*a/n. Hello again! I am back! this is part one of two for this section of the story. A lot of the lines are taken directly from the episode, Fools for Love because I didn't think I could say it better. The dialog that is. I adjusted it to fit the story line. I also did it for this section because its the first ep I took directly from the show. Let me know how you think. I also had Spike revert a bit back to his big bad self because I thought it fit his character. again Please Please Please review. reviews are love after all.*
"Hey guys, thanks for coming." Buffy said as she opened the door. She didn't bother to think about the fact that her mother was being invited into her own home. It made her head all achey. She stepped back from the door so the pair could walk it.
"Ok," She said, "Dawn's been fed and burped and changed and all that stuff. Spike is just putting her down now to bed. She should sleep for a couple of hours for sure. Lately she's been making it till midnight before waking up all crying and stuff. We should be back by than. I can't patrol yet." Buffy made a gesture to her abdomen. Her pale blue tee shirt covered the white bandages twining around her stomach. She still hadn't told Spike about what happened. She didn't have to after all. They just lived together, and fought demons together, and were raising a baby together. Yeah, the voice in the back of her head was making her feel pretty damn guilty about not telling him.
One hour later Buffy and Spike sat at a corner table at the Bronze.
"You're awfully quiet pet," Spike said, "what's buggin ya."
"I need information." Buffy said, with out realizing it she retreated into how Spike and her used to interact. Before he got a soul. The person who needed information and the informee.
"On what?" Spike asked slipping into his former big bad stance as easily as he slid into his duster.
"Slayers, You killed two of them."
"That I did." Spike said warily, unsure as to where this was going.
"You're going to tell me how." Buffy said.
Spike sensed a change in the slayer; he could feel her fear roll off of her in subtle waves. He knew something had happened. She'd acted funny all day. He planned on finding out what.
"Fine, but we do this my way. Order up some wings I'm feelin' peckish."
Buffy stared at him confused for a moment before turning in her seat to flag down the waitress. The combination of raising her hand and turning her torso pulled at her abdomen, causing her to wince in pain.
"Thought so." Grinned Spike, "Something nasty got a bite out of you."
"I'm fine." She snapped back. The pain of her wound killing what was left of her fired nerves.
"Of course that's why you're here in a second rate club in a dark corner with you're once enemy turned roommate draggin' up past uglies, cause you're fine." Spike replied voice tinged with bitterness.
"Were you born a pain in the ass or did that happen after you became a vampire?" Buffy asked with false sweetness.
"What can I say pet, I've always been bad." Spike responded.
London 1880
Spike saw himself as William, sitting alone in the corner of a dinner party. He was bent over a scrap of paper furiously scribbling away at it while muttering to himself. In his mind he watched himself get cornered by two other gentlemen. He remembered the humiliation of that night.
"…They call him William the bloody for his bloody awful poetry…"
"…Rather have rail road spikes in my head than listen to that stuff…"
Even over one hundred years later the cruel words of his peers echoed back to him. None crueler however than what Cecily had said to him that evening.
"…I love you, Cecily… I'm a good man… please try and see…"
He could still hear his pathetic begging that she listen, understand. And her response, those words that would forever be burned in his mind.
"I do see you. That's the problem. You're nothing to me. You're beneath me."
"So you were rejected." Buffy said, her face flat.
"Yep. Best thing that ever happened to me. If Cecily hadn't rejected me I wouldn't have been in that ally. Dru wouldn't have found me. And I wouldn't be a vampire, just another forgotten name on a gravestone dying from consumption or typhoid."
"So you traded up on the food chain. Then what?" Buffy asked.
"Hey now pet, not so quick there. It's not something you flip past on the Discovery Channel. Getting killed made me feel alive for the first time. I could feel the power coursing through my veins, the pure strength was like a high I never even dreamed existed."
London, 1880
William left the party, red faced with humiliation while shredding his poetry. He finally stopped in an alleyway, collapsing on a hay bale. Spike remembers sitting dejected and broken for what seemed like hours when he heard a female voice. Dru's voice. How she peered into his soul that night, offering him what he couldn't hope to refuse. Offering what he didn't want to refuse. He could still remember the feel of the prick of pain as her fangs slid into his neck. How he knew he should be afraid but wasn't.
The pair wandered over to the pool table. Each picking up a billiards cue and began to play a game while Spike continued his story.
"Dru gave me a chance like I never had before and I took it with both hands." Spike said as he positioned his lean body to effortlessly preform the break.
"The slayers Spike. What about the two slayers, one during the boxer rebellion, one during the 70's what happened to them." Buffy said as she took her turn with much more care to avoid straining her wound.
"I'm getting there pet. You wanted to drag up the uglies now you gotta listen to them my way." Spike replied.
Buffy waved her hand in a way for him to continue.
"I hadn't been a vampire long before I heard of the slayer. Less than a year really. I became obsessed. Most vampires avoided the slayer, the subject itself brought a cold sweat and frightened whispers. I was tired of hiding. I sought her out. Seemed like the perfect bit of fun. Hell there was death, there was glory and sod all else." Spike paused, recollecting his former self from a century before. He shrugged, "I was young."
He took his shoot, sinking a solid colored ball with ease.
"How'd you kill her? The first slayer, during the boxer revolution." Buffy asked again as she lined up her shot.
"Funny you should ask pet." Spike said as he slid behind her. He whipped his hand forward and grabbed her by the neck as if he was to attack. Reacting on instinct Buffy pivoted, bringing up her own pool cue ready to use it as a weapon. But Spike quickly knocks it away. His face shifts as the demon in him comes forward.
"Lesson of the first," He snarls, his breath hot on her neck where his fangs are pointed to, "you always have to reach for your weapon, I already got mine."
He stepped back shaking his face as he shifted back to normal.
"And that's good." He continued, "See when you're a vampire you've got nothing to fear. All the humans, even those that tormented you while you were alive, are nothing anymore. They can't kill you or hurt you. They become your prey. You hunt them, torment them, kill them now. When you're a vampire you only have one thing to fear. One girl, just one puny chit. And pet, that chit is you. Back then it, though, it was her."
The Boxer Rebellion, China, 1900
He could smell the pungent odor of scorched wood and burning flesh of those trapped in the riot. He could hear the screams of the panicked villagers as they tried to flee the chaos and destruction. But he pushed all of that to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand. Fighting the slayer. The girl was tiny, diminutive even. Skilled no doubt but didn't look like the girl that stuck fear into every big bad that went bump in the night.
"See rebellions are perfect for vampires. All that chaos, we can't help it. We go to it. It calls to us. The destruction, the pain, the blood. Nobody notices one more dead among a million. So we went. Finding her was just a bonus."
The slayer and Spike continued to trade blows but Spike gained the upper hand.
"This good for you to?" He asked laughing with pure joy at the fight.
A few more minutes of fighting and he was sinking his teeth into the slayers neck, sucking her blood. He remembered the rest of the night. Finding Dru again, the intoxicating effect of the slayer blood, bragging to Angel and Darla about what he, Spike, did.
"Had to be one of the best nights of my life. Until Dawn came along that is." He said.
Buffy looked at him fascinated, "You got off on it!" She said not sure if she was accusing him or understanding the feeling.
"I suppose you're telling me you don't?" Spike laughed, the same bitter note in his voice.
Buffy remained silent and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She couldn't deny that sometimes (all the time) after a really good fight she got a little horny. Hey Faith said it first, she just had to agree.
"Besides how many of my kind have you done, before I got all souled up that is?" Spike asked.
"Not enough." Buffy replied.
"And it never is. We keep coming don't we. You can kill a hundred, a thousand, and all the enemies in Hell besides and its never enough is it? But us? All we need is just one of us to have what we've all been waiting for, what we all want."
"And what's that?" Buffy asked staring Spike in the eye.
He closed the space in between them with one long smooth stride. For the second time that night he got right up next to her and leaned his had down to her ear, letting his warm breath tickle her ear and neck.
"Simple pet, all we need is one… good… day."
