Spike walked through the grave-yard, high on the blood of the couple he had just killed, their pathetic cries for mercy and delightfully bloody deaths had made up for some of the indignation he had felt to be bested once again by that infernal Slayer. Why did it suddenly seem so new again, like it had been years since he had tasted fresh, warm blood and felt the joy of the kill? He made his way into his crypt and noticed the stash of empty liquor bottles by the door. Maybe he had been on a drinking binge of a more alcoholic nature and had been passed out for a day or so, would explain the feeling that he had not fed for an eternity, also might account for the strange gaps in his memory.
"I must have really tied one on" muttered Spike "Time to kill the bitch good and proper, then get out of this pathetic excuse for a town."
He was feeling meaner and nastier by the moment. It made him want to hurt somebody, torture them until they screamed in pain and…It made him long for Drusilla. Why exactly had they broken up? He distinctly remembered returning to her after his last drunken episode and making it clear to her with a hot poker and a branding iron exactly why they belonged together. What could have happened to destroy that delightful new chapter in their relationship that they had been forging? And why couldn't he remember?
Meanwhile, Buffy had gathered everybody at her house. William was assisting Joyce in the kitchen, instructing her on the correct way to serve tea, while Dawn rather obviously eavesdropped around the corner.
"You're sure Buffy," said Giles, "You saw two of them?"
"Definitely. Saw Spike, as we all know and loathe him, tearing out of here, and then William, cowering under the tree. Unless Spike is a speed, er, demon with the quick change of clothes and hair, we have two of them."
"How is that possible?" asked Xander
"Um…evil Spike double from the other dimension…?" suggested Willow, "Except, for Spike, his evil double would be, um, not so evil, because he's evil already."
"But he's human. His 'good' double would have led out his life and died half a century ago" said Giles "No, this is more complicated than that. I suspect that our answer might lie in investigating exactly what happened at the rubbish tip the other night. I'll start reading up on Toth."
He waved a book of demonology that he had brought with him. "Willow, some sort of history of Spike himself might prove beneficial. Anything that might help us unravel this situation."
Willow dutifully charged up her laptop and began to hack in to the Council of Watchers official web-site (www.COW.com).
"Can I go stake Spike now?" asked Buffy, "Cause he's all not chipped and trying to kill my family."
William entered just then, balancing a tray of tea and Joyce's chocolate chip cookies. "Who is Spike?" he inquired politely, "And if he is causing you and your lovely mother any distress, perhaps you should notify the local authorities?"
"Local authorities wouldn't be much help with this guy, but thanks" said Buffy, feeling rather sorry for William, who was seemed so out of his place in her living room. He conducted himself like somebody in one of those boring Emma Thompson movies that Giles occasionally insisted on renting and then watching at her place because he had yet to purchase 'a video'.
"How are you doing there?" asked Xander, somewhat kindly. It was difficult not to feel somewhat protective towards William, he was so the antithesis of Spike, and now, clothed in Giles' old suit and balancing a tea cup on one knee, rather endearing and pathetic all at the same time.
"Still dreadfully flummoxed" sighed William "Try as I might, I can't seem to recall exactly how I came to be here. Last thing that comes to mind is that odd girl in the barn, and even that isn't very clear."
"She look like this?" asked Willow, pulling up a photo of Drusilla on the computer and showing it to William.
"Why yes, the very girl." he said, astonished that the device the young lady was manipulating could produce a photograph in this manner.
"She pursued me after I left the party…talked about…well, very little of what she said made much sense, but…" he trailed off as another memory hit him, an unfamiliar one "My mother!" he said sharply.
"What about her?" asked Anya, bored "Was she in the barn too?"
"No…I'm certain that I just recalled the manner in which she died…" William's lower lip shook a bit like he was fighting off tears "It feels so odd…like it's happening now, and yet happened so long ago."
Buffy exchanged a glance with Giles. Looked like William was finally getting some of his post turning memories back, and if her past experience with vampires was any indication, slaughtering their family members was usually the first rite of passage after their glorious 'change'. Tara quietly went and fetched the box of tissues from the kitchen and put them within the reach of William's trembling hand.
"What are you remembering, William?" asked Giles softly.
"She is crying…. she looks so much older than I remember her…alone, so alone in her bed, with nobody she loves there to hold her hand…" William stood up and walked away from them, his face pale. "She's dying…of consumption, and grief, that her child died before her. Me. She thinks I'm dead and wants to be with me…why would Mother think I was gone?"
"More to the point," muttered Buffy, "Why was Spike watching his mother die when he could help her along?"
"Shhhh" hushed Giles "It may well be imperative that he get back his memory if we are going to address our current situation."
William was silent, his eyes staring into space, but seeing another scene, his beloved mother, dying alone in that miserable hospital bed, her dear eyes so sunken and old, her usually rosy skin a deathly white…. Recalling himself walking into the room when all was quiet, and looking down at her as she slept, a dreadful sorrow and longing pounding against something cold and uncaring, a barrier within himself that he finally penetrated until he was able to blurt out her name and her eyes shot open and met his. "William!"
"Mother, I'm here."
"I've so longed to see you," her smile had suddenly lit up her face as her eyes met his, "Am I dead now too?"
"Not yet," he had replied "I've come to tell you that it's alright, that I'm waiting for you and we will be together in Heaven…that you can let go now."
Her face was suddenly so relieved, he could almost hear her heart beat slowing as she relaxed.
"They told me your grave had been tampered with, that you had been stolen by demons and were a cursed creature…I couldn't bear it William…couldn't bear to think that I would never be with you again"
And he had taken her in his arms and reassured her that their souls would be reunited in Paradise, and she had smiled, and died peacefully looking into the face of her son.
As William slowly told this story, he was overcome with the intense emotion he had felt that night. Tara, Joyce, and even Buffy fought back tears of their own as they listened.
"What is your next memory after the death of your mother?" prompted Giles gently.
"Oh…I see that strange girl."
"Drusilla"
"Yes, that's her name. I see her a lot, and only her…she consumes me…there is nothing but her…and then nothing" William thought hard, but it was like a black mass surrounded his memories, and no matter how he prodded at it, it was impenetrable. "No, there's nothing…until you, Miss Buffy."
"Me?" Buffy widened her eyes.
"I see you…your face coming out of the dark. That's all….I, I'm feeling rather overcome. I think I might like to retire."
He dashed up the stairs with Joyce following. She found him sitting sadly on the edge of the bed they had made up for him. "You must have loved your mother a lot" she said, feeling very maternal herself towards him.
"Oh yes, very much" William buried his face in his hands. It all felt like it had happened minutes ago, and the loss was overwhelming. "I don't understand any of this," he said quietly, and then, very plaintively: "I want to go home."
"Jeez," said Xander, "What the heck do you make of that?"
"I'm really not quite sure" said Giles, thoughtfully "Poor chap, this must be terrible confusing for him."
"Found something!" chirped Willow "Somebody actually wrote their thesis on Spike and posted it on the web-site. William's mother died in 1893, 13 years after him, so he had been a vampire for a while before she died. Wild that he cared enough to comfort her like that"
"Yeah, wild" said Buffy "What do you have on the demon, Giles?"
"Nothing as of yet. Willow, perhaps you can…"
"Still reading Spike's bio…really interesting stuff…hey, he even has a prophecy, something about being guardian to 'a key that will protect the world' … Council wants to keep him alive 'if at all possible' at least until the end of 2001 cause of this. Says he plays a huge part in saving the world."
"Wow, Spike, who knew?" quipped Xander.
"It's always the unlikely ones who have a prophecy and a mission," said Anya "Seen it a million times. Powers that be like to keep the bad guys guessing."
"Whatever." said Buffy "What about the demon with the glow stick?"
Giles looked up from his book. "I may have the answer here. The rod device, it's called a Ferula-gemina. It splits one person into half, distilling personality traits into two separate bodies. As near as I can tell Toth was attempting to split the Slayer into two different entities."
"Two Buffys." said Riley, as the author suddenly remembers he was still on the show at this point.
"Yes, one of them with all the qualities inherent in Buffy Summers. The other with everything that belongs to the Slayer alone: the strength and speed, the heritage. When it hit Spike, I think it separated him into his human qualities and his... not"
" So…Looks like William is the sweet kind half of the whole Spike."
"And the other half is running around killing people"
"Right."
"So I can kill Spike, and William gets to fulfil this prophecy thingee? Cool!" Buffy grabbed her coat.
"Not exactly…the two halves can't exist without the other. Kill the Spike half and the William half dies."
"Well…I'll admit to being kind of fond of William, but Spike's a killer, and what do I care about some key?" Buffy shrugged and began fiddling with Mr. Pointy.
William was dreaming. In his mind he was pushing, always, against that dark curtain that seemed to prevent him from functioning, from making his own decisions, thinking his own thoughts. Every now and then though, he would push through. He saw her. The dark haired girl from the alley. His heart ached with love for her, and every time he felt that love, the curtain opened wider. 'My soul, so trapped inside this black chasm' he thought…and yet, still here. Then she was gone and there was only black again until something else was there, something pulsing and buzzing and causing great physical pain except when William took over the thinking. When William was allowed to burst through the black and take control, the pain subsided. Soon the dark thing was letting William do most of the controlling, because to let William think, feel and even covet the Slayer was preferable to the constant pain. The black entity was sleeping, and William was finally able to do and say what he pleased, after what seemed like a century of brief moments of emergence…
…And in Spike's dream, a few miles away in the cemetery, the opposite, he was recalling with disgust his utterly pathetic humanity when he heard of his human mother's illness, how something beyond his control had taken him to the place where she and other humans lay so unappetizingly pale in their beds, how this thing had caused him to say things to comfort her and wept –wept!- as she faded away in his arms. Flashes of light in his head that came ever so infrequently as the years passed, and then, when that chip was in his head, became less of a burden and more of an assistance. The unwelcome part of his mind that pushed its way into his dark anger showed him how at least to keep that Initiative tool from causing the pain, began to eat into the black and make him think before he acted, feel some empathy for those who once had been his food, recall and remember what it was like to breathe and have a heartbeat.
Spike woke up violently with a shudder and searched for that gleaming, unforgivably weak part of him that he had kept hidden from Angelus (wouldn't he have laughed if he had seen Spike comfort his dying mother?), from that witch Darla (the cow had always looked down on him, like he was not worth her time)…but it was gone, no light, nothing but the blackness he had craved and wished for since he had first burst from his grave and into Dru's waiting arms. And realized, with a start, that he didn't feel anything when he thought of Dru now, that whatever had kept him with her and made her so important to him no longer existed. He smiled. Now he was finally in control.