night vision didn’t yield any initial results. But the buzzing grew louder still, more incessant as the sound began colliding with glass, as if something were trying to get out through one of the closed windows.

A bug.

A sodding, good-for-nothing bug, too stupid to realize the way it came in could also be the way it got out … Spike wondered for a moment how many bugs over the decades died in hot cars simply because they couldn’t decipher that the in door and the out door were the same bloody thing.

But when the buzzing flew by Spike’s line of vision, the thought train crashed like Amtrak. That wasn’t just a bug – it was one of those fucking wasps. Not a regular wasp, black and yellow and shit, but some super steroid wasp, like something you’d see on the Discovery Channel, killing off African tribe leaders and cutting a swath of death and carnage across the land.

Spike growled, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. He hated bees, just flat-out hated them. Never mind that he was all supernatural and virtually immortal and shit now … Spike just fucking hated bees.

It went back to when Spike was a child, age seven or so. He was a meager child, not much in the way of physical strength and with no adult role models short of his mother, he didn’t have much of a backbone either. He’d seen a bee for the first time two months earlier and though nothing happened, Mother freaked, took young William inside and wouldn’t let him return to the yard for three weeks.

Bees were the work of the devil, she would say. Creatures cleverly disguised as pollen-gatherers, appearing to help nature along while conspiring to infect humanity with Satan’s poison. Every time a bee stung you, Mother said, you grew closer and closer to the Eternally Damned One.

William discovered how big a lie that was when he felt a sudden pinching sensation on his left arm one morning as he ran through the garden. Mother warned of trampling her flowers, but she never said one word about the bees. So with a shriek, William looked on in horror as a bee jammed its stinger into his arm, wiggling to free itself as the boy’s arm began to throb.

Finally the bee dislodged itself, falling dead with the stinger still embedded in William’s arm. He wailed and cried as Mother flew out from the house, grabbing her son and taking him inside before calling on the local medic. She scolded William for running in the garden, but he barely heard her with his screams and cries of pain. His arm swelled to nearly twice its size before the physician got there to administer the treatment and remove the stinger.

William obviously survived the ordeal – only to years later be bitten by another creature and have his future forever altered – but that fear and loathing for all manner of bees never left the vampire.

The irony wasn’t lost on Spike as one eye kept to the road, the other glued to the wasp crawling along the passenger-side window … a Champion, saved the world by frying to nothingness in a falling Hellmouth and he still got skittish over a tiny fucking insect.

If Buffy could see this … she’d be real impressed.

No. Spike shook his head rapidly, ridding his mental recesses of that thought. He didn’t care much to think of Buffy anymore, not because the thought of her caused him to miss her and lament their parting and think of all those hearts and flowers and Hallmark crap. No … anymore whenever Buffy entered Spike’s brain, it made him think back to that faithful night in Sunnydale, the one where he did something incredibly stupid to her – only to follow that with a trip to Africa the vampire wished half the time he’d never taken.

He went after that spark, looking to make Buffy love him. But it didn’t work, and right now the only thing Spike got out of this spark was an impromptu road trip to a city he hated and a wasp in his car.

A wasp that suddenly decided to pay the folically-fried Champion a visit. Spike grunted and swerved the steering wheel momentarily as the insect buzzed into his forehead and flew to the windshield in the vampire’s line of sight. The sheer annoyance was nearly enough to make Spike change into his vampire face, but for the moment he kept his cool.

Nobody else was on the road and Spike’s preternatural senses made the dark of night almost irrelevant. So while the prospect of a car crash didn’t appear to endanger anybody, Spike really didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle. In reality, Spike couldn’t help but chuckle, finding humor in the fact that yet another thing went awry in his unlife.

Apparently, the Champion couldn’t even take a road trip without the Powers shitting on his coat.

The wasp began buzzing again, repeatedly banging its head into the windshield, desperate for a way out of the Camaro. Not once did it try one of the windows or even the rear windshield; instead, it stayed in Spike’s line of sight, the buzzing growing louder with each passing second.

If the wasp could talk, it would probably be saying something like, “Goddammit! Get me the fuck out of here!”

For a moment, Spike thought about reaching up and swatting the wasp away, but he really didn’t feel like dealing with the possibility of getting stung and potentially losing control of his car. So the vampire did nothing, keeping his gaze straight ahead as the desert whizzed by him.

Without warning, the wasp left the windshield and flew off to Spike’s left.

Then, silence.

Spike sighed in relief, convinced the bug had finally left his car. Not that the creature had the sense to go out the window, after all, it just got lucky and found the opening. The drive continued, now past the Nevada-California line.

Thumb began beating against steering wheel, head cocking back and forth in a rhythmic beat. “To think, I did all that,” he began singing under his breath, “and may I say, not in a shy way.

“Oh no, oh no not me, I did it my way …”

A sign flashed by. Over 150 miles to Los Angeles. He’d get there by sunrise, no doubt.

Just then, the vampire felt something land on his neck. Then the buzz. That bleeding buzz … the wasp was back, and this time, it camped out on the back of Spike’s neck. The Champion could feel the insect’s legs crawling along his flesh, the sensation giving him chills. He felt the displacement of air caused by the flapping wings, the buzzing echoing in his ears.

For a moment, Spike lost control of the car, cocking the wheel left and right repeatedly to regain control. He sucked in his cheeks and growled to himself, trying not to provoke the wasp while simultaneously wishing it would just fly away already. Even if it was just to the windshield, he didn’t want that damn thing on his neck anymore.

Minutes passed and the insect wouldn’t leave. Its feelers were gliding over Spike’s flesh, so annoying and grating to his heightened senses. He could feel his grip on the steering wheel tightening, his annoyance rising to the point where he was tempted to reach behind him, grab the bug and tear it apart limb by tiny limb.

In fact, Spike was starting to think that if he didn’t, he’d never make it to L.A. with the rest of his sanity intact.

So with a heavy sigh, Spike removed his left hand from the wheel, reaching behind his head and grabbing for the wasp. But the bug escaped just in time, buzzing to the backseat before turning course and flying right into Spike’s face. Startled, the vampire lost control of the Camaro, the car veering off the road and into the desert.

Dust and sand kicked into the night air as the Camaro careened forward – about 90 miles an hour now. Spike fought with the steering wheel, the wasp now landed and crawling on his face. The antennae brushed against the vampire’s forehead as it changed to that of the vampire, growing rigid and cold. Spike growled as he struggled to keep his car under control, the suspension rocking as the terrain became more bumpy.

Spike wanted to shoo the wasp away, but he didn’t want to take a hand off the steering wheel. If there was one thing good about driving through the desert, it was not having to worry about trees or the like if one happened to veer off the road. For that Spike was glad, but the wasp flying in his face made it hard to see, as the bumps often caused the Camaro’s headlights to stare into the sky.

Then, without Spike noticing, the front left bumper of the Camaro struck a small rock, the speed and force just enough to turn the car onto its side. The car flipped onto the passenger side, sliding before flipping onto the roof, Spike silently glad he was wearing his seat belt as he jostled around in the car seat. His head was inches from hitting the roof as glass from the broken passenger-side windows flew about the inside of the car, the occasional piece cutting Spike’s face.

Slowly, the Camaro’s speed dissipated, finally coming to rest about a mile or so off the highway. The car was on its roof, the motor still running. With a sigh, Spike watched as the wasp finally flew out the window and into the California night. Sucking in his cheeks again, Spike shut the engine off and removed his seat belt … only to grunt in pain when he fell and hit his head on the roof of the car.

Climbing out, Spike surveyed the Camaro, glad nothing caught fire or broke. The front bumper was messed up, and there might be radiator damage, but other than that, the car seemed fine.

The wasp flew by again as Spike lit a cigarette, his annoyed glance following the tiny creature as it hovered through the air. He kept his Zippo lit, taking the first drag of his smoke as he watched the wasp come back toward him. Then, just as the wasp came within reach, Spike shoved the Zippo in front of it, watching with a self-satisfied grin as the insect passed through the flame and immediately sank to the earth, on fire.

Spike got on one knee to watch the wasp scamper and writhe in pain before the flames finally consumed and killed it. Now just a charred nugget, the wasp crunched under Spike’s boot, his lighter closed and stuffed back in his pocket.

“Ponce,” Spike growled, glancing at the car.

If he could get it upright again, and if the radiator wasn’t fucked up, he might still make it to L.A. before sunrise. Otherwise?

Sleeping in the backseat. Spike couldn’t remember if that was illegal in California or not.

You Owe Me

Well, Faith was her normal self again. That was good.

But the fact that she was avoiding both her Watcher and Spike was a bit irksome. Understandable, if she remembered everything like the vampire did, but irksome nonetheless.

Also irksome was the uneasiness gnawing at Spike’s gut, the undeniable yet apparently unfounded need to get away. For some reason, the Champion found himself restless since his return to adulthood – or, to be more accurate, undeadness. He felt the urge to leave; not permanently, but for some reason he wanted to leave. Go somewhere, spread his wings a little.

Well, figuratively. Last he checked, Spike didn’t have any wings. But he did have vampire dust on his sleeves. Sighing, the vampire tried to brush it off his coat as he walked by one of seemingly hundreds of trailer parks in this tiny Nevada town.

Thank God for pressure-washers. Mallory had just refilled the reservoir with water and soap, trying to get the last of the rust-colored mess off of the side of the trailer. She'd been scrubbing for a couple of hours, and most of it was washed off by now. The sand was a weird mucky orange. Ugh.

Well, at least she wouldn't have to forfeit her cleaning deposit if she decided to move out. She doubted the landlord would appreciate her leaving old blood all over the side of one of the rental units.

The redhead dropped her rag into a bucket of sudsy water, picked up a cleaner one. Scrub, scrub, scrub. This could be a really good workout. Maybe later, she should think about trying to market it.

The scrubbing caught the vampire’s ears as he went by the trailer park, and despite his better judgement, Spike looked, only to see a familiar redhead scrubbing away at her trailer. Running a rag over the side of it, undoubtedly washing whatever manner of dirt and gunk that finds its way onto such things.

Lighting a cigarette with a smirk, Spike meandered over Mallory’s way, clearing his throat to announce his presence so his voice wouldn’t scare the holy fuck out of her. Place like this, scaring a girl at night wasn’t the best of ideas.

“I know it’s hot as balls during the day,” he chimed in, “but don’t you think it a bit daft to do that at night?”

"I don't want the neighbors to see," Mallory answered without looking around. She hoped she'd gotten enough of the mess cleaned off that Spike wouldn't be able to tell it was blood. She did not want to have to explain about why her trailer had looked like the inside of a slaugtherhouse earlier.

"They think I'm enough of a weirdo as it is, I'm sure. People falling in and out of the door at all hours, guys on the roof, me wandering home sometimes at around dawn. I don't want to deal with it right now."

At least the bruises were a lot less livid today, dark purple fading to a kind of lightish red. She no longer looked like somebody's battered wife.

“Mm-hmm,” Spike mused, eyeing the trailer, noticing the dried blood she was frantically scraping at. He shook his head, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Wouldn’t want the neighbors asking about blood, now would we?”

Whatever Mallory was doing these days, Spike wasn’t sure he wanted to know. If her seemingly humble abode was taking on a layer of vitae as paint on a regular basis, chances were she was in over her head … and if she was, then it was probably her own fault.

“Course, if some vampire catches a whiff of that in the breeze, the neighbors would be the least of your bleeding concerns … so to speak.”

"Well, I'll deal with that when it happens, won't I?" Maybe she should quit using the rags and use something else. Hell, maybe she could rent a sandblaster. That would be fun. The trailer could use a whole new coat of paint, anyway. It'd sure give her nosy-ass neighbors something new to talk about.

Mallory dropped the rag into the soapy water, and some of it splashed onto the sand. She picked up a bottle of soda and uncapped it to take a drink, looking at Spike a little sourly. "What're you talking to me for, anyway?" she asked, because she was cranky and embarrassed, but it was done now. Over. Victoria was herself again.

"Don't you have some old man you could be beating up? Maybe some middle-school kids you could bully out of their lunch money? Is that what you did while you were six years old?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Spike bit back, somewhat taken aback by the redhead’s attitude. Feisty little thing … emphasis on little. “Was I supposed to mock or threaten you instead?”

He might’ve stopped over to say hi, but he didn’t come by to talk to Mallory so she could snap at him like this. He took another drag of his smoke, threw the rest to the ground without bothering to snuff it out. Smoke filtered through his flaring nostrils, his gaze fixed on the woman before him.

“What are you after?” he wondered aloud. “I find you cleaning blood off your redneck house, and yet you’re tossing things in my face?

“What dirty little secret are you hiding, niblet?”

Fine, he wanted to be like that? "A funny thing happened to my girlfriend, Spike," Mallory said, gesturing at the trailer. "Maybe you're familiar with it. She started acting not so much like herself, got a lot more dangerous. Course, it wasn't some long-haired creep that did it to her because she got stupid, but it all shakes out the same, doesn't it?"

Ugh. He had such a nerve lecturing her, about anything. "Have you apologized to Corbett yet? Because I saw what you did to him. I'm curious, did you beat him up for the same reasons you bit Jill?" Her tone was merely inquiring now, and she was kind of horribly fascinated.

"Seriously, why? You could have broken his neck. Not to insult him when he isn't here, but he's old. Older than my Pop, probably."

Spike snarled a bit, his gaze squinting as he searched for the lest rude thing to say. His nostrils flared again and he couldn’t help but light another cigarette, clacking his Zippo shut and shoving it back in his pocket.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he growled in a low voice, in no mood to revisit his confrontation with Corbett. Because that would mean revisiting Sunnydale, and as antsy as Spike was to be elsewhere – especially right at this moment – Sunnydale wasn’t that place.

Giving the trailer another once-over, the vampire shook his head, taking a drag. “Strange girlfriend you have,” he muttered. “Might wanna consider a pulse next time.”

"What I understand is that Corbett looked like he got hit by a bus. I know what Victoria's excuse was, what's yours? I would think you had learned your lesson by now. Or is that a stupid idea to have, that you ought to be better than that?"

She was just looking at him now, feeling something ridiculously like disappointment. For all Spike's bluster about his soul and being a Champion, he seemed to slip up an awful lot. She wondered how much of it was someone else's fault than his own.

"I know Jill's a button puncher. I've taken my fists to her over it myself, and she hasn't learned how to stop yet. Maybe when somebody kills her over it, she'll figure out that she really can go too far. But Corbett? Some old man who I'm sure has had his nose buried in a book for most of his life? C'mon. At least give me some bullshit excuse."

Another long drag, a half-smoked cigarette tossed aside. So the girl wanted an excuse, did she? Well, now … wasn’t Spike just so happy to oblige?

“Fine,” he said, his face inches from Mallory’s. “You wanna know why I turned Watcher’s face into a sodding punching bag. Fair enough. Sod barged into my crypt, tossed my past with a certain Slayer in my face and threatened to stake me if I so much as touched Faith – ignoring the fact that Faith and I are … friends.”

The wind picked up just then, and Spike could smell the blood Mallory was trying to wash off the trailer. It wasn’t necessarily spilt blood, just … blood that had been ingested. So it was that Victoria … well, now.

“Don’t suppose they make Pepto for the undead?”

"I fixed the problem already," Mallory said evenly, her crankiness winding down a notch. "And 'friends', hmm?" she added, having not missed the pause. "Is it the kind of friends who take their clothes off together? You might want to watch that double standard about a pulse, Spike, you're likely to trip over it."

Common sense said that she should be more careful with the vampire, since his recent track record had proven that he was not exactly immune to bursts of temper and what amounted to childish tantrums, but she didn't necessarily believe that Spike was a loose cannon. He was just occasionally ... stupid. And obnoxious.

"I'm going to take a wild stab and assume that this ... thing ... he confronted you with is something you actually did, although I really don't want to know what it is because I don't want to know you that well. I have enough on my plate right now without worrying about your grocery list of sins. But what would a hero do in this situation, if they'd done something they shouldn't? What would a Champion do?"

The redhead poked Spike's shoulder lightly with one finger. He was a few inches taller than she was, and it had her looking up a bit to see his face. Waiting to see if he could say the word on his own. Wondering if he'd strangle on it if he tried.

Spike’s glare softened, his shoulders somewhat slumping as he took a step back. He sighed in a bit of resignation, fumbling through the pockets of his coat to fish out another cigarette and lighting it. The first drag wafted above his head as he struggled to meet Mallory’s gaze.

“I dunno,” he said in a hushed tone. “Ask Angel.”

Which was really the crux of everything, wasn’t it? Spike spent so much of his unlife living in Captain Forehead’s shadow that was always a bit showy to get attention. Blustering, arrogance … all to get everyone to stop paying mind to Angel. Even Buffy was partly because of his distaste for his grandsire.

"A Champion would apologize," Mallory said gently, taking pity on him because he really was such a baby. The irony of it was that his six-year-old self had probably been more mature than this blustering, big-mouthed creature who stood in front of her. "Sometimes even if they don't mean it. 'I'm sorry' goes a long way."

"The question is, what are you going to do? He's just some guy, right? I can almost guarantee that you won't die from it, especially since, y'know, you're already dead." She chuckled a little, then shrugged her shoulders.

"We all have to eat it sometimes, Spike. Even me. Hell, even Angel, I'm sure, wherever he is. When we're wrong, even if we hate it, we're better for admitting it. Yeah?"

Much to his surprise, if not dismay, Spike didn’t know what to say. On some level he knew Mallory was right, but he lacked the ability to verbalize as such. He even questioned his ability to apologize to Corbett. Sure, he’d apologized to the Watcher once before, but that was for something he didn’t do, so in a way it was easier.

But this? Apologizing for letting Corbett’s ill-conceived verbal assault get the better of him? The vampire wasn’t sure he could.

“That’s just it,” he started, shrugging his shoulders in semi-defeat. “I’m not sure I can. Angel was always good at the ‘I’m sorry, I bleeding screwed up’ thing. That was never me – which might explain partly why we hated each other.”

"Well, if you try and fail, you can always try again. I doubt he's going anywhere. He's got a Slayer to look after. I bet Faith would say the same thing I'm saying right now. Those white hat guys are always really annoying like that."

Mallory sat down on the last step leading up to the trailer, resting her forearms on her knees. "Baby steps. Trying is a start, something to build off of. I'm not saying you have to be friends with him and you don't have to go out afterwards and have beers together. Hate his guts until you turn to dust for all I care. But you did 'bleeding screw up' and you ought to be better than that."

She reached out and poked the vampire's shoulder again, having to stretch to make contact. "I think you are better than that, actually. I think you're a bullshit artist, too, but that's neither here nor there. Baby steps. You want to be a real champion? Maybe this is where you start."

“I apologized to the sod before,” Spike admitted. “For his Potential. Didn’t even kill her, but I apologized for it. That felt easy, y’know?”

Another cigarette lit. Damn, Spike needed to get out of here.

“But this … sod all. It’s bad enough I punched his nose in, but for him to see me when I was … bleeding kiddy-sized? To know what a proper, prissy little ponce I was?

“Not to mention, I feel justified in what I did, given the things he said. I can take a lot of abuse, but when you start throwing the ‘B’ word around, Spike gets a might testy.”

She looked at him sideways at that. "Are you not willing to take responsibility, Spike? Because what I'm hearing is that he confronted you with something you actually did, and you decided the absolute best way to show how much you've changed was to beat the snot out of him. You don't really want me to ask you what you did, do you?"

It really was like talking to a kid, like trying to convince her little brother to eat his vegetables when they were younger. "Think of it this way; if you apologize, that makes you better than him. Not that you don't already think you are in some ways, but this means you'll have proof. That would be worth it, right?"

She waited, looking at him, watching him smoke. "Don't be a jerk, okay? For five minutes. For me, because you owe me. I did not go to Oliver's skeevy ass to get the spell lifted so you could be a jerk. Is that fair? Is it reasonable? Even a little?"

Again, Spike’s stance softened, his eyes averting to the ground below. He sighed, blowing out the last of his drag before snuffing out the cigarette butt with his boot. His hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat.

“But he is,” Spike said in almost a whisper. “Bleeding sod’s better than me. He knows it, and I bloody well know it.”

No matter what Spike did, no matter where he went or who he saved, he’d always be some monster. A good monster, one who uses his supernatural abilities to help people and occasionally stop Armaggedon, but still a monster. It was a hard pill to swallow sometimes, so much so he often tried to ignore it.

"Well, then you have to be as good as him, I guess." Mallory's voice was quiet, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a sympathetic smile. "Or at least you have to try. For me, because you owe me. And because I think you can."

She almost touched his shoulder, refrained at the last second. "You're gonna have to do something. Before you pick on somebody who can actually fight back and end up much less ... solid. Okay?"

Mallory was right. Something needed to be done. Maybe this was why Spike felt the sudden urge to leave Nevada for a little while? He was never one for spiritual quests – ironic, given his little venture to Africa several years back – and he really wasn’t much for self-reflection or consciously enacting self-growth.

But now that he was pretty much on his own? Sure, there was Faith and perhaps the redhead before him, but Spike found himself without the self-assured Champion to string him along.

No Buffy and Spike. No Angel and Spike. Just … Spike.

“Right,” Spike said with a nod, trying his best to smile at Mallory, unsure if it actually worked. “I owe him – and you, what with keeping emo magick boy away and all – that much.”

"Nobody said growing up was fun. But you're over a hundred years old. It's time you took the training wheels off. I can't be everywhere are once.”

Ugh, maybe she should let the rest of the cleaning go hang until tomorrow night. It was getting late and she had to make sure Tuffy got one last walk in before she went to bed. The redhead got up off of the step, shook her head at the remainder of the mess.

Sandblaster. Definitely.

"I'm gonna head in. Think about what I said. And don't be a jerk. Good night, Spike."

Spike thought of saying good night in return, but found himself unable to do so as Mallory’s words flew through his brain. He stood in place for minutes after she disappeared into her trailer, still mulling over her advice. The pointed “Don’t be a jerk” notwithstanding, she was right in everything she said.

Regardless of whether he felt Corbett was wrong to throw Buffy in his face, Spike was wrong to attack and pummel him the way he did. And considering how Corbett put up with and cared for Spike when he was a child, he owed the Watcher at the very least an apology.

But not before getting out of this hellhole. Spike would be back, he knew that, but for now … he just wanted to be gone.

On the One Hand

On the one hand, Spike was frustrated. But on the other, he completely understood.

The vampire hadn’t heard anything from Faith since they both returned to their adult – and in Spike’s case, undead – selves, and it was starting to bug him. Not in a “Faith might be in danger” sense; Spike figured Faith had been around long enough to take care of herself and figured she would’ve come to him if things were getting way over her head. But more in a … “What the hell is Faith up to?” sort of way.

Could it be the Slayer was wigged by her little episode as a six-year-old? If Spike remembered everything that happened while he re-visited the Billy days, chances were so did Faith. Which probably brought up memories of not-so-dear mum … not to mention something else the vampire probably hadn’t considered.

Still, Spike figured checking in with Corbett was a good idea. Despite their … history … they did share a common interest in the Slayer’s well being.

Corbett had been sitting on the couch for so long he wondered if maybe he’d molded to it. Like this one lady did on that old show Nip/Tuck; she got so fat she couldn’t get out of the sofa and her skin eventually grafted itself onto the couch.

No, that was preposterous. That shit wasn’t real; certainly not as real as the Defiler. Yessirree, nothing as real as the biggest fucking Tin Man ever seen … supposedly.

But even with knowing the Defiler was metal, even with having a piece of it tucked away in a bag on the coffee table, Corbett was getting nowhere. He’d spent weeks researching Elfleda, thinking if he figured out more about who raised it, he could find a way to destroy it. But with next to nothing on the Corruptress and the recent discovery of exactly what the Defiler was (or at least what it was made out of), the Watcher figured a new direction was in order.

Problem was, the change in course led to the same dead end. It was like driving through downtown Atlanta.

Or worse, Austin.

The knock at the door jolted Corbett from his tome-induced trance, forcing the pen lodged in his teeth out of his mouth and to the floor as he rose to grab the door. A little confused as to who would be visiting him at this hour of the night, the realization came with an exasperated sigh when the Watcher opened the door, only to see peroxide blond and black leather standing in the hallway.

“Spike,” he said with a hint of a sullen tone, stepping aside.

“Give it a rest, old man,” Spike said with a sneer as he walked through the threshold, actually surprised Corbett hadn’t mystically removed his invite.

Truth was, Spike wasn’t that fond of Corbett. But he respected the Watcher for the effect he had on Faith; far as Spike knew, Faith didn’t get along well with the tea-and-crumpets party, so for her to click with Corbett the way she did … there had to be something about him.

But the fact was, Corbett still blamed Spike for killing Teresa. Never mind Spike told the Watcher he in fact did not kill the Potential in Toronto, but The First did after unsuccessfully persuading Spike to do so … the sod still wouldn’t hear it. Spike had no qualms about paying for the misdeeds of his past, but having to pay for something he never actually did … that annoyed the vampire.

Because last time that happened, he lost his bloody hands.

“I’m not here to bust your bleeding balls,” he added. “I’m here out of concern for your Slayer.”

Corbett’s expression softened as he shut the door, relieved to hear he wasn’t the only one concerned about Faith. He didn’t like the vampire spending time with her, but she trusted him and they saved the world together once, so he begrudgingly let it slide … and did everything he could not to pay mind to Grace’s suggestion that they were sharing a bed.

Even if he did find them naked in the same room when they shrunk to children.

“You too,” the Watcher affirmed, folding his arms and standing in front of the door. Despite the calm he felt in knowing why Spike was here, his mere presence still made him nervous. Even if he didn’t kill Teresa – and Corbett wasn’t so sure he believed that – this was still William the Bloody, and as great as closing a Hellmouth was, it didn’t make up for the decades of death and torture and the two dead Slayers.

“She’s not here,” Corbett added with an exhausted sigh. “Hasn’t been for some time. I’ve called a few times, had no response. I figure she’ll contact me when she’s ready. I’d imagine she’s quite embarrassed.”

Spike nodded, pulling a cigarette out his pack and sliding it between his lips. He didn’t light it, he just felt the need to have one there. For some strange reason, it calmed him. He’d felt a bit more antsy than usual in recent days, and not all of it was because Faith went AWOL.

“But you think she’s alright,” Spike said with arched brow.

“I’d know,” the Watcher said in a calm, but stern, voice. “I don’t have that dread in my belly … and I happen to know what it feels like when my Slayer’s cut down.”

Silence filled the apartment for a tense moment, Spike’s brow arched higher as he contemplated what to do. That was a low blow, uncalled for … under other circumstances, the vampire might’ve bit back, thrown some witty retort the Watcher’s way and smugly grinned. But this was neither the time nor the place, so he decided Corbett got one free shot.

And only one.

Still unsure of how to respond, Spike glanced at his surroundings, not the least bit surprised by what he saw. Books piled on top of books, dusty tomes open to random pages with sticky notes pasted on them. Corbett was in serious research mode, that much was certain, but it wasn’t until Spike’s eyes fell upon the tiny paper bag on the coffee table that his interest really piqued.

“Big Bad coming, I wager?” he offered, pointing at the bag.

“Big Bad already here,” the Watcher responded, taking his place back on the couch ,grabbing the book he’d been reading to show Spike. “Called the Defiler, was raised by Elfleda.”

Spike shuddered and rolled his eyes. He had but one encounter with the Final Fantasy reject, and it was one too many for him. Elfleda, the Corruptress … it didn’t matter to Spike what she was called, she was one freaky little bitch.

“Sounds like hugs and puppies,” the vampire deadpanned. “I dealt with Elfleda once; don’t recommend it.”

Corbett nodded, lighting a cigarette and puffing mindlessly at it. “She toyed with Faith once,” the Watcher admitted. “Several months ago. Scared the both of us. This is not the sort of creature I look forward to meeting.”

Spike folded his arms over his chest. “And the Defiler?”

Corbett shrugged, closing the book and referring to notes he made to himself after Connor’s last visit. “Being made of metal, best I can wager,” he offered with another shrug, as if to suggest he was pretty much shooting in the dark. Corbett felt at odds with himself; his Slayer AWOL and his research abilities not at their finest, he felt as if he was slipping.

Was it age? Was it stress? He didn’t know, but the longer it lasted, the more frustrated and disheveled Corbett became.

Spike furrowed his brow. “What, Elfleda head down to the local scrap heap and build herself a monster?” he quipped. “If that’s the case, I say forget the Slayers and just call in Optimus Prime.”

Noticing Corbett’s shocked and bemused smirk, Spike sighed, finally deciding to light his cigarette. “Forced weekend retreat to Africa with Andrew,” he growled. “I’d appreciate it if we never spoke of it again.”

“Problem is,” Corbett sighed, forgetting Spike’s unexpected foray into popular culture, “most anyone who touches the Defiler – or any piece of it – falls ill. Violently so. Connor said an ally of Rhiannon’s wound up in the intensive care unit of the hospital after encountering the beast.”

Spike nodded with furrowed brow, suddenly deciding that picking up the brown paper bag wasn’t such a good idea. If a Slayer’s ally nearly died from simply touching this thing, that was the epitome of bad news.

“Right,” the Champion mused, partly to himself. “Then how the bloody hell do you kill it?”

“Very good question,” Corbett said with a helpless shrug. “I need to talk to Rhiannon, see if she can add anything since my books are proving pretty much useless.”

Corbett looked like hell. The bags under his eyes indicated he’d slept maybe five minutes over the past week. Spike couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was researching the Defiler and how much was him worrying about his Slayer. Normally, Spike would suggest Corbett go looking for Faith, but given how independent she was, he figured that would be a bad idea.

Faith would return when she was good and ready.

But Corbett … he looked beat down, a full beard creeping on his wrinkled face. His voice was raspier than usual and empty cigarette packs were almost as plentiful on the floor as the dusty tomes with which he was doing research. As antsy as Spike felt and as much as he suddenly felt like he needed some time away from Nevada, Corbett looked like he needed a vacation.

About a couple months’ worth.

“You look like hell,” Spike offered.

Corbett gave Spike an annoyed glare. “Thank you,” he cracked.

The vampire sighed, sitting next to Corbett and lowering his voice. “Look,” he began, “I know we’re not the best of friends. Never bloody will be. You still think I killed your pup and I think you need to let that go.

“But for your sake – and Faith’s – you need a break. Take some time, do something that doesn’t involve books and prophecies and the occasional ‘Oh, good Lord … the world’s doomed.’”

Corbett blinked, surprised to have the vampire offering him advice.
But … the Defiler.”

“No offense, mate, but it looks like Connor and Rhiannon have more of a bead on it that you.”

Corbett wanted to be mad at Spike – for his nosiness and his insults. But the truth was, the Champion wasn’t wrong. Corbett did need a break, and seeing as how he was literally getting nowhere in finding out/stopping Elfleda and her metallic pet, now seemed like as good a time as any.

“Fine,” the old man said with a ragged sigh. “Once I talk to Rhiannon, I’ll take a break.

“There’s a trip I’ve been meaning to take anyway.”

Spike stood, taking the last drag of his cigarette before snuffing out the butt in the black ashtray on the table. He’d normally just toss the butt to the floor and snuff it out with his boot, but he didn’t want to mess up the already-cluttered carpet. Corbett would stake him for sure for that.

“Good on you, then,” he said as he headed for the door. “Do be a bloke and tell Faith when she gets back that I’m gonna be gone for a while. Ol’ Spike’s gettin’ an itch that needs bloody scratching. So I’m gonna jet for a bit, clear out the ol’ brainpan.

“If she asks, just tell her I’ll be back.”

As the door shut behind Spike, Corbett stared at it, unsure of what to think. On the one hand, he was furious at the vampire for his unsolicited advice and the audacity to ask for a favor. But on the other hand, the advice wasn’t off-base and Corbett did actually find Spike’s concern for Faith refreshing.

Maybe there’d be hope for the limey bastard yet.

Now William

“Where’ve you been now, William?”

Spike snarled to himself, closing the window and sighing. He’d been back not two seconds and already Angelus was on his case. Already an annoying little ponce, Angelus was worse whenever the girls weren’t around. So with Darla off catering to The Master’s desires and Drusilla … doing whatever Drusilla did … that left the de-facto leader of this little Fang Gang in a less-than-pleasant mood.

Then again, Angelus was never in a pleasant mood unless he was torturing and disemboweling.

“Feeding,” the younger vampire answered, quickly making his way to the back bedroom, wanting nothing more than to retreat before the sun rose. If he fell asleep fast enough, he wouldn’t have to bother with his grandsire’s prattling.

“Feeding,” Angelus repeated, stepping out of the shadows and grinning at Spike. His grin was actually more of a sneer, a look of condescendence over the younger leech before him. In many ways, William was nothing more than an insignificant bug, someone to be toyed with when desired and ignored when needed.

Too busy chasing around his sire to truly be a useful vampire, Angelus had little, if any, respect for Spike, so much so he refused to use the fledgling’s new alias.

“Now William … ‘tis not smart to be feedin’ while the Slayer roams about, now is it?”

Spike growled under his breath. Damn Angelus and his cowardice. Refusing to meet the Slayer head-on, denying himself the adrenaline, the rush of confronting the only being on the planet truly capable of undoing him. Oh, Angelus was mighty when it came to preying on the weak – ask him to mind-fuck a seer to insanity and he’s golden, but the minute you point him in the direction of a being with some semblance of power and he skulks away to the shadows, wishing for his lovely Darla.

“I was hungry,” Spike explained, turning to face Angelus with a defiant gaze. He really didn’t care for the elder vampire’s assumed position of authority. The way Spike heard, it was Darla who made Angelus, so despite the former poet’s distaste for Darla, he figured it only made sense for her to be in charge of this little macabre family.

Then again, Spike often wished to take Drusilla by the hand and just leave the other two. Roam the world together, hunting down Slayers and living the unlife to its fullest. No caveman-browed masochists to get in the way and tell Spike what to do.

“And let the Slayer come,” he added with a bit of a swagger. “I bloody welcome her.”

Angelus made no effort to hide the bemused smirk on his face, brushing a lock of brown hair out of his eyes as he approached Drusilla’s progeny. Once face-to-face with the irritate lad, Angelus placed a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head.

“Oh … William,” he began with a mocking regret in his thick Irish accent. “Y’still don’t get it. The Slayer’s not to be meddled with. She’s slain dozens of our kind, possibly hundreds.”

“Weak little wankers,” Spike responded dismissively, shrugging his shoulder out of Angelus’ grasp. He wanted none of the elder vampire’s lecturing. Too many times Angelus warned of the strength of the Slayer and the undead foursome had yet to encounter one. Then again, that was probably because whenever she so much as crossed into whatever country they were pillaging, Angelus would herd them all up and scatter away like a cockroach whenever a lamp was lit.

“The Slayer would be no match for us.”

“Aye, no match,” Angelus agreed momentarily, pushing Spike back into a chair. “Well, not for me. But you … you’re reckless. Not too keen on usin’ the brainpan. Any Slayer who survives past a month will take advantage of that and dust you in two seconds.”

Spike scoffed. “No match for you,” he mocked, shaking his head. “Then why not take her? You’re so bleeding strong, Angelus. Why is it every time the Slayer so much as sneezes you grab us and hide in the nearest mouse hole?”

Angelus’ nostrils flared. Again with William and his insolence. Those questions, the constant nagging and needing to know why Angelus did things the way he did. There was no need to question such things; none of the four were piles of dust, so as far as the one once known as Liam was concerned, he was doing things the right way.

“You’re young,” he told Spike. “Which is why I don’t stake you for your stupidity. I keep hoping some day everything I tell you will sink in, and you’ll get it.

“Just because I can take on the Slayer doesn’t mean I should. This isn’t a seer, William. This isn’t someone I can pick at for a few months, drive her batty until I give her the eternal kiss. Oh no … Slayers are special. They fight back.”

And you can’t handle that …

“Which is what makes it fun,” the younger vampire chose to say instead, not at all interested in the prospect for a round of fisticuffs with Granddaddy as the sun threatened to rise. “Kill the helpless to feed, sure, but don’t you just wanna tear into something every once in a while? Just get in there, get your bloody hands dirty? Let the animal buried deep where your soul used to be and just let loose?”

Angelus said nothing, his sadistic sneer growing as his hair framed his face. The younger vampire felt an unnerving chill run down his spine at the sight, willing to admit only to himself that Angelus did in fact scare him sometimes.

This being one of them.

“We’re animals,” Spike added, hoping to feign bravado well enough to fool the elder vampire. “Prattle on all you want about the art and the sodding majesty of what we do, when the sun comes up we still have to crawl in our beddy-byes.”

If Spike still had a heartbeat, it would’ve tripled when Angelus glared at him over his shoulder. It wasn’t necessarily what Spike said that irked Angelus so; it was more the young one’s insolence. No matter how often Angelus demonstrated his power, his hold over both Darla and Drusilla, it seemed Spike was always right there to disagree with him.

When Angelus wanted to run, Spike wanted to fight. When Angelus took his rightful turn with Drusilla, Spike threw the vampiric equivalent of a hissy-fit – one that only got bigger if he was denied his own turn with Darla. Angelus never cared if Spike had his way with Darla; it was the blonde’s choice not to engage the fledgling vampire in such a manner.

And Spike didn’t understand that, much like he failed to understand just about everything else about the ways of the vampire. Angelus blanched at the thought of taking on the Slayer; sure, there were myths and legends of the few vampires able to best the Slayer in battle, but as far as Angelus was concerned they were just that: myths.

He never believed for once second that Lestat could ever take one, let alone several.

The Slayer was the veritable Boogeyman, and the more vampires stayed out of her path of senseless destruction, the better. Dealing with Daniel Holtz had been bad enough; Angelus hated to think what would happen if one took Holtz’s convictions and added superpowers to them.

“Do ye not remember Holtz?” he offered simply, leaning back against a doorway and folding his arms, patiently waiting for Spike to finally get it.

Spike, for his part, scoffed, shaking his head. “Please, you mean to tell me you’re still getting your knickers in a twist over that sod? You offed his family, turned the niblet and drove him bonkers. And I’m sure he’s back with his nice and cozies now anyway … unless the sod struck a deal with the bloody devil or something.”

It amazed young William how Angelus could cower so easily over a mere mortal. One which he and Darla had tortured quite deliciously, at that. For all of Hotlz’s righteousness and for all the men he enlisted to his cause, he was just a man. Flesh and blood, nothing special aside from a crossbow and a stake.

But the Slayer? Oh, she was a morsel. All the righteousness of an uptight Englishman, but with the powers of a demon and the looks of a harlot. Why wouldn’t Spike be enticed by that? He was drawn to the power, the thrill of potentially bettering someone whose only purpose is to turn him into a pile of dust.

For Spike, it was not only an adrenaline rush, but a bit of an aphrodisiac as well.

“Take away Holtz’s weapons and all you’ve got is a man,” he added. “But the Slayer … she is the weapon.”

“All the more reason to avoid suspicion,” Angelus countered, again approaching Spike and pushing him back against the wall. Picture frames shook with the force of William’s impact, his eyes widening.

“We’ve got ourselves quite the reputation,” the elder vampire continued. “No thanks in part to you. Now I don’t care if the local vampire king hears about Angelus and his little group. I welcome that. But the Slayer finding out about us?

“If her Watcher’s worth the ink used to write his books, the Slayer knows more about us than we know about ourselves. Which puts us at a disadvantage. I’m not worried about the power, young William … I’m worried about what she’ll have … up here.”

Angelus poked Spike in the forehead to accentuate his point, smirking to himself and shaking his head as he let go of his “comrade” and began to walk away. “Then again, the Slayer’ll have that over you regardless.”

Without thinking, Spike snarled and pushed himself off the wall and jumped at Angelus. With a growl, his face shifted … eyes turning yellow and his forehead growing bumpy and rigid. He tackled his grandsire to the floor, grabbing a large tuft of hair and ramming Angelus face-first into the floor.

“Older doesn’t mean smarter,” Spike quipped, again introducing Angelus’ nose to the floor.

Reaching behind him, Angelus grabbed Spike’s wrist and forced his hand off his hair before swatting at the younger vampire and pushing him off. Rolling over, Angelus glared at Spike, his face still remarkably human and showing little, if any, emotion.

“You’re young,” Angelus began, “that much we knew. But you’re also stupid, a fact becoming more and more clear every night. I’ve tolerated you until now because, for some reason, you make Drusilla happy.”

Breaking off a leg from the wooden table beside him, Angelus reached for a grabbed Spike by his collar, growling in his face and pointing the broken-off leg in his chest. “But let me make somethin’ clear, Willy … you are not, nor will you ever be, the leader of this family. That mantle belongs to me, because I know what it takes to make sure we all make it to see the next sunset. Bluster all you want about how big and bad you are, but you will always live in my shadow.”

Spike pushed Angelus off of him, kicking away the table leg as his face shifted back to its human façade. “What it takes … you run away at the first sign of trouble. Cause all the bleeding havoc you want, but the minute someone spoils the party, you run off with your fangs between your legs.

“Who knows … Dru and I might just take off one night.”

Angelus laughed to himself, brushing blood away from his nose and licking his fingertips dry. “No you won’t. Dru wouldn’t leave,” he offered. “She’s more mine than yours.”

Again Spike charged Angelus, only to find himself swatted away this time. He hit the floor with a grunt, looking up in time to see Angelus crouched over him, the fangs now unsheathed and the feral eyes striking. He struggled against the elder vampire’s hands on his collar, but couldn’t break free.

“I made her,” Angelus growled. “So I have as much a claim to her as you. I didn’t make you, William, but I can – and will – destroy you. When the Slayer’s in town, you stay low.

“Wouldn’t want to disappoint Dru, would you?”

Letting go of Spike, Angelus walked out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him. With a growl, Spike rose to his feet, closing the curtains over the window to keep the rising sun from invading his room – and his flesh. He growled and sneered at the closed door separating him from the vampire who pranced about acting like he knew what was best for all bloodsuckers involved.

The more he learned about Angelus, the less Spike liked the sod. Overbearing, confrontational as all get out … so long as you didn’t hold any power. Then he was a wuss to end all wusses. Unwilling to face the Slayer or even acknowledge that anyone other than him might have something resembling brains or strength … at least Darla was up-front and knew what she was. Angelus was trying to act all bureaucratic where there was no call for it.

Vampires and politics didn’t mix, and the more Spike saw in this little family of theirs, the more he wanted out. Angelus was right … as long as he stuck around, Spike would always be under the older vampire’s shadow. There was no way of getting around it, unless Spike did something bold like try and stake the boy.

But that would piss off both Darla and Drusilla … and the last thing Spike wanted to do was piss off his beloved Dru. The vampire sighed, sitting with his back against the wall and shaking his head. He was stuck. Unless Dru agreed for them to separate – which she wouldn’t, as tied to Angelus as she was, Spike was stuck.

“Bloody hell.”

The Thing About Plans

After leaving Corbett and the children - yeesh - back at the Lighthouse, Connor headed over to the McDonald's, just in case Billy had wandered back on his own. It was fully dark by now, and he had the stupid little plastic car in the pocket of his shirt. He hoped Spike remembered this little adventure once he got back to what passed for normal in his existence, he really did. It was going to be well worth the laugh if he did.

The fast food establishment yielded no lost child, however, and so the Destroyer moved on to the playground Julie had visited just the other day. It would have been rational that a child from the early nineteenth century, or whenever it was Spike had been a human boy, would know not to amble off by himself without an adult, but this was pretty far removed from a rational situation. Connor wondered if the Watcher would blame him if the kid had gotten eaten, or if he would simply write it off as one of those things that happened.

In Searchlight, anything was possible, after all.

He passed the swing set, the merry-go-round, the jungle gym. No little boy. "No wonder you and Dad don't get along," the young man muttered, shaking his head. "He probably thinks you're way more trouble than you're worth. Probably he's even right."

Finally Connor stopped and took a hard look around, then raised his voice. "Spi-- Billy! If you can hear me, please answer!"

“Yeah, I can hear you … and you were right the first time.”

The only good thing about the past hour or so? Spike had been able to go back to his crypt and get a fresh change of clothes. Because the whole naked thing was a drag – mostly because Faith wasn’t naked with him – but more than that, the vampire couldn’t stand the sight of that … outfit he’d been forced to wear for much of the day.

On some level, much of the day felt like a really bad dream. Waking up as a scared little six-year-old boy, unsure of the world around him or anything. A six-year-old Faith teasing him – they were so having a talk about that later – having to stay with Corbett, of all people?

Yeah, not fun.

And now that he was all adult-sized again, Spike wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he had a vague suspicion he’d know where to start. He took one last drag of his cigarette before flinging the butt off into the night, pushing himself off the ground and standing again.

“Let me guess,” the vampire said with a sigh and a scowl. “Watcher panicked and told you to come find poor, lost little Spike.”

"Well, aren't you lost?" Connor asked with equal parts amusement and annoyance. "Not his fault you can't stay where you're put." Pause. "You're back to normal. Congratulations. Did the spell wear off?"

The toy car was extracted from his pocket, and he tossed it in the vampire's direction. "Believe that's yours," he cracked. "Where did you go, anyway? Corbett said you were, what, six, seven? Did kids do that when you were alive? You're lucky something around here didn't get hold of you."

He waved a hand around at their general surroundings, continuing with, "You didn't happen to meet a 'nice lady' named Erato, did you?"

Spike caught the toy car, frowning at it. His Happy Meal toy … wonderful, yet another reminder of the day of constant humiliation. Waking up childish and in a strange man’s home … realizing this world was full of things he didn’t know about … being called a pussy by a six-year-old girl … getting lost at a bloody McDonald’s.

Yeah, Spike could stand to drink the memory of this day away.

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “No … Erato.” He stared at the toy car again, his frown deepening and his brow furrowing even more. “But … last night, Faith and I ran into a little girl. Said she was lost, had some weird thing on her hand.

“We touch the girl, and next thing I know, we’re waking up six.”

Not magic, then. Hmm. He'd have to tell Corbett, if there was something lurking around here it could still be in the shadows somewhere. "C'mon," Connor said, gesturing away from the playground. "We should be someplace else. Faith's worried. I think she's kicking herself for helping lose you."

He put his hands in his pockets as he began to walk, then added, "Nice language from her too. Corbett must've been freaked out to hear her talk like that, if the five minutes I spent with her are anything to go by." He snorted quietly, then glanced sideways at Spike.

"Can't imagine you any other way except how you are right now," the Destroyer admitted. "Too bad I didn't get to see you too. Feel like I'm owed something out of this besides looking after the post-toddler version of the girl I work with."

Spike snorted at the no magic remark, shaking his head and lighting another cigarette. “Right,” he said. “Cause people wake up as little children every bleeding day.”

Didn’t Connor hear what he said about the little girl they’d run into? The strange symbol on her hand and all that? Spike was about to say it again but thought otherwise, sighing and sucking in his cheeks. Yes, the mouth on Faith … the vampire couldn’t help but wonder what kind – if any – parenting she’d had as a child, aside from the few occasions Faith made it known to Corbett she was scared of her mother.

“I’d wager she didn’t have much parenting,” Spike said. “Girl kept telling Corbett how bad her mum was, how much she loved being here more.”

And calling me bloody names.

“You wouldn’t have missed much,” Spike admitted. “1860s London mummy’s boy. Unspectacular, really.”

"Maybe not," Connor said, almost but not quite idly. "You're of Angel's bloodline, and I've seen Angelus. If he was around then ... I'd imagine he wanted a chip off the old block."

He frowned, remembering another, a strangely beautiful, utterly damaged girl in an old-fashioned dress. She'd been like a china doll, one that had been deliberately thrown down the stairs so that it was cracked beyond repair. "Drusilla," he said musingly, and his shoulders tightened as though he might have been overheard by someone other than Spike. Had the mad thing fluttered away again?

"He never mentioned anyone he sired," Connor said, looking down at the ground he was walking over suddenly. "Too ashamed of it, and really that's only fair. Did he make you what you are? Or just her? Am I supposed to call you my brother now?"

The barest trace of bitterness now, and the Destroyer faced straight ahead as he walked, hands in his pockets, his expression neutral. He remembered now why he half wished Spike wasn't here. Too much blood under the bridge, and not enough of it his own.

Spike sighed again, not really wanting to take this little trip down Memory Lane. Why didn’t he just tell Connor about how he sired and staked his mother while they were at it? Just open up the wound of embarrassment even more and pour like a pound of salt into it.

Yeah, that would be fun.

“Angelus sired Drusilla,” Spike started without regard for how uncomfortable the details might make Connor. “Darla showed her to the boy, he became obsessed. Guess Dru had The Sight or whatever.

“Angelus stalks her, torments her, drives her bloody mad until one day … the eternal kiss. So there they are, right? Darla, her dear boy and the granddaughter … so to speak.

“One night, Dru found me in an alley. I’d … had a bad night and needed to be alone. Too bloody emotional to even think about what a bad idea it would be to go into an alley by myself. Dru finds me, chats me up a bit, and next thing I know, she’s turning my neck into a sodding lollipop.”

"She was ... ethereal," Connor said, and sadness tinged his voice now. Yes, he'd seen Angelus, but he couldn't even begin to imagine the things he must have done to Spike's sire to make her as she was. "Ethereal and shattered. My father's greatest sin. Angelus must have been very proud."

He chuckled mirthlessly, then tried to shake the thoughts away. "I have no family now, not really. I remember things, but the happy things aren't real. If you had the chance to stay as you were, be a child and do it all over again the right way, would you?" His speech cadence was becoming odd, resembling Holtz's more old-fashioned way of talking, and his shoes scuffed along the pavement as he continued to walk. "Or is it better to have a soul and still be damned for what you are?"

One good thing had come of this, at least. If whatever had happened to Spike had worn off, that meant it would wear off for Julie too. But he couldn't stop from asking himself: What if? Sometimes, a clean slate wasn't so bad. At least then it wouldn't have been a cheat.

Spike stopped in his tracks and gave Connor a glance, furrowing his brow in surprise of what the boy asked. Not so much what Connor asked – if Spike understood even half of what Connor’s life had been like, he had no qualms or confusions as to the inquiry – but why Connor saw fit to ask Spike.

The vampire never really had been one for introspection or self-reflecting. Spike always figured if he didn’t have a physical reflection, there was no need for reflection of any other kind. But Connor’s question did pique Spike’s inner curiosity, and as he mentally revisited the past day he spent as a child, he couldn’t help but wonder if it would’ve been so bad to be given a clean slate like that, to be able to start over.

That, and Spike figured he was Connor’s only link to Angel’s world, so he supposed there was no one else to ask.

“Not sure,” he said as he started walking again. “There’s something to be said for a clean slate, I suppose. Centuries of sin and bloodshed, wiped away while you frolic about in the park every day.”

The vampire heaved a sigh, puffing on his cigarette some more. “But something tells me that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Like I wasn’t meant to just start over. Angel had his soul thrust upon him as punishment for killing a Gypsy; I went after mine. I guess much like the Gem of Amarra wasn’t your father’s destiny, starting over wasn’t mine.

“Starting over would make everything I’ve done and gone through bloody pointless.”

Connor scowled, disliking the answer. "So the soul fixes everything?" he asked a little too sharply. "Even serial killers have souls. If you have a soul and you do terrible things anyway, what then?" He kicked at a few loose pieces of gravel in his path, sent them skittering ahead. "It’s not a..." The young man waved his hand around, frustrated at being unable to find the right word. "It’s not a baby-wipe, Spike!"

It was an unfortunate analogy at best, and yet it seemed to fit. A metaphysical baby-wipe, cleaning away the shit of his sins. Except not, because they were still there every day when he woke up. How was he supposed to be forgiven when he couldn't even forgive himself? He kicked at the ground again, jamming his hands into his pockets.

"Are you redeemed?" he asked the vampire, looking at him pointedly. "Was the soul the whole point of it, or did you have plans for what you'd do afterwards?”

“The thing about plans,” Spike retaliated, flicking the spent cigarette butt to the ground, “the more of them you have, the more they get screwed up.”

Like father, like son, the vampire mused, keeping the thought to himself. How Connor interpreted what Spike said and what he actually did say wound up being two completely different things, and Spike got the general sensation that Connor didn’t place much emphasis on a soul, which would probably explain the tension between him and Angel.

Granted, it wasn’t like Spike ever treated a soul the way Angel did, but he never tossed it aside as completely meaningless. The Champion liked to trumpet about how heroic he was with just the chip, but that was more his own hedonistic ideals. More specifically, maybe if he saved a bunch of people and looked after Dawn, Buffy would look at him more favorably.

Which had been all fine and dandy, until vampire and Slayer started boinking and Spike suddenly forgot what the word no meant.

But with his soul? There was an understanding Spike didn’t much care to admit, let alone comprehend. Angel was right more often than not about the essence of being a monster with a conscience, more so than Spike let on.

And only with the passage of time – and apparently spending the day as his childish self decked out in Little Mermaid overalls – did Spike truly understand what it meant to be evil, only not.

“I’ll never be redeemed,” the vampire added with a shrug. “Not until my dying night. Your dad was a ponce, but he was right whenever he said a soul’s a burden, not some free pass out of the darkness that is this life.

“The soul isn’t a fix, Connor. The soul is a choice. As in, the soul gives you the awareness to recognize what’s good and what isn’t. When your dad and I were killing and torturing half of Europe? We knew what we were doing, but we didn’t understand just how vile and bloody despicable we were.

“Now we know, because we have souls. And because of that knowledge, he choose to not be evil little bastards anymore.”

So what does that make me? Connor thought bitterly, removing his hands from his pockets and looking at them as if he expected them to still be stained with blood. Innocent blood. If nobody ever asks you what you want, does it count as making a choice? He wished he'd never asked the question.

"Is," he said after a silence. "My father is a ponce. He's alive. The man in the hat, Whistler, he said so. He says I'll see him again one day, just not soon. Typical. He's never here when I need him and always around when I don't." The Destroyer let out a quiet snort and shook his head. "I ... he's my father, but he breaks things. Even with a soul, things get broken in his wake."

After another long pause, Connor shook off the chill of memory, rubbed the back of his neck. "So now that you're not a baby anymore, what're you going to do?" he asked the vampire somewhat sarcastically.

Spike scoffed and shook his head, his cheeks sucking in with a smirk. Of course Angel was still alive; no way the sod would ever truly go away. Buffy sent the bloke to hell and he came back from that, so who was to say something as miniscule as a demon army a couple hundred thousand strong and a dragon would keep the Champion down?

“He was that way with Buffy too,” Spike mused with a knowing grin. “She wants him around, he’s off … killing people or some such. She wants nothing to do with him, he’s following her around like a puppy dog addicted to product.”

The vampire let Connor’s last question sink in a bit, lighting a smoke and clacking his lighter shut. “Not sure,” he said. “Probably keep doing the hero thing, slay the nasties, help those who need it.

“Look into the strange girl with the mark on her arm. I reckon a certain Watcher would like to see his Slayer grow up again.”

"And Faith?"

Connor knew he shouldn't ask, that it was none of his business and Spike would probably say so, but it felt like a pertinent question, especially if the Slayer was also about to return to normal. He only knew Buffy by name, and a little by reputation, but if the vampire's scoffing words were anything to go by, a vampire and a Slayer never needed to get together.

He looked over at the bleached blonde, his expression non-confrontational. "I wish she hadn't told me, but she did. Corbett must be ecstatic. You should probably not go to sleep around that guy anytime soon. Be a good way to find yourself inside a vacuum cleaner bag."

Spike smirked. “Far as I know, Corbett doesn’t have a clue,” the vampire said, taking another long puff from his smoke. “I’m assuming she hasn’t told him, since she asked me not to tell him.

“Which I haven’t.”

If Angel and Buffy were Connor’s only window into the vampire-with-a-soul-Slayer relationship dynamic, then he probably didn’t think Spike bonking Faith was a good idea. But there were a few key differences; mainly, no curse and the fact that Slayer and vampire weren’t actually lovers … just allies who enjoyed the occasional all-night fuckfest.

“My soul’s not like your dad’s,” Spike explained matter-of-factly. “There’s no curse; only way I lose it is if someone mystically takes it from me. Angel? One moment of pure happiness and he’s all … grrr again.”

The vampire shrugged, taking one more drag before flinging a half-smoked Marlboro into the distance. “And Faith and I aren’t in love. We’re just allies who understand each other, what with our dark pasts and all – and we happen to find each other really bloody hot.”

"And I'm sure Corbett will fully appreciate that you're not in love when he puts a stake through your chest. Also, could you pretty much never describe someone as thinking you're hot again, please? Who are you, Paris Hilton?"

Connor rolled his eyes, then closed his mouth on the subject. If he had been asked, he'd have observed that people who kept secrets did so because they were doing something wrong and didn't want anyone to know about it, but clearly his opinion wasn't being sought, despite his experience on the issue.

What a shocker.

"I'm not gonna tell, and anyway I think she regrets mentioning it to me. But if you get lit on fire, don't expect me to dump a bucket of water on you. If you're going to keep secrets, you have to expect them to blow up in your face eventually."

Spike scoffed. “That Gruxlar demon?” he said in relation to the hotel tycoon’s daughter. “Seriously, she’s a demon. Oughta see the file Wolfram & Hart had on her. Regular War & Peace.

“Besides, I’ve got bigger tits.”

The vampire lit yet another cigarette, heaving a sigh once the first drag was taken. “If Corbett wants me dead, it’s for more than shagging his Slayer. He still holds a grudge for me killing his first charge. Can’t say I blame the sod, really.”

Despite telling Corbett the truth, Spike knew the Watcher wouldn’t believe him. Spike was a vampire – one of the most ruthless ever, in fact – and his claim to fame was Slayers. So naturally, Corbett would be a tad skeptical if Spike pointed at Teresa’s corpse with a “I didn’t do it.”

So finding out he was shagging Faith? Yeah, that had combustible written all over it.

“I wager the only person who would dump water on me would be Faith,” Spike said with another drag of his smoke. “I’m not well-liked.”

Connor almost asked if Spike had done it, then decided not to. It had been a long day, and he had his own problems to tend to. Whatever the grudge was between the vampire and Corbett, he was leaving it to them. Chances of the blonde being set on fire and all.

"Julie's probably going to be back to normal soon, I guess," he said instead. "I think she's starting to worry she'll never get home again, poor kid. Even though she's not really a kid. I hope she hasn't been permanently traumatized by Faith's language. Think there's a chance she won't remember any of it?"

Spike gave Connor a bemused glance, smirking and shaking his head. “Considering I remember everything, including the embarrassing Disney outfit?” he offered. “She’ll probably remember a Slayer’s potty mouth.”

Connor stopped walking, then turned and gave Spike a deadpan stare. The corners of his mouth twitched a couple of times, and he had to smother a chuckle before he said, "Disney, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I can see you being into Peter Pan or something. Unless you're more of a Blue's Clues fan."

He waited, then shrugged casually. "Well, I'm gonna let you get on with whatever it is you're going to do next. When I see Corbett, I'll tell him about the kid. Whenever this wears off for Faith, let her know she should either call the bar or drop by. Something fairly big is brewing, and there's probably going to be more fighting. I'll talk to you later, Spike."