Chapter 7: Nightmares and Miss Edith
By: Hope
She cried out when he went to touch her. He had just been trying to soothe her, to heal her, to help her feel, which was all that he had been able to do for her since she had come back. But now he found that his touch disgusted her and she repelled him, pulling away from his grasp. He didn't realize that she had kicked him across the small bathroom until he heard the tiles crack behind him, his back now stinging in pain.
He didn't realize what he had done wrong until he looked up at her, confused. Unlike many times before, there was anger on her face but included was a mixture of fear and disgust. That was when he realized what he had just done. He had just done the one thing that couldn't be forgiven. He had done the one thing that would hurt the woman that he loved, more than anything else in the world.
"Ask me again why I could never love you." She snapped, holding onto her bathrobe tightly, as though her life depended on it.
Spike stood up, tearing at the eyes. "Oh god. Buffy...."
"Spike?" Buffy began to fade from Spike's mind as the new voice entered his head. "Spike?"
Spike opened his eyes and found Angel standing over him. "Just a dream.." Spike said to himself. He had had the same nightmare since even before he had left for Africa. Everytime it would end the way that the real event had ended.
Spike, shattered and tearing on the bathroom floor and Buffy looking down at him, defiantly. He was surprised that she hadn't killed him right there. "Spike?" Angel asked again, interruping Spike's thoughts.
Spike stood up and stretched, studying Angel. He had been able to give him another bag of blood, an extra one that Spike had learned to keep in his pocket for when he wouldn't have time to go out and get more blood. It was sort of like his 'just in case'. Angel looked like he had recovered most of his strength, even in that short amount of time. "Yea, Peaches?" Spike asked, mid-yawn.
"The sun's down, we can go back to the hyperion now." Angel said, anxious to see how everyone had been doing, if they had seen Connor or not.
"Alright mate." Spike said, picking up the jacket that he had been using as a pillow and putting it on. "Lets go then, shall we?"
- - - - -
Connor stared at Buffy with a look of disbelief on his
face. She had just told him the whole story of Angel, or everything she knew at
least. Normally Buffy would hold back on a few details, such as her relationship
with Angel, which she had done to others, but she felt that Connor had been lied
to enough and that it was time he heard something that was true.
"And please feel free to ask any questions." Buffy concluded. Connor looked up at her, so many questions were swarming in his head and for some reason he felt that he could trust Buffy, that unlike almost everyone else he had ever met in his life, she was telling the truth.
"H-how were you able to forgive him for what he did to you?" Connor managed to find the one question that Buffy would have a hard time answering. She had known that he would ask it but she didn't expect it to be the first one.
"It wasn't him." She answered simply, almost horrified at the memories of Angelus flooding back into her head. "It was the demon. The Angel that I had known wasn't the person that did all of those things...." Buffy said, looking at Connor. "The Angel that we both know wasn't the person that did those things to Holtz's family." It seemed that Buffy had hit a nerve in Connor.
He twitched at the name Holtz. Holtz had been the one that had raised him to be who he was now, he had been the one that protected him from the demons and the other murderous creatures of the hell they were trapped in, but according to Buffy, almost everything that he had ever taught him was wrong.
It was true that Angelus had murdered his family. But it wasn't true that it was Angel, the one who had taken care of him the first few months of his life, from what Buffy had told him Fred and Gunn had told her. Connor was starting to understand that they were completely different people. "But...the beast killed my fa- -holtz. He killed Holtz." Connor said, remembering when he had found him.
"How are you sure about that?" Buffy asked him. "Do you know how many vampires there are in this world, in this city?" Buffy asked him. "Besides, why would Angel kill him when Holtz had given him everything that he had wanted?" Connor was silenced by Buffy's words and was now beginning to feel some sympathy for what he had done to Angel.
A knock came at the door, startling Connor a bit. "Don't worry." Buffy said as she got up off the bed to answer the door. "Its probably just Dawn." It was already past sundown and the only reason why Buffy hadn't gotten worried about Dawn was because of how wrapped up she had gotten in telling her story to Connor.
She unlocked the door and opened it, expecting to see Dawn standing there, looking annoyed. "Slayer!" But instead of Dawn being there, it was clearly a vampire, already in its game face.
It rushed up at Buffy and knocked her down and across the room, then entered the hotel room. Damn. Buffy thought to herself. I forgot hotel rooms don't count.
Connor was more prepared than Buffy was and once the demon had walked past him, not paying any attention to him, he kicked the vampire in the back, knocking it across the room and on top of Buffy.
Buffy quickly kicked it off of her and held it down. "Stakes! Bag! There!" Buffy ordered Connor, pointing to a black duffle bag in the corner of the room.
Connor jumped over each of the beds and opened the bag, surprised at the contents. Buffy had told him that she was a vampire slayer, someone chosen to fight vampires and other demons but he had no idea that she would carry around so many weapons. She had at least two axes, a sword, three bottles of holy water, crosses, garlic and stakes, almost completely filling the large bag.
Connor grabbed a suitable stake and tossed it to Buffy. "What are you doing here?" Buffy asked the vampire, pressing the stake down to its chest.
"I have a message to the slayer." The female vampire growled.
"Yea well you plan on telling it before I stake you?" Buffy threatened.
"We have the sister." Buffy was taken aback by the words and the vampire was able to break free of the slayer's grip long enough to push her away and make a run for the door. She made it to the door before she looked down at her chest in confusion before she turned into dust.
The stake that Buffy had thrown at the vampire fell to the ground, now surrounded by ashes. Buffy walked over and picked it up, then turned to Connor. "Take the bag." Buffy said emotionlessly to Connor. "We're going to go get help." Even though Connor knew who she meant they were going to see, he followed her, due to the fact that he wanted to help Dawn, and that even though he had seen much scarier things in his life, at that moment, Buffy scared the shit out of him.
She was already halfway down the hall by the time Connor was able to grab the bag and catch up to her.
They stood in the elevator in complete silence until she pulled what Justine had told Connor was a cell phone out of her pocket and started punching numbers on it. "Xander?" She asked, holding the phone up to her ear. "Come here, now. Bring Anya. Go to the Hyperion, I'll explain when you get here." It was amazing that through the whole thing he didn't believe that she had let her friend Xander say anything besides hello. And her voice had stayed firm and toneless the whole time.
Maybe there was someone in the world that had gone through more horrible things than Connor had.
- - - - - -
"Dawnie." Dawn's head was filled with pain. She took her
hand and rubbed her head, finding that there was a large bump on the back. The
last thing that Dawn had remembered was walking out of Wolfram and Hart, then
hearing a loud crash noise, followed by a black out.
Dawn opened her eyes slowly. Realizing that she was sitting down on a large chair. The room was to bright for her and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light before she saw the person standing in front of her. It was a woman. She had black hair and eyes and wore a red dress that made her skin look even paler than the hair did. "Why hello dearie." The voice said in an almost innocent tone. The woman walked up to Dawn and looked at her, smiling. "I thought you weren't going to wake up." She said. "But she told me you would. She told me that I had to wait."
"W-w-who?" Dawn asked, terrified.
"Miss Edith."
Dawn's eyes widened with fear at the mention of the doll. She had heard about it in many stories from Spike and Buffy, but she had never heard it from these lips before. No, this was the first time she had ever met Drusilla.
"The nice law people said that you were the sister of the slayer." Drusilla said, looking behind Dawn. Dawn turned her head slightly, afraid to take her eyes off of Drusilla and saw that Drusilla was looking at two large vampires that were guarding the door.
Dawn looked back up at Drusilla, who looked as though she was studying Dawn. "Your sister's been a naughty girl, Dawnie." Drusilla began to ramble. "You see, she's changed my Spike." She pouted at the memory of seeing Spike last year but then looked back at Dawn and smiled. "But you're going to help me get him back."
- - - - - -
"Hello?" Angel called out as he and Spike entered the
Hyperion. They had spent the 20 minute walk in silence. Spike had told Angel his
story when they had been waiting in the building for the sun to go down and even
though it seemed hard to believe, Angel actually felt like Spike was telling the
truth. William the bloody had gotten a soul.
Angel could tell that he was leaving a few things out. Mostly about his relationship with Buffy. Spike had heard how Angel had reacted with Riley and he didn't have any reason to hate him. Riley and Buffy had had a healthy, normal relationship, so if Angel had heard half the things that had gone on between Spike and Buffy in the past year or so, Spike would most likely be staked right there.
"Angel?" A voice came from inside of a room behind the counter and was then followed by a head poking out of the door. "Angel!!" The small brunette seemed happy to see Angel and quickly ran out to greet him, not even noticing Spike was there. "Where were you?! You look sick, Gunn!" She turned her head and called to no one in particular. "Get some blood!!!" As soon as she had finished saying that a tall african american man stepped out of another room and walked to a small fridge that was kept behind the counter and began to take bags of blood out and put them in mugs that were placed on top of the fridge.
The girl looked up at Angel with her large eyes. From what Angel had told Spike what had been happening with him over the last few years, he guessed that that was Fred.
Finally realizing that Angel hadn't walked into the hotel alone, Fred looked at Spike, then back at Angel, mouthing 'who's that?'
"I'm a friend of pea- -Angel's here." Spike said.
"Your british?" Fred asked, noticing the accent.
"Was once." He answered, his head suddenly filled with memories of his mortal life. He grabbed onto his head in pain and staggered back, now leaning himself against the wall, not able to hold himself up.
"Fred." Angel said, recognizing what was happening to Spike. It had first happened to Angel when he had gotten his soul. He would be listening to other people talk or he would see something and it would remind him of something he had once done, whether it was in his mortal life or his life as Angelus. The memories would come in headaches that could last anywhere from a few minutes to days. "Get him a mug of blood." Angel ordered. Fred obeyed him and quickly jogged behind the counter to help Gunn put more blood in mugs.
Angel stood in front of Spike and put his hands on Spike's shoulders. "Its alright Spike. You're just having some memory flashes, the same thing happened to me." Angel attempted to get through to Spike but it was obvious that Spike was now trapped within his own memories, as Angel had once been.
"Spike?"
The voice began to fade and seem irrelevant in Spike's mind as he was flooded with images of what had happened after he had first rose. Of how he had gotten the nickname Spike.
In the distance Spike heard a phone ringing. "Hello?" Fred's voice filled the air. "Buffy! You'll never believe."
"Buffy!" Spike screamed, suddenly snapping out of his memories. "Sh-she can't see me."
Spike looked around the room and realized that Fred had just hung up the phone. "She's coming here...she...it sounded like there was something wrong, she said to get together all the weapons we can find." Fred said quietly, finally realizing who Spike was.
Cordelia had told her about everyone in Sunnydale when Angel had left to meet Buffy after she had come back from the dead. She had described Spike as the peroxide-head vampire who used to only want to torture and kill Buffy, but then ended up falling in love with her before she had died. Fred was pretty sure that Angel didn't know that he loved Buffy. Even though Angel had moved on, to Cordelia nevertheless, he still loved Buffy almost more than anything else in the world and would do anything to protect her. Cordelia. Fred thought to herself. Cordelia's still missing!
"Cordelia!" Fred yelled, causing everyone to give her their full attention. "You weren't trapped or held hostage or anything with Cordelia?"
"No." Angel answered, noticing how Spike had tensed up at the mention of Cordelia. "I'm gunna take Spike upstairs so that we won't have to deal with Buffy staking him..." Angel said. "Although it is tempting." He half joked.
"Oh but Peaches," Spike said, not able to resist. "I'm sure she'll be just thrilled to hear that you have a son." That stopped Angel dead in his tracks. He hadn't told Buffy about Connor. Buffy didn't know that he had slept with Darla.
"Trust me." A voice came from the front of the Hyperion. Everyone turned to see Buffy standing at the door, Connor next to her, holding a bag of weapons. "She knows." Buffy finished.