Back to Humanity
Chapter 1
By Kalifower
Disclaimer: All the characters and settings and everything else is purely owned by Joss and Co.
Comments: This takes place somewhere in the beginning of season 6. After Life Serial but before the musical. The Troika decide to mess with Spike but their plans go haywire. Don't you just love the way the Evil Trio can cause so much trouble, so badly?
Three young men were watching the monitor with gleeful abandon, replaying tapes recorded the night before from their newly installed cameras. "It looks like the Slayer has a friend. Why'd she want to be friends with a vampire?" Warren said leering at the screen.
"Maybe she's lonely." Andrew said, "Besides, he helps her all the time."
Warren grunted back at Andrew. "Well she seems to spend a lot of time with him. Perhaps that's how we should distract the Slayer: through him." The three boys looked back at the monitor. Their last attempt to distract and test her had been a bust, so they had decided to attack her through her friends. The problem was she didn't seem to be spending a lot of time with any of them. They had vetoed attacking her little sister because, as Andrew had pointed out, who cares about siblings? So they had been watching her, waiting to see who would be the best to attack and it was looking more like Spike. It would distract the Slayer, and if they could take Spike down, then they would get rid of one of the few effective people she had working with her. What they didn't know was how, exactly, they were going to get rid of Spike.
"Well, we could kill him by staking him, beheading him, or lighting him on fire." Jonathan said counting the ways to kill a vampire on his fingers.
"I don't really wanna get that close to a vampire." Andrew said and perked up. "I could conjure a demon to go after him."
"He fights demons, dangerous ones, for fun. I don't think that's going to stop him." Jonathan said looking at Andrew.
Warren continued. "What we need is a weaker Spike. Too bad he isn't like the rest of her friends, they'd be much easier to take out with a demon."
They sat around for a few minutes. Andrew didn't have any ideas besides the conjuring up a demon, so he started to make Return of the Jedi's Hans Solo flirt with A New Hope's Leia. They were just about to start kissing when Jonathan spoke up. "So why don't we make him more like the rest of the Slayer's gang. We could make him human. I came across a spell that might do that on one of my wizarding boards a few months back. The outcome is kinda iffy, but it looks like it would do the trick." He started browsing the computer, searching for information. Looking up from the screen at the rest of the Troika he added, "it would be much easier to kill him then."
"Oo, and then we could conjure a demon and send it after him."
"What's with you and conjuring demons?" Jonathan paused. "Anyway, wouldn't that be overly complicated and elaborate?"
Warren arched his fingers together began. "I don't think so, Wicket. One, because we're bad guys, overly elaborate is what we do. I mean, come on, we used a freeze ray. Two, not only would the human Spike create confusion with the Slayer and the rest of them; but he wouldn't be able to fight back. Random death by demon would be easily attributed to living in Sunnydale."
"Fine," Jonathan said as his eyes lowered to the floor. "I think I have everything that we need to do it, which is good because I'm starting to get nervous going into the Magic Box and overnight shipping costs too much."
"Great get started, if we can do this tonight, our plans for domination of Sunnydale will finally really begin."
"Dun, dun, duuunnnn!" Andrew and Jonathan sang. Warren rolled his eyes.
Spike walked into the front room of the Magic Box shortly after sunset that evening. He had been antsy all day. He could barely sleep; he wanted a good fight, whether or it was a demon or a Scooby was unimportant. Xander looked up and scowled at the vampire. Spike decided that perhaps a fight with that particular Scooby would be fun. Then he could go on patrol, and fight a demon or two. The night was looking good for him.
"Oh, look whose strutting in acting like he belongs here," Xander said.
Spike eyed Xander who was cuddling with the ex-demon of his. "I'm just here to help Buffy, not that you would know anything about that, since you're usually on the receiving end." He noticed Buffy roll her eyes. Yes, tonight would be good.
"What are you doing here?" Buffy asked.
He gave her the most honest and annoying look he could and started, "I already ans." He was stopped by a painful, cramping feeling in his stomach. He felt ill. Which was odd, because he hadn't felt ill in over one hundred years, but apparently it was like riding a bloody bicycle. He doubled over in pain gripping his stomach. "Ooooo." The night was suddenly taking a turn for the worse; he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of the stupid Slayer and her stupid sidekicks.
"Spike got a wittle tummy-ache." Xander said in a baby voice so sick that it even Anya screwed up her face in disgust. "Musta had some bad blood in the fridge tonight, huh? Didn't you check the expiration date, dead boy?"
"Shut up, Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooo," now this was turning into more then just bad stomach cramps. What the hell was going on with him? He managed to glance up and noticed that the Scoobies were starting to look a little worried, but mostly annoyed. Great, stay annoyed, he thought, please. He didn't want any sodding sympathy. Well, maybe from Buffy, in bed, naked. He almost smiled at the thought, but the pain was growing worse and even a sympathetic, nude and sweaty Buffy wasn't enough to distract him.
"Um.Spike are you alright?" It was the little one. It was nice that she was concerned. He hated to admit how big the soft spot for her had gotten this summer; but he was the Big Bad, and the Big Bad didn't show weakness or need concern.
Spike realized that he was going to lose consciousness soon, in fact everything was getting very dark and fuzzy. He was waiting to feel light headed and dizzy, but it wasn't coming. Instead he felt heavy and tired. Then everything was getting very bright, which was strange. He'd passed out from pain, or from being drunk, enough to know that the world got dark, then there was some relief from everything, then you woke up and it was unbearably bright. He was pretty sure that he hadn't gone through the "brief respite from the world" phase. The bright light faded and the pain stopped. He had fallen to the floor.
Looking up at the shocked faces all around him, he squinted at the witches, "was that some kind of 'stop being so damned annoying' spell?" He was waiting for some reaction even a hand up would have been better then their slack jawed expressions. When he looked closer he realized that they weren't looking at him, so much as right next to him. It was then that he noticed there was someone mere inches away. He counted the heads staring down at him, they were all there, which meant that whoever was lying next to him was not one of them. He listened to the heartbeat, and didn't recognize it.
Who the hell could.He turned his head and looked at the man. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Spike stood up quickly. This was bad, worse then he could ever imagine. The Scoobies were looking at him, then at the man on the floor and then at him again. In fact, if they kept looking between the two men, they were probably going to make themselves dizzy. He just stood there staring at the man, at the Scoobies, at the wall, at everything. He felt like a deer in the proverbial headlights.
The man on the ground moaned, and rolled over slightly. Without opening his eyes he said, "Sarah, would you please fetch Maman. I feel ill again. Perhaps I am not as well as the doctor had thought I was. I had so hoped this constitutional in our park would help." He groaned a little more and opened his eyes, "Sarah." they widened, "oh, dear, where is my sister? Where have you ruffians taken me? If you've h-h-hurt Sarah." He looked over at Spike and gasped.
Everyone stared. It was all they could think to do; there were no words that could really express the feeling, except perhaps, "uhhhh" and the more eloquent "this is a total wiggings." Spike could just hear the Scoobies mental variations on those themes, and almost smiled when he compared it to how that man on the floor would have phrased those two feelings. "Oh, dear," sprang to mind, but he had already said that hadn't he?
Shaken out of his reverie by the thought of comparing the man to the Scoobies he said, "'lo, mate." To compensate for his double's higher-class accent Spike tried to make his even lower class, skimming the bottom of England's socio-economic ladder. He felt like he was going to hyperventilate, and he didn't even have to breathe. He felt nervous tension building in him. He had been antsy before showing up at the store tonight. Now, he didn't know what he felt. He wanted to hit something, kill something; that was always an easy to define feeling. But he was having others he hadn't felt in so long he didn't know how to define them. Flitting on the edges of his mind were embarrassment and shame, at all his deep secrets being revealed to people who already hated him.
Unfortunately, before Spike could continue to speak the shy witch spoke up, "Spike he really looks like you."
"No, well I mean yes," Willow added. "But um.not exactly. He looks like Spike would if you crossed him with a little Giles and a lot of Wesley." Several heads were nodding in agreement. In response to the unasked question Willow spoke to Tara, "he was that other watcher I told you about, who was even more uptight than Giles ever was and snotty."
"Hey!" Spike glared at the two witches. He shouldn't be defending this man, but he couldn't have people ever call him snotty. Even if it was a him that had died 120 years ago.
"Raise your hand if this is one of the weirdest moments you never thought you'd see." Xander said raising his hand high in the air. Slowly, everyone raised their hands. They were having a little difficulty dealing with two Spikes, especially since one of them did and didn't look very much like Spike.
Obviously confused by the behavior around him William began, "please, what have you done with Sarah. She's just an innocent, there's not need to harm her. Father will pay anything. Please." The man who looked incredibly like Spike was beginning to cry.
"We're not going to hurt your sister," Spike said, his face was almost gentle, but his fists were clenched. "She's not even here, she's probably safe at home with your Mum wondering where her big brother disappeared too." Please just stop crying, he thought. The Scoobies did not need to see him, any version of him, crying. "We're not going to hurt you either. You just, uh, showed up here." William began to calm down, his breath slowing and becoming more even.
"Yup, just pop, and you're here. Lying on the floor next to Spike." Anya added. "You're double looks like he's going to hyperventilate, Spike." Turning to Willow she said, "Once you've seen half your friends have doubles of one sort or another, this just doesn't seem so confusing anymore."
"Anya, this is serious." Willow glared at her.
"I'm being serious. I wish Xander's double had stuck around for a little longer. That would have been nice, the sex, I mean." William blushed and everyone fell silent.
Xander broke the quiet. "Spike's been split into two halves of himself. Maybe like demon Spike," he pointed to Spike, "and human Spike," he pointed to William.
"That doesn't account for the different clothes, Xander. And we don't know if the young man who looks like Spike is indeed human." Giles looked at the boy as if he couldn't believe that he could get any more stupid. Seems the old man had underestimated the young git, again.
"Plus, Spike is acting nice to him, so it couldn't be pure demon." Dawn added to the confusing conversation.
"Hey, I'm not being nice." Spike stood up and moved away from William. "I just don't want him crying around here, acting like the stupid git he is." He looked over to his double and wished he hadn't said those words, because the human was starting to cry again. Bullocks, he had been so touchy as a human. He looked over to Buffy, but she just looked confused and distant, like she didn't want to be here dealing with this.
Willow stepped up to fill in for Buffy's commanding absence. She knelt by William, who was still on the bloody floor. "What's your name?"
He sniffed and looked into Red's eyes, "William Elliot Fenton."
The witch's eyes looked up to the group and looked to Spike. He was trying to remain as passive as possible. He knew that she at least had a clue to who this was. He wished he could have a cig, but someone would probably stake him if he tried to light up in the store.
"Um, I hate to say this, but do you know what day it is?"
William's eyes clouded over with confusion. He was beginning to look around, and Spike could guess what the other him was starting to think. Along the lines of: where's everyone's clothes gone? And some other prudish nonsense. "T-t-Tuesday, I believe." He swallowed hard. Apparently, he was trying to hang onto denial.
"No, that's not what I meant." She sighed and began again, "What's the date, the year?"
Sinking further into denial William replied, "What is wrong with your voices? Are some of you Americans? I met a few last year during the Season, it was my first in Town. Of course I couldn't stay long, I was still at Oxford at the time. They were quite charming, genteel and with the most intriguing accents." This was ridiculous, Spike thought, are some of you Americans? God, he was such a tosser. William whimpered and that broke Spike.
"What's the sodding year?"
Shaken and startled William gaped and then answered, "1878." Oh, God, he was so young, Spike thought. That was two years before. Spike's mind flashed back to the night he was turned. Then he remembered where William must have been moments before he arrived in the Magic Box. The illness had been one of the big events in his human life he still remembered, but almost dying did that to a bloke. It was shortly after that long illness, and he had been recovering. Sarah, his sister, and he had gone walking in the family park for the afternoon. The Doctor had told him that it would be good to strengthen his weakened lungs with constitutionals. Halfway through the afternoon, he had felt too weak to continue. Sarah had gone back to the house to get some of the servants to carry him back to his bed. He had weird fever dreams while she was gone and shortly before she arrived with the servants he had awoken. William had felt weak and humiliated for the rest of the day. After that he had heard some of the servants teasing him behind his back, and shortly returned to Oxford to complete his degree
"Oh, dear." Giles began wiping his glasses. Spike glanced at the man and hated the look of pity and confusion on his face. He wanted to growl, to hit something and the Watcher wiping is glasses, again, was starting to annoy the demon. Spike had left William behind when he was turned. He never wanted to deal any of his human life after he had left it. It had taken years to deny everything in him that was that wanker. He had changed his accent, his style, his attitude and anything that he couldn't kill in himself (his education, his poetry, his love, a voice whispered in his head) he had hid from the world. Now here was the man he thought was gone forever. This was so bloody unfair.
"Who the fuck did this? Bloody chip or no, I'm going to kill something and I want it to be the person who did this." He walked over to the witches. "Did you do this. Was this some sort of spell gone wrong like when the Watcher went blind and Buffy and I.Did you do this."
"No," Tara began hesitantly and then grew stronger as she glanced over at Willow, who looked just as confused as her. "We didn't do this, it must have been something else."
"I feel magic, so it was probably a spell, but we should probably check." Willow said matter-of-factly. Her face softened. "Spike is this who we think it is?"
Spike hated to see the girl's face look at him all soft and understanding. "What does it bloody look like? Of course it is. Bloody stupid hair, glasses and stupid whimpering voice." He hadn't meant to say all that, to sound so mad, so scared, so out of control. This was too much, and he didn't want to handle it. He felt the demon in him banging on its cages.
William slowly stood up, teetering back and forth a little, trying to find his grounding. He looked at the profile of Spike, "you look familiar, have we met? We look as if we are related." Spike raised his eyebrow at the boy. William grabbed his head a little and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. He looked like he was struggling for consciousness, and Spike knew that the last of that illness and the shock of what was going on was too much for him. The vampire turned and caught his double as he fell. He picked William up and placed him on the table and flung his duster on the corner of the shelf nearest him. He began looking though the inner pockets of William's jacket for the smelling salts that he carried around with him that summer.
"Wow, dead boy, can't even stop from ripping yourself off. That is so lame."
"How bloody stupid are you?" He found the small vial and uncorked it holding it up for the Scoobies to see. "This is what I was looking for." He waved the vial under William's nose and the young man began wheezing and coughing. He leaned over and whispered into William's ear, "Just relax. You'll feel better if you do."
By Kalifower
Disclaimer: All the characters and settings and everything else is purely owned by Joss and Co.
Comments: This takes place somewhere in the beginning of season 6. After Life Serial but before the musical. The Troika decide to mess with Spike but their plans go haywire. Don't you just love the way the Evil Trio can cause so much trouble, so badly?
Three young men were watching the monitor with gleeful abandon, replaying tapes recorded the night before from their newly installed cameras. "It looks like the Slayer has a friend. Why'd she want to be friends with a vampire?" Warren said leering at the screen.
"Maybe she's lonely." Andrew said, "Besides, he helps her all the time."
Warren grunted back at Andrew. "Well she seems to spend a lot of time with him. Perhaps that's how we should distract the Slayer: through him." The three boys looked back at the monitor. Their last attempt to distract and test her had been a bust, so they had decided to attack her through her friends. The problem was she didn't seem to be spending a lot of time with any of them. They had vetoed attacking her little sister because, as Andrew had pointed out, who cares about siblings? So they had been watching her, waiting to see who would be the best to attack and it was looking more like Spike. It would distract the Slayer, and if they could take Spike down, then they would get rid of one of the few effective people she had working with her. What they didn't know was how, exactly, they were going to get rid of Spike.
"Well, we could kill him by staking him, beheading him, or lighting him on fire." Jonathan said counting the ways to kill a vampire on his fingers.
"I don't really wanna get that close to a vampire." Andrew said and perked up. "I could conjure a demon to go after him."
"He fights demons, dangerous ones, for fun. I don't think that's going to stop him." Jonathan said looking at Andrew.
Warren continued. "What we need is a weaker Spike. Too bad he isn't like the rest of her friends, they'd be much easier to take out with a demon."
They sat around for a few minutes. Andrew didn't have any ideas besides the conjuring up a demon, so he started to make Return of the Jedi's Hans Solo flirt with A New Hope's Leia. They were just about to start kissing when Jonathan spoke up. "So why don't we make him more like the rest of the Slayer's gang. We could make him human. I came across a spell that might do that on one of my wizarding boards a few months back. The outcome is kinda iffy, but it looks like it would do the trick." He started browsing the computer, searching for information. Looking up from the screen at the rest of the Troika he added, "it would be much easier to kill him then."
"Oo, and then we could conjure a demon and send it after him."
"What's with you and conjuring demons?" Jonathan paused. "Anyway, wouldn't that be overly complicated and elaborate?"
Warren arched his fingers together began. "I don't think so, Wicket. One, because we're bad guys, overly elaborate is what we do. I mean, come on, we used a freeze ray. Two, not only would the human Spike create confusion with the Slayer and the rest of them; but he wouldn't be able to fight back. Random death by demon would be easily attributed to living in Sunnydale."
"Fine," Jonathan said as his eyes lowered to the floor. "I think I have everything that we need to do it, which is good because I'm starting to get nervous going into the Magic Box and overnight shipping costs too much."
"Great get started, if we can do this tonight, our plans for domination of Sunnydale will finally really begin."
"Dun, dun, duuunnnn!" Andrew and Jonathan sang. Warren rolled his eyes.
Spike walked into the front room of the Magic Box shortly after sunset that evening. He had been antsy all day. He could barely sleep; he wanted a good fight, whether or it was a demon or a Scooby was unimportant. Xander looked up and scowled at the vampire. Spike decided that perhaps a fight with that particular Scooby would be fun. Then he could go on patrol, and fight a demon or two. The night was looking good for him.
"Oh, look whose strutting in acting like he belongs here," Xander said.
Spike eyed Xander who was cuddling with the ex-demon of his. "I'm just here to help Buffy, not that you would know anything about that, since you're usually on the receiving end." He noticed Buffy roll her eyes. Yes, tonight would be good.
"What are you doing here?" Buffy asked.
He gave her the most honest and annoying look he could and started, "I already ans." He was stopped by a painful, cramping feeling in his stomach. He felt ill. Which was odd, because he hadn't felt ill in over one hundred years, but apparently it was like riding a bloody bicycle. He doubled over in pain gripping his stomach. "Ooooo." The night was suddenly taking a turn for the worse; he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of the stupid Slayer and her stupid sidekicks.
"Spike got a wittle tummy-ache." Xander said in a baby voice so sick that it even Anya screwed up her face in disgust. "Musta had some bad blood in the fridge tonight, huh? Didn't you check the expiration date, dead boy?"
"Shut up, Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooooo," now this was turning into more then just bad stomach cramps. What the hell was going on with him? He managed to glance up and noticed that the Scoobies were starting to look a little worried, but mostly annoyed. Great, stay annoyed, he thought, please. He didn't want any sodding sympathy. Well, maybe from Buffy, in bed, naked. He almost smiled at the thought, but the pain was growing worse and even a sympathetic, nude and sweaty Buffy wasn't enough to distract him.
"Um.Spike are you alright?" It was the little one. It was nice that she was concerned. He hated to admit how big the soft spot for her had gotten this summer; but he was the Big Bad, and the Big Bad didn't show weakness or need concern.
Spike realized that he was going to lose consciousness soon, in fact everything was getting very dark and fuzzy. He was waiting to feel light headed and dizzy, but it wasn't coming. Instead he felt heavy and tired. Then everything was getting very bright, which was strange. He'd passed out from pain, or from being drunk, enough to know that the world got dark, then there was some relief from everything, then you woke up and it was unbearably bright. He was pretty sure that he hadn't gone through the "brief respite from the world" phase. The bright light faded and the pain stopped. He had fallen to the floor.
Looking up at the shocked faces all around him, he squinted at the witches, "was that some kind of 'stop being so damned annoying' spell?" He was waiting for some reaction even a hand up would have been better then their slack jawed expressions. When he looked closer he realized that they weren't looking at him, so much as right next to him. It was then that he noticed there was someone mere inches away. He counted the heads staring down at him, they were all there, which meant that whoever was lying next to him was not one of them. He listened to the heartbeat, and didn't recognize it.
Who the hell could.He turned his head and looked at the man. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Spike stood up quickly. This was bad, worse then he could ever imagine. The Scoobies were looking at him, then at the man on the floor and then at him again. In fact, if they kept looking between the two men, they were probably going to make themselves dizzy. He just stood there staring at the man, at the Scoobies, at the wall, at everything. He felt like a deer in the proverbial headlights.
The man on the ground moaned, and rolled over slightly. Without opening his eyes he said, "Sarah, would you please fetch Maman. I feel ill again. Perhaps I am not as well as the doctor had thought I was. I had so hoped this constitutional in our park would help." He groaned a little more and opened his eyes, "Sarah." they widened, "oh, dear, where is my sister? Where have you ruffians taken me? If you've h-h-hurt Sarah." He looked over at Spike and gasped.
Everyone stared. It was all they could think to do; there were no words that could really express the feeling, except perhaps, "uhhhh" and the more eloquent "this is a total wiggings." Spike could just hear the Scoobies mental variations on those themes, and almost smiled when he compared it to how that man on the floor would have phrased those two feelings. "Oh, dear," sprang to mind, but he had already said that hadn't he?
Shaken out of his reverie by the thought of comparing the man to the Scoobies he said, "'lo, mate." To compensate for his double's higher-class accent Spike tried to make his even lower class, skimming the bottom of England's socio-economic ladder. He felt like he was going to hyperventilate, and he didn't even have to breathe. He felt nervous tension building in him. He had been antsy before showing up at the store tonight. Now, he didn't know what he felt. He wanted to hit something, kill something; that was always an easy to define feeling. But he was having others he hadn't felt in so long he didn't know how to define them. Flitting on the edges of his mind were embarrassment and shame, at all his deep secrets being revealed to people who already hated him.
Unfortunately, before Spike could continue to speak the shy witch spoke up, "Spike he really looks like you."
"No, well I mean yes," Willow added. "But um.not exactly. He looks like Spike would if you crossed him with a little Giles and a lot of Wesley." Several heads were nodding in agreement. In response to the unasked question Willow spoke to Tara, "he was that other watcher I told you about, who was even more uptight than Giles ever was and snotty."
"Hey!" Spike glared at the two witches. He shouldn't be defending this man, but he couldn't have people ever call him snotty. Even if it was a him that had died 120 years ago.
"Raise your hand if this is one of the weirdest moments you never thought you'd see." Xander said raising his hand high in the air. Slowly, everyone raised their hands. They were having a little difficulty dealing with two Spikes, especially since one of them did and didn't look very much like Spike.
Obviously confused by the behavior around him William began, "please, what have you done with Sarah. She's just an innocent, there's not need to harm her. Father will pay anything. Please." The man who looked incredibly like Spike was beginning to cry.
"We're not going to hurt your sister," Spike said, his face was almost gentle, but his fists were clenched. "She's not even here, she's probably safe at home with your Mum wondering where her big brother disappeared too." Please just stop crying, he thought. The Scoobies did not need to see him, any version of him, crying. "We're not going to hurt you either. You just, uh, showed up here." William began to calm down, his breath slowing and becoming more even.
"Yup, just pop, and you're here. Lying on the floor next to Spike." Anya added. "You're double looks like he's going to hyperventilate, Spike." Turning to Willow she said, "Once you've seen half your friends have doubles of one sort or another, this just doesn't seem so confusing anymore."
"Anya, this is serious." Willow glared at her.
"I'm being serious. I wish Xander's double had stuck around for a little longer. That would have been nice, the sex, I mean." William blushed and everyone fell silent.
Xander broke the quiet. "Spike's been split into two halves of himself. Maybe like demon Spike," he pointed to Spike, "and human Spike," he pointed to William.
"That doesn't account for the different clothes, Xander. And we don't know if the young man who looks like Spike is indeed human." Giles looked at the boy as if he couldn't believe that he could get any more stupid. Seems the old man had underestimated the young git, again.
"Plus, Spike is acting nice to him, so it couldn't be pure demon." Dawn added to the confusing conversation.
"Hey, I'm not being nice." Spike stood up and moved away from William. "I just don't want him crying around here, acting like the stupid git he is." He looked over to his double and wished he hadn't said those words, because the human was starting to cry again. Bullocks, he had been so touchy as a human. He looked over to Buffy, but she just looked confused and distant, like she didn't want to be here dealing with this.
Willow stepped up to fill in for Buffy's commanding absence. She knelt by William, who was still on the bloody floor. "What's your name?"
He sniffed and looked into Red's eyes, "William Elliot Fenton."
The witch's eyes looked up to the group and looked to Spike. He was trying to remain as passive as possible. He knew that she at least had a clue to who this was. He wished he could have a cig, but someone would probably stake him if he tried to light up in the store.
"Um, I hate to say this, but do you know what day it is?"
William's eyes clouded over with confusion. He was beginning to look around, and Spike could guess what the other him was starting to think. Along the lines of: where's everyone's clothes gone? And some other prudish nonsense. "T-t-Tuesday, I believe." He swallowed hard. Apparently, he was trying to hang onto denial.
"No, that's not what I meant." She sighed and began again, "What's the date, the year?"
Sinking further into denial William replied, "What is wrong with your voices? Are some of you Americans? I met a few last year during the Season, it was my first in Town. Of course I couldn't stay long, I was still at Oxford at the time. They were quite charming, genteel and with the most intriguing accents." This was ridiculous, Spike thought, are some of you Americans? God, he was such a tosser. William whimpered and that broke Spike.
"What's the sodding year?"
Shaken and startled William gaped and then answered, "1878." Oh, God, he was so young, Spike thought. That was two years before. Spike's mind flashed back to the night he was turned. Then he remembered where William must have been moments before he arrived in the Magic Box. The illness had been one of the big events in his human life he still remembered, but almost dying did that to a bloke. It was shortly after that long illness, and he had been recovering. Sarah, his sister, and he had gone walking in the family park for the afternoon. The Doctor had told him that it would be good to strengthen his weakened lungs with constitutionals. Halfway through the afternoon, he had felt too weak to continue. Sarah had gone back to the house to get some of the servants to carry him back to his bed. He had weird fever dreams while she was gone and shortly before she arrived with the servants he had awoken. William had felt weak and humiliated for the rest of the day. After that he had heard some of the servants teasing him behind his back, and shortly returned to Oxford to complete his degree
"Oh, dear." Giles began wiping his glasses. Spike glanced at the man and hated the look of pity and confusion on his face. He wanted to growl, to hit something and the Watcher wiping is glasses, again, was starting to annoy the demon. Spike had left William behind when he was turned. He never wanted to deal any of his human life after he had left it. It had taken years to deny everything in him that was that wanker. He had changed his accent, his style, his attitude and anything that he couldn't kill in himself (his education, his poetry, his love, a voice whispered in his head) he had hid from the world. Now here was the man he thought was gone forever. This was so bloody unfair.
"Who the fuck did this? Bloody chip or no, I'm going to kill something and I want it to be the person who did this." He walked over to the witches. "Did you do this. Was this some sort of spell gone wrong like when the Watcher went blind and Buffy and I.Did you do this."
"No," Tara began hesitantly and then grew stronger as she glanced over at Willow, who looked just as confused as her. "We didn't do this, it must have been something else."
"I feel magic, so it was probably a spell, but we should probably check." Willow said matter-of-factly. Her face softened. "Spike is this who we think it is?"
Spike hated to see the girl's face look at him all soft and understanding. "What does it bloody look like? Of course it is. Bloody stupid hair, glasses and stupid whimpering voice." He hadn't meant to say all that, to sound so mad, so scared, so out of control. This was too much, and he didn't want to handle it. He felt the demon in him banging on its cages.
William slowly stood up, teetering back and forth a little, trying to find his grounding. He looked at the profile of Spike, "you look familiar, have we met? We look as if we are related." Spike raised his eyebrow at the boy. William grabbed his head a little and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. He looked like he was struggling for consciousness, and Spike knew that the last of that illness and the shock of what was going on was too much for him. The vampire turned and caught his double as he fell. He picked William up and placed him on the table and flung his duster on the corner of the shelf nearest him. He began looking though the inner pockets of William's jacket for the smelling salts that he carried around with him that summer.
"Wow, dead boy, can't even stop from ripping yourself off. That is so lame."
"How bloody stupid are you?" He found the small vial and uncorked it holding it up for the Scoobies to see. "This is what I was looking for." He waved the vial under William's nose and the young man began wheezing and coughing. He leaned over and whispered into William's ear, "Just relax. You'll feel better if you do."