Rating: PG-13, for language

Feedback: Yes please.

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no money. Joss is king.

A/N: Italics indicated Bill's thoughts. The scenes/quotes used are from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Fool for Love.

Chapter 4

Bill was in the dark. He hated the dark. For as long as he could remember, which wasn't that long according to his life's interlopers, the darkness of night had terrified him. He always felt as if there was something out there, waiting to get him. Because of this strange phobia, he never walked on dark streets. Took taxis home even when he wasn't drunk. Refused to go out of his apartment after dusk had fallen. These somewhat neurotic habits had been faced the scorn of just about anyone who'd noticed, because hell, even teenage girls would try to walk it if they were fairly close to home, and Bill was a grown man. Who just happened to still fear the boogeyman. Although, if he actually was a former vampire, then that would explain a lot. Somewhere, instinctively, he knew what was out there.

But now he was alone in the dark, the worst place to be, and was still afraid. Bill shivered as he walked down the empty streets. All of the buildings were empty and unlit. The streetlights weren't on, but he could still see the shapes of everything. It was like movie-night, where the characters couldn't see anything, but the audience could. The blonde man shook his head. Way to lose focus. Where was he? It looked a lot like pictures he'd seen of L.A., right down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine. But he didn't remember being here, right? He wasn't supposed to. Bill pulled his duster tighter around himself before he realized that he was even wearing it. He looked down and nearly laughed out loud, despite the fear crawling up the back of his spine. He was still in his office clothes: nice, blue, long-sleeved shirt, red tie, and slacks. Somewhere between his house and the Watcher's headquarters, he'd ditched the tie. It had come back for more, apparently. This had to be a dream.

"Oh God," Bill moaned aloud, almost giving himself whiplash as he whirled his head around, trying to find the enemy. The moment you realize that this is a dream is always when they get you. The emptiness persisted. The fact that it was in a city that he knew should be crawling with people only made it worse. Bill was almost on the brink of bolting for the nearest building and locking himself in a room with a flashlight when Angel appeared. Literally, just materialized in the middle of the road, like some magician's trick.

It wasn't Angel, not exactly. He was in vampire face and dressed in...leather pants? Something else was wrong though. His eyes were cold, mocking, held none of the softness that normally resides there. They were...soulless. Evil, thought Bill, as some long forgotten church sermon popped into his mind. The Devil's eyes look like that. Reflecting the darkest part of human beings.

"Ever the poet, aren't you Spike?" Angel drawled. Holy God, can he read my mind? Even his voice was different. The mocking tone was evident in every syllable, and there were the faintest traces of what sounded like an Irish accent. "Even after they've done the mind warp on you." The vampire began to circle him, and the small, reptilian part of the blonde man's brain began throwing out urgent warnings about vultures and sharks.

Something clicked in that same part of Bill's mind. "You're Angelus," he stated, turning to follow the still-circling vampire.

Angelus chuckled. "Give the boy a gold star." He finally stopped moving and stared at Bill appraisingly. "You sound weird without your fake accent."

"Fake accent?" Bill asked, confused, still afraid. But strangely, he was more afraid of the dark than he was Angelus. Maybe it was because he knew Angelus, even if he didn't remember. The dark was always unknown.

"The Cockney accent you made up a few months after you were turned," Angelus explained. "Not ringing a bell? All right." And suddenly, Bill was staring at himself. Or more accurately, what he used to be. His face was a little leaner and his skin was paler. His clothes were clearly from a different era, and not particularly fancy. The kind of clothes, relatively speaking, that Bill would've worn if he went out drinking with Drew. Giles said I was turned in the 1880's. And evil Angel said this was a few months after I was turned. This is how I looked late nineteenth century. Would that mean that I was Spike? Spike's hair was ruffled and unruly. But Flashback Spike's biggest problem was not his hair. It was that he was being pinned to the wall of a building. Probably not this particular building though, considering it didn't exist.

Bill studied the person doing the pinning: nineteenth-century Angelus. His hair was long, going down to his shoulders, like it had been in the hazy memories that Bill had managed to summon. The older vampire was in human face and unlike Spike, Angelus looked like someone of high-society, dressed up and proper. The two of them clearly didn't share opinions on how to live after death. At the moment, Old Spike and Old Angelus (as the blonde man had begun to call them in his mind) were both motionless, looking like a movie that had been paused.

The current, leather-pants-wearing Angelus stepped up to where Bill was staring and explained, "Pulled from your memory, even if you can't get to it. Yorkshire, 1880. We were in a mineshaft. The sequence of events that brought us there only confirmed my sneaking suspicion that you were a complete idiot."

"If this is my memory, then how can I see myself?" challenged Bill, mostly just for the sake of being stubborn.

Angelus shrugged. "It's how you imagine yourself to be in that particular moment. Fairly accurate, although you aren't as muscular in reality." Bill gave him a sour look. The vampire just grinned a grin that showed more teeth than the human was entirely comfortable with, and ordered, "Watch. You'll see about your accent."

The nineteenth century vampires began moving. Spike began struggling to break free, and Old Angelus just held on tighter and asked, "Perhaps it's my advancing age that make me so forgetful, William." Oh yes, definitely an Irish accent for Angelus. "Why don't we kill you?" The flashback vampires seemed unaware that they were on an L.A. street and had two creatures watching them.

Bill leaned over and asked current Angelus, in a hushed tone, "Why'd you call me William? I thought that was only my name when I was human?"

The vampire glanced at him in amusement. "Shut up and watch."

Spike was choking out something around Angelus's death grip. It sounded like 'ike' or 'pike'. "What's that?" Angelus asked, releasing Spike.

The younger vampire rubbed his throat and glared. "It's 'Spike' now," he growled, in the Cockney accent that echoed in the back of Bill's head. "You'd do well to remember it, mate."

Old Angelus blinked at him in annoyance. "I'm not your mate. And when did you start talking like that?" And then they both disappeared, back into the parts of Bill's brain that were locked away from him.

"So, there's you as a vampire," current Angelus said, almost businesslike, clearly enjoying Bill's confusion. "Let's take you to the night that you died."

And there he was again. But very different this time. His skin was not as pale as it had been, though he was not particularly tanned. His hair was still unruly though. Unlike Spike, this man was dressed as a gentleman, complete with tie. So I'm not the only one. And there was something else that was different then the vampire Spike. Some bravado or confidence that wasn't there in the human. Something else we have in common.

"This is what I looked like the night I d-died?" Bill asked, feeling a lightheaded, like he wasn't really grounded to anything anymore. Wait... "Buffy said I died to save the world. That means that I died twice!"

"Don't let it go to your head," Angelus advised. "Plenty of people have died twice. Angel, Buffy...my Sire, Darla, died four times."

Bill blinked. "How is that even possible?"

"Not the point. Watch."

William the human began talking to an empty space, where a person had probably been. "Oh yes!" William seemed to give himself a mental slap on both cheeks. "I mean, no." He glanced to the side. "I mean...mother's expecting me." He then disappeared.

"Wow, the voice really is different," Bill observed. "And that changed in just a few months? Huh. Wait a minute." The human replayed William's words. "I'm what, twenty-something? 'Mother's expecting me'? I sound like Norman Bates!"

Angelus grinned and agreed, "I think, had Drusilla allowed you to live out the rest of your natural life, you would have become the nineteenth century equivalent of him."

"Even the cross-dressing and murder?"

"Anything's possible."

The blonde man stared at Angelus. "What was the point of all of that anyway?"

"One: To prove that you lived your entire unlife as a fraud." Bill nodded in concession. "Two: To show you what you have in your mind, if you could get to it." Angelus smiled his scary smile again.

Bill shook his head. Time to wake up now. "Well, this dream has been very informative, but I'd like to wake up and eat breakfast, so if you don't mind-"

Angelus sighed. "I can see we're going to have to do this the hard way. All right 'Bill', the first thing you should know about all of this is," Angelus cocked back a fist, "not a dream." And then the vampire punched Bill. And it hurt like hell.

Agony flared through his entire face as the vampire's fist slammed into his nose. It felt like his sinuses were on fire and Bill tumbled backwards, scraping his hands on the pavement as he reached out to catch himself.

"Ahh Will, you've forgotten how to take a fall," Angelus commented, amused, from somewhere above the injured man.

Bill was trying to remember which direction, up or down, you were supposed to tilt your head in case of nosebleed and could only respond, "You son of a bitch, what the hell was that for?!"

Angelus laughed and crouched down to where Bill was sprawled. "I told you this wasn't a dream. It's not real, but it's not a dream."

"What are you?" the man asked, not trying to get up.

"I'm your memory of Angelus," the vampire admitted.

"What, so I just made you up?" God, my face hurts. Angelus nodded. "Then how come you could hit me?"

The dark-haired vampire chuckled. "Maybe you aren't listening. I'm your memory of Angelus. I hit you a lot. And it tended to hurt."

"So why are you here?"

"That would be telling," Angelus smiled, "and right now, you wouldn't be willing to listen." The vampire picked Bill up effortlessly and placed him on his feet, dusting him off with those huge paws that passed as hands. "You aren't ready to hear it. So wake up Bill, go about your day." Angelus slung an arm around Bill's shoulders. "And be suspicious. They won't tell you the truth. See you tonight."

Bill jerked awake amid sweat-soaked sheets, gasping for breath. He threw the covers off of him and darted to the small bathroom that was attached to his room. Blinking as the lights assaulted his eyes painfully, the blonde man examined his face in the mirror. No broken nose. No blood. He looked at his hands. His palms weren't scraped raw from their close encounter with asphalt.

"This sucks," Bill said to his reflection. He splashed some water onto his face but it didn't change anything. The memories were still there. The blonde man sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. What did he do now? 'They won't tell you the truth'? What 'they' had Angelus been talking about? Angel and Buffy and the others?

Bill wandered back into his room and grabbed the toothbrush that had been packed along with some of his clothes. How did the Watcher people get into my apartment anyway? Break in? Did they have a spare key? Miniature, complementary Crest toothpaste onto the brush, just like in hotels. Shower with miniature, complementary shampoo, soap, and conditioner. White, fluffy towels. Because Bill wasn't feeling enough of a sense of unreality. Hair still damp, because they didn't give him a hairdryer, the blonde man changed into a pair of blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Bill had always liked black T-shirts, for some reason.

A knock at his door nearly made him leap out of his skin. "Spike?" came Andrew's voice. "Are you awake in there?"

"Yeah," Bill called. He opened the door. Andrew smiled when he saw him.

"It's good to see you again," the boy said.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"I'm supposed to kind of show you around," Andrew continued. "Everyone else was busy and I volunteered."

"Okay, sure."

Bill followed Andrew out into the hall. "Can we get breakfast?" the blonde man asked.

"Lunch, more like," commented Andrew. "It's 11:30. We didn't want to wake you. There's a restaurant across the street. You still like onion blossoms, right?"

"I love onion blossoms."