Author's note: I've been itching to let go of this chapter... please, please, please tell me what you think. This is both my favorite and most vulnerable chapter-Please tell me what you think. :) Reveiws people! press the little button.
Chapter XXIX - Some Things are Revealed
"Why did you save him?" Buffy asked Spike as soon as she thought Alex was out of hearing range.
It was a little disturbing to see him tucking William in like that. The whole place had such a domestic air to it. The house the records, Alex going to school it made everything seem so... well, real.
Buffy wasn't sure how to handle it.
When Spike had kissed William good night, it made him look, well, like a dad.
Right, because she would sure know all about that, her own father hadn't even been around long enough to tuck her in good night.
"The Cortenay person." she added as clarification.
"This whole thing must be confusing to you isn't it?" he asked trying to steer her away from the topic. He was pretty sure that as soon as he gave her an opening to whine she would latch onto it and hold on for dear life.
Buffy cocked an eyebrow.
"Somehow I think I'll manage." She said dryly. "Just call me adapt-o girl." She paused. "Now, don't think I'm going to drop the question."
"I saved him because, his father, a very close friend of mine, and then evidently my brother-in-law, Edward Cortenay saved my life once." as he said this, his eyes looked passed Buffy. "A demon, if I remember correctly. S'how we met," he paused steepling his fingers as he had often did in his human days when he was in deep thought. Right now he was dwelling in memories he had tried for so long to stamp down on. "Was still in school then. And when I went back to Wescottshire for Holidays, I took Edward with me, he was a man of no title but he did have wealth, a great fat lot of it. Not like we did, though, new money. S'father got it of the East India Trading Company. Camilla took a liking to him."
Buffy cocked her head.
"So you're telling me Jonathan Cortenay was not related to royalty but you are?" she asked arching an eye brow.
Spike snapped out of his memories.
"Hard to believe innit, slayer?" he asked.
"Believe me when I say, uh huh." she replied. "That's the greatest understatement I've ever heard."
"Wait a second, a demon..." she looked at Spike. "You were attacked by a demon?"
Spike nodded.
"Was fighting the bugger off when Edward came across me." he said. "And he took forever to react while I was yelling instructions. Prolly not used to seeing a five hundred pound Zugrath demon. He did better than me though, was never much of a fighter back then."
Buffy blanched she began piecing together an idea in her head. The housekeeper, other than being truly intimidating, was a seer. Oh god, that made him sound like a watcher.
Once the thought entered her head she found that she couldn't
"So you knew about the demon and how to kill it?" she asked, her voice already taking a teasing tone.
"Knew?" Spike demanded. "Of course I knew. I've known since I was bloody ten-" his eyes widened in realization as he snapped out of his memory induced reverie. Buffy was now grinning at him like the Cheshire cat.
"Spike," she teased. "William wasn't a watcher was he?"
Spike looked so shocked that he had let that little fact slip. he had kept that to himself for the last hundred or so years.
"Spike?" Buffy demanded. She realized that he might even be serious. A lord, a Duke, whatever, she could deal. But a watcher? Now that was little hard to swallow, to think that bad boy Spike was once a Giles was just… just… "No way, I was just kidding, how did you know abut that demon?"
Spike's face suddenly froze. His expression was unreadable.
"You were right." he said, his voice sounded hollow and strange.
Buffy rolled her eyes.
"C'mon, Spike I wasn't born yesterday." she said. "Now seriously, how did you do it?"
He didn't answer her; however, he just grabbed her hand.
"Spike, where are we going?" Buffy asked yanking her hand back.
Spike looked back at her then turned knowing that she would follow. Finally after two flights of stairs and ten minutes, he threw open the double doors of a colossal library, the room was circular with a winding path that went four stories up, there were mahogany writing desks and everything.
Giles would have drooled.
Buffy took out one book, then the next, everything was arranged by genre, there was a whole section (that consisted of two stories) of occult books, first editions of charlotte's web and everything else Buffy could have imagined.
"When I was little," Spike's voice said, "I would come in here and just read all day, sometimes forgetting supper."
Buffy just stared from him to the library. She opened a book and read out the name of a random demon.
"Mohra." she said, she grinned, this one she knew. She had seen one for like five seconds when she had visited Angel a couple of years and an entire world ago.
"Green bugger, impossible to kill unless you bring darkness to a thousand eyes, meaning the big red gem in the middle of its forehead, goes after warriors of the light side, needs lots of salt to live also, its blood had massive regenerating properties. Bugger turns vamps human and the like."
Buffy stared at him.
After a moment she walked over to another book and opened it to a random page.
"Marie Deveraux" she read.
"Slayer in 16th century France." he answered smoothly, barely pausing to think. "Born Pontieirs, France on the 14th of May, 1567 and died 6th, December 1586."
Buffy looked up from the book and stared at him open mouthed, Spike cocked an eyebrow in response.
"Does that prove it to you, slayer?" he asked.
Buffy put the book back and took a seat on the desk, still a little awed by the library, after a long moment, she turned her attention back to Spike.
"If you know about all this, then why suddenly go off and get that- that-?" she asked. "I mean you know all about vampires, why become one?"
Spike exhaled loudly, picking up another leather bound book and sifting through the pages.
"I'm love's bitch, remember?" he asked absently. "A woman," he snapped the book closed. Shaking his head at how pathetic his human was. William was a brilliant watcher, but he somewhat awkward around the ladies, he didn't have Spike's confidence. "The woman said something cruel to me, I was going through a phase, rejecting my destiny and place at the watchers council, I was about to be introduced to my slayer when it happened. So, I let a known vampire bite me, hoping she'd kill me. Angelus, however, didn't follow my plan." he returned the volume to the shelf. "Oh well, I stopped brooding, let my blood guide me since then. Became a doer, not a thinker, William was a thinker, and i wasn't going to be him anymore."
Buffy just looked around.
"So anytime we had trouble with a demon, you could have helped?" she asked. "Oh, my God, last year when the Gentlemen came into town, you knew what was going on! That's why you weren't scared or surprised! And that's why you know how to cure Giles of his blindness when we were-" he smirked at her and she shook off her thought. "-Never mind-you knew which book to look into! And You knew about Du Lac's cross! All this time you were playing dumb! When Giles turned into a demon, you could speak Fyarl! No wonder you could understand him! Why didn't you just speak up?"
"I was rather disinclined to come to your aid then, slayer." he said. "Could you very well blame me? I was chained to the bathtub, after all."
She shrugged, he did have a point. Then something occurred to her, she completely brushed off the fact that spike had just used the word 'disinclined.'
"Could you have restored Angel soul?" Buffy asked curiously.
Spike shrugged.
"Yes." he said confidently. "I believe I read the spell once before." he jerked himself out of his thought in a way only he could. Buffy now realized that when he did that, he was pushing away the nature of William, the way he would stop himself from falling into a thinking daze. "Now, I believe I've given you enough proof."
Her intense look made him pause.
"Slayer?" he prompted.
"I guess I don't have to ask you to research what you can about William." She said quietly.
He shook his head.
"I'm already cataloging the prophesies I know, Pet." He said with a small smile. "I think you forget that he's my son too."
Buffy smiled gently.
"Yeah." She said. "He is."
He smiled back but said nothing. After a moment, he opened the door and held out his hand to her.
Buffy just arched an eyebrow looked down at the vamp's out stretched arm.
Spike smirked.
"Just want to lead you back to your room, Slayer." he said. "God knows you probably can't find it on your own."
Buffy glared at him.
Spike chuckled.
The watcher was right yet again. It was like the old days, William was barely wrong about anything, and just like that, the spark of the watcher in him came to life. Melding both Spike and William, he felt it, but he didn't say anything.
