Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from BtVS.
Many, many thanks to ObscureBookWyrm for taking time to look this over for me. She's the best!
Spoilers: Initiative
A/N: Personally I find stories that just rehash episodes to be boring, but here's the problem with S4 of Remember When, the events are going to be essentially the same. Mostly. I mean, how boring is that? So I'm going to strive to show only the interactions between characters that are skewed from the original timeline. Since I hate rehash, I'm not going to be rewriting entire episodes, but just hitting on the key points of difference or writing in between the scenes. I know things are a little broken up right now, but once Spike makes his appearance in Pangs the story will come together in a more seamless manner. The thing to keep in mind is, unless I (in an A/N) or the characters specifically say otherwise, everything happens as it did in the series. I hope it will be creative enough to hold your interest!
Remember When
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Misery had permeated every cell of Willow's being when the knock came at her dormitory room door.
"Come in."
The door hit the wall with a bang. "What the hell is wrong with you Sunnydale women? Are you genetically predisposed to being prey? Is it the water? Tapped straight from the Hellmouth, it must be."
"Spike!" Willow leapt off the bed as Spike slammed the door behind him. He was paler than she remembered. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his usually pink lips were nearly blue and chapped with dried skin.
"Are you alright?" The question popped out without forethought. Her concern only seemed to enrage him further.
"No, I'm not alright, you dumb bint. You're the Slayer's bestie and you're inviting people in willy nilly? You want to die?"
"Of course not! I didn't know it was you."
Wow, Willow didn't know that someone's head could actually explode, and yet still remain intact. Red-eyed, Spike advanced, poking her in the chest until she fell back on the bed.
"That's the soddin' point. You didn't know it was me! It could have been any number of nasties bent on having you for supper. Fuck! That's it. It's official. You're all a bunch of ninnies."
"Hey! That's not nice."
"Oh My God!" Spike roared with a distinct adolescent twang. He slapped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide and mortified over the edge of his palm. That's right. Those words just came out of William the Bloody's mouth.
A giggle escaped Willow. Followed by another. Until she was nearly bent over with laughter. God, it felt good to laugh, even if it was symptomatic of hysteria.
Spike backed away as if she had somehow infected him with valley girl-itis. He dropped his hand, brassed off beyond the telling of it.
"Shut up!" he yelled. "Evil, here. And I will rip out your throat!"
Willow gasped, trying to rein in her hilarity, but she was far from successful. Her giggles choked off into a shocked yelp when Spike launched himself on her, vamped out, fangs going for her throat.
"Ow!" He rolled off her, landing on the ground with a heavy thud, while clutching his skull. Willow peered at him from over the edge of the bed, her green eyes huge with disappointment.
"Did you just try to bite me?"
"Fuck-ing vampire. What's with you women not getting that?"
"That's not okay!" Afraid of getting too close, she swung her foot over the edge and kicked him in the side with her pointed, very witchy looking boots. He grunted, but was otherwise unaffected.
Frowning, Willow was silent for a moment as she studied his crumpled form. "You think I'm a woman?" she asked hesitantly.
Spike cast her a disgusted look. Leave it to the silly bint to hone in on the least important thing, rather than the fact there was a dangerous animal in the room with her. "Well, yeah. It's what you are, innit?"
"I guess. No one's called me a woman before," she said with a shrug. "I guess I'm still trying to get caught up, you know? Being in college, on my own, doing adult things." She sniffed. "Getting dumped."
Spike didn't reply. Caught up in his own misery he hunched over next to her bed, his aching head braced in his hands.
"You okay?"
"No. I am not bloody okay. I've had a horrible bloody night. Hell, a horrible couple of weeks. Bugger it. The entire last two years have been the worst of my miserable undead life." He rolled over so he was sitting with his back braced against the bed, his knees drawn up. He rested his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his cupped hands. He looked so defeated that Willow reached out and rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
Spike was silent, his head clutched in his hands. He was a picture of such abject misery that Willow started to feel more than a little concerned.
"She said I wasn't demon enough to be her man. Said we could be friends….friends." The last was drawn out in a long pained growl that reverberated through Willow. The mournful sound yanked on the tendril of control that hid her own sorrow at bay. Tears leaking from her eyes, she slid off the bed to sit on the floor next to Spike.
"Then she went and shagged everything with a dick, including a soddin' fungus demon. Those soddin', shite-eating, opportunistic wankers eat vampires. What is she thinkin'?"
Willow flinched at the vehemence in his tone.
"Then Joyce…" he trailed off. Willow had heard all about the confrontation at the Summers' residence and Joyce's refusal to allow Spike on the premises because he couldn't control his vampire tendencies.
Tendencies he'd just shown not five minutes ago.
Willow was mad, but she was sympathetic as well. She knew all about rejection. How it felt, a wrenching deep down in your soul that tightened until it felt like your very self was breaking apart under others' judgments.
"I'm so sorry. I…I know how it feels never to be good enough. To always be trying to be better, something more. To have it never matter."
Spike carefully lowered his hands to look at her. "That can't be true. You're a right fine bird, Red."
"Oh, sure. 'Cept it's always…you remind me of my sister…or I just needed help with my homework. It's never, 'Hey sexy, wanna be my snuggle bunny?" Her face fell, and something truly terrible shimmered beneath her tears, a rising tide of panic that looked about to swallow her whole. "And…and I'll never be that girl!" she burst out.
"What girl?"
"The special one. The talented one. Or even just the pretty one that all the hot guys fall over themselves for. I'm never going to be chosen for anything."
Spike tilted his head peering at her closely before saying in a soft, almost consoling voice, "Hey, that's not true. You're pretty. Besides, you're something better than pretty. You're a clever bint."
Willow's face darkened, anger billowing off her in inky, bitter waves. "Sure, clever. That's all I'm ever good for. Being the clever one. The smart one. The nerd. Guess what, Spike? No one ever looks at the nerd. They want the blonde in the itty bitty polka dot bikini or the babe in black leather."
Spike watched her for a moment, a curiously blank expression on his face. The blankness morphed into a leer that wasn't quite right, but good enough to pass inspection by a heartbroken witch. "Oh, you're a cute one, Red. Downright biteable in fact."
In the time that it took him to respond, the shadows behind her eyes had receded, and the uncertain girl with the soft voice and even softer heart was back.
"I am?"
"Sure. Remember last year? You were wearing that cute little lilac jumper. All soft and fuzzy. Almost took a taste right then and there. And tonight…"
She frowned. "Yeah, I noticed."
Sheepishly, Spike rubbed his head, his hand brushing over a tender spot on the back of his skull.
"I wouldn't have killed you. Just….I'm so hungry. Something's wrong with me."
"What's the deal with that? I mean, the uggg." She grasped her head, imitating his agony.
"I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with me. There I was minding my own business, trying my hand at alcohol poisoning – no mean feat when you're undead and all – when these commando blokes jumped me outside of Willy's." Spike shook his head. After a couple moments he sighed deeply. "When's the Slayer going to be here, you know?"
"Uh, she's at a party."
Spike threw up his hands with a growl. He stood, pacing the small confines of the room, suddenly feeling very claustrophobic. "The world's about to end and she's at a party!"
"An apocalypse!" Willow jumped up, ready to get on her official apocalypse outfit. Something less fuzzy. She frowned at her sweater, pulling it away from her body. And less neon.
"Well, no." Spike rubbed his brow.
"Then what?"
"None of your business, alright? It's official slayer stuff. So why don't you go back to wallowing or whatever it was you were doing in here by yourself?"
Willow stared him down for a few minutes, her brow crinkling.
"You know what? I just remembered that I'm very upset with you."
"Why?"
"Because!"
Spike cocked a dark eyebrow.
"You're not going to shove a broken bottle in my face, are you?"
Spike made a sound of disgust. "What is it with you birds and that bottle? The way you all harp on about it you'd think I actually cut you."
"Bottle. Face." Willow pointed to her face, which was set in an expression of extreme displeasure. "I'm only human, Spike. You stab me in the face with a broken bottle, I die. Or I get horrible facial scars. I'll be like Edward Scissorhands. All pale and scarred and then nobody will ever love me." She started sobbing. "Not that anyone loves me now."
"Bloody hell. I'm sorry about the soddin' bottle. I swear to all that's unholy I won't do it again if you'll just stop blubbering on."
"And the last time you were here, you had to be all, 'Willow and Xander kissing in a tree,' and it led to all kinds of badness. Oz and I broke up for weeks, and Cordy ran off. She was crying so hard she ran her car into a tree and got impaled on some wire fencing. She's still not talking to Xander."
"Well the bird wasn't right for the lad. She's high maintenance, that one. The whelp can barely maintain his own hard-on."
"Eww!"
Spike leered. "Wot? Thought you were interested in the boy's biology?"
"Spike, no! I'm Oz's girl." Willow's face fell. "Or I was."
"Still holding a torch. Been a while ain't it?"
Her white brow creased in confusion. "What? Oh, no. We got back together after you left."
"The boy took you back? Is he that weak or you that good?"
Willow reached for the first thing she could find, which happened to be a clump of used, wadded-up tissues on her side table, and hurled them at Spike.
"Bugger!" He leapt back. "That's disgusting."
"He forgave me," she wailed, ignoring his revulsion. "But now…" she sniffed, reaching blindly for some more tissue on her nightstand.
"What?"
"He left." She collapsed on the bed, blubbering, and Spike scratched the back of his ear. Using extreme caution, he sidled next to the bed, and patted her on the back.
"Why'd the berk do that? Doesn't seem right, leaving a bird like you behind."
His words only made her cry harder. He was looking at the door longingly, wondering if he should just wait in the hall for the Slayer, when he felt a jerk on his sleeve and he tumbled down beside her.
She instantly pressed her soggy face to his shoulder and sobbed loudly.
"Fuck. No…the leather." His protest ended in a defeated sigh. He lifted his arm so she could press her face into his chest, and he leaned back against the headboard. Every few minutes he patted her shoulder while he stared hard at the door, willing, through sheer force of will, for Buffy to walk in and save him.
After a few minutes, he realized the girl was talking. He shifted her, so she wasn't muffled in the leather.
"What was that, witch?"
"I said, he left me because of a girl."
Spike rubbed the back of his neck, thinking back to the solemn wolf he had only seen for a few minutes. "That doesn't seem right. Maybe you should start from the beginning."
She nodded and told him everything.
8888
Willow had gotten a pint of Chunky Monkey out of the fridge and they were sharing the carton as they sat at the end of the bed.
"So he locked her in with him, so she wouldn't go chowin' on the locals, then the beasties shagged themselves rotten?"
"Spike!"
"What?"
"I just—uhh. Do you have to be so mean?"
"Not being mean. Just makin' sure I've got all the facts."
"Well, it's mean." She rubbed a hand over her chest. "It hurts, you know."
Spike looked down at his spoon, before tossing it into the ice-cream carton. "Yeah. I know."
Willow took the mostly empty carton and tossed it into the trash with a mental reminder to take it out before going to bed. No need to invite ants with a big old 'Boy Howdy' sign.
"So he's gone then?"
Willow nodded. "Off to find way to control the beast within, blah, blah, send you a postcard, blah, blah, love you but can't stay…blah…" She started to sniffle again.
"Hmm."
The thoughtful sound made Willow dry up her self-pity right quick. That sound could not possibly mean good things.
"Hmm, what?"
"Just, hmm."
Willow's brows snapped together. "There are no 'just, hmms'. There are sarcastic 'hmms' and 'absent-minded, stop-talking-cause-I'm-watching-TV hmms', but there are no 'just hmms'."
"Well. You said he tried to rip your throat out, right?"
The sound she made was pure disgust. "Yes, I get it, Spike." Her arms crossed defensively. "He had to leave to protect me. I'm not stupid."
"You sure about that?"
"Don't be a jerk!"
Faster than she could blink, Spike was on her, throwing her onto the bed and holding her down. Her scream died in her throat when he thrust his vamped-out face into hers. Her green eyes were huge as she watched him edge closer, his yellow eyes glowing with killer instinct. When he spoke, his low, liquid voice was such a contrast to the hard edges of his predator face that she nearly forgot to breathe.
"There he is. A good man. A man who took you back after you threw his love in his face. A man who forgave you. And he's starin' down at the love of his life. Ready to sink his fangs into you. Ready to rip your throat out. Knowin' you're goin' to taste sweet. All that rich blood, and succulent flesh." Spike fingered Willow's throat, following the undulation as she tried to swallow down what little spittle was left in her mouth. "Nothin' tough here. All tender meat. Nothin' to get stuck in his fangs. Nothin' to stop him from chewing right through you to the sweet bits inside."
Willow hyperventilated. Her chest rose and fell with her frantic panting, but Spike's heavy weight wouldn't allow her to take a full breath. She watched him speak; hypnotized by his words, mesmerized by the picture he painted.
"Then he wakes up." Spike's voice lowered into seductive tones. "But the urge. That animal need to sink into you hasn't gone away. God. All he wants is to breathe you in." Spike inhaled deeply, rubbing the side of his nose along the line of her jaw. "All those wonderful scents. Fear, adrenaline, tears. Heat, your heat. And maybe his cum from when he was inside you last. It's all still there, itching beneath his skin, just waiting for the next full moon to be let out so it can devour. Eat and fuck its fill until there's nothing left but bloody bits and maybe some pretty red hair."
Spike drew back, watching her tears as they streamed down her temples, darkening her hair with their wet.
"Tell me, Red. You get it now?"
She nodded, unable to speak.
"No matter the face. Never underestimate the monster just beneath."
"Okay, Spike." She swallowed hard. "I won't."
In one startling motion, he kipped to his feet, refusing to look at her lying on the bed.
"I'm off. If you see the Slayer, tell her I'm lookin' for her."
"Yeah, okay," she agreed, her rough voice still a whisper. "Spike?"
"What?" He kept his eyes trained on the door, far from where she sat cautiously on the bed. "I get why he left, and…I'm not angry. You're right. He needed to go. But…I can still be sad, can't I? I miss him so much. I want him here, beside me, with me…and now's he's gone and I feel like everything inside me has gone wonky. Like it's all wrong and I can't make it right again."
Hand still on the door handle, his eyes lowered to stare at his steel-toed boots, he opened his mouth to speak. The words caught in the back of his throat, and he coughed.
"Yeah, Willow. Missing him, loving him…it's just part of being human."
She nodded, and he opened the door to leave only to have the black muzzle of a rifle thrust into his face.
"Damn! Cut the power! Cut the power!" Someone yelled.
Spike whirled to the side, slamming the door shut. Without missing a beat, he tore the computer desk from where it was anchored on the wall and thrust it in front of the door. The door rattled in its frame as something heavy hit it from the outside.
"Once we have Hostile Seventeen, secure the girl. She might be contaminated."
Spike glanced over his shoulder from where he was braced against the door, using his weight to keep the commandos out. Willow was standing between the two single beds right in front of the window that led to a two story drop. Her hands were clutched against her chest and her eyes were wide with abject terror.
Darkness doused the room. Willow's scream pierced Spike's sensitive ears.
"He's dangerous. Use extreme force if necessary."
The door shuddered, the sharp whine of wood shattering. Nothing for it, the commandos were coming through.
Spike abandoned the door, running at Willow full bore. He didn't hesitate as he snatched her up into his arms and leapt up. He braced one booted foot on the nightstand situated between the two beds, using it to propel himself into a forward spin. He tucked Willow against his chest, wrapping his duster around her head as he slammed into the window backwards.
As they fell through the air, diamond shards of glass glittering in the yellow street light followed them down. He landed on his back, all the air rushing from his lungs, Willow cradled safely on his chest.
Dazed, but well trained for life on the Hellmouth, Willow scrambled off of him, offering her hand to help him up. Behind her backlit silhouette, Spike could see bodies fill the square frame of the window they'd just leapt through. The sight of their rifle muzzles prodded him to kipping to his feet in record time.
He grabbed Willow's wrist and hauled her behind him, running so fast they were practically flying. In the distance he could still hear the commandos giving chase, their shouts telling him that more had joined the ranks.
"Scarper to the Watcher's."
"Spike!" She grabbed his leather cuff, refusing to release him. "Come with."
"No. We'll lead them right to the door. You run, I'll draw them off. Now, go!" he ordered, pushing her down the path. She cast him one last frantic look but quickly obeyed. Spike watched until she was safely out of sight, then began laying a trail even a Fyarl demon could follow.