Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of BtVS or AtS.

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Not very shippy in this chapter.

Feedback: Yes, I'm extremely needy.

Author's Note: I know I wrote on my profile that "Baby You Don't Even Know" is on temporary hiatus, so please! Take note of the "temporary" part and don't freak out! New chapters will be up soon, not to worry. Also, since I'm writing this as a means of avoiding the business and chaos of Thanksgiving and relatives, allow me to now wish all you readers a happy holiday! Oh and another note: I'm good at characterizing Drusilla (I guess I just don't have that insane-type state of mind) so sorry if she's way OOC. But she's meant to be a little more cogent than usual, so whatever. And one more thing, I haven't had a chance to edit this thoroughly yet, excuse some slight errors.

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Chapter 3: Discoveries

He didn't trust him. There was something dark and sharp and foreboding about him evocative of . . . who? He couldn't place his finger on it. But he could tell it was someone he didn't particularly like.

He sighed and lounged back onto the droopy sofa bed, pulling the smoking fag out of his mouth. Immersed in the pillows, he sniffed the sheets carefully. Didn't reek of Harris. That was a good thing.

He thought more about this kid. Why had Buffy brought him in? What was he doing here? He knew it wasn't his place to ask questions, but he was living here now. If this new housemate was a homicidal, Mary Jane-smoking, drugged-up juvenile delinquent, he had a right to know, didn't he?

"What makes you think you have any rights?" A measured voice broke through the quiet of the basement and the whirring of the washing machine. He looked up, startled and gazed around the room. She stepped out of the shadows. He groaned when she smiled and threw her head back, sending raven-black hair sprawling across her thin shoulder.

"You're not here," he growled.

She laughed liltingly, sending shivers up his spine. "Aren't I? It'd make more sense for me to be here than you."

"You've never made sense."

"You're right. Never was one for a linear train of thought. But I always saw things, William. I've always seen things for what they really are. And I see what you really are."

She approached him and sat seated on the bed, bringing a deathly white hand to his forehead. It was deceptively soft, but he refused to lean into it.

"Go away," he whispered futilely.

"My poor, poor William," she murmured in a more recognizably childish manner. "What have they done to you? They've caged my pretty, pretty boy and thrown away the key."

He turned away from her. "I've done it to myself. You remember. You were there with me."

She nodded solemnly. "All those years, you were my golden boy. You were a free bird, soaring on the wings of your own imagination."

He snorted. "Imagination? Is that what they're calling callous murder and bloodshed nowadays?"

"It was what you were born to do."

He gazed vacuously into his hands. "Born to be a monster?"

She shook her head and cupped his face in your hands. "Ah, ah, ah, brooding does not suit my boy. I've already got a daddy for that."

He batted her hand away and spat hatefully. "Stop calling me your 'boy'. That's not what I am anymore."

She plumped her lower lip up, almost in a sad pout. "That's right. You're hers, now. The one she never wanted, but hers nonetheless."

He was too tired to argue. "She has nothing to do with this."

She chortled low and mockingly. "Oh my pet," she gasped through laughter. "She always does." She moved across the room, her long burgundy skirts swishing like the sound of the laundry. "Don't tell me that deep down, you aren't more than hopeful that your being here means something."

He was silent.

"You think if you play the part of sad, sniveling dog, holed-up in the decaying heart of her basement, you'd win her back. That if you try to find the spark, the light, you could dance with her in the sun." Her face suddenly twisted into a scornful scowl. "You aren't worth her dirt. You belong in the darkness with me."

He ground his hands to his ears. "No."

She grabbed his hands loose and shouted in his ear. "Always in the darkness with me, William. Puppy can't run, can't hide. Might as well bite and bark the way he was meant to." She let her cold, lifeless lips trail down his neck. "May as well kill."

He got up with frustration. "That's it," he decided firmly. "It's been neat talking you, Halluco-Dru, but the fun's over. Retreat back into whatever insane recess of my mind you marched out of." He went upstairs to get a blood pack.

He marched into the kitchen, shaking. It seemed like the voices and visions and people were with him all the time now. Only time they let him be was when the blood was filling the back of his throat. They never bothered him then because that's what they wanted. They demanded blood.

Warily, he put the blood Buffy had brought home from the butcher into the microwave. It was hard being here. A year ago, he would have rejoiced at the opportunity to live in the same house with the slayer, waking up to smell her scent in the air every morning, but now he hated it. Being here and so close to her reminded him of what he was and what he had done---not only to her, but also to the millions of innocents throughout the years. It was like a prison of constant guilt and loathing. But he didn't have anywhere else to go.

"I don't like him being here," he heard Xander say from the living room. He stopped and stiffened, aware that they were talking about him. He wanted to awkwardly withdraw back to the basement, but he didn't want to make a sound while doing it. He didn't want to listen and he didn't want them to know he was listening. But at the same time, he couldn't help himself. So he stood silently with his ears perched.

"I know it's a uncomfortable situation, but we all have to make sacrifices sometimes," Buffy replied. He stilled and wondered how she could feel that way. Why should she make the sacrifice for him? What had he ever done to her, except cause her pain? He shrunk at her compassion.

"But why for him?" Xander said again, as if line with his own thoughts. "He doesn't exactly deserve the whole "getting by with a little help from his friends" riff."

"You don't know that!" Buffy objected, more hotly than he would have expected.

"You said he was dangerous."

"That's what they told me. But others told me different. There are always two sides to a story, Xander."

Still listening from the kitchen, he wasn't following. Who were they? And who were others? And why were they talking about him? This wasn't right.

"How could we know if he was dangerous?" Willow softly interjected. "We don't even know him." Didn't even know him? He grew sad with this remark somehow. You spend five years attempting to kill and work together with people and they say they don't know you. Red, of all people should know him. He thought he learned a lot about her that one night they had spent together with Xander in the abandoned old factory. Of course that was a long time ago. He was different now . . . wasn't he?

"I don't want him here, either," Dawn stated grimly as well, and the words blunted him on the head. They could call him evil, depraved, sick and twisted, but one disparaging word from the Nibblet's mouth and he was crestfallen. He had never shown how deeply her hostile reaction to his being back affected him, but it did. He remembered how much she adored him and trusted him as a soulless monster. Now that he was repentant and sorry, she couldn't stand to be in the same room with him. It twisted his guts inside painfully.

He heard Buffy sigh. "Dawn, you know this is complicated. We can't refuse to have him here. He's just a kid."

Hearing that, he almost breathed a sigh of relief. So they hadn't been talking about him after all. They were talking about that boy and . . . wait? Did they say dangerous?

"But he isn't 'just a kid', Buffy," Xander pointed. "He's Angel's kid."

He had been taking the mug of blood out of the microwave when he heard that and promptly dropped it in response. He stared down at the spilled blood in shock, and then back up at Buffy, who had walked into the kitchen and stood in the door. She sighed at the broken mug and the blood on the floor before looking up at him.

"Spike. How much of that did you hear?" she said, beginning to pick the pieces of porcelain out of the blood.

He swallowed hard and shook his head in disbelief. "Enough," he murmured.

"So now you know. Conner is Angel's son."

He didn't say anything. The questions were too numerous to properly convey at the moment, so he just absently dipped his finger in some of the blood spilled on the counter and sucked it into his mouth. In less than a second, he had a young, fuming teenager on top of him, trapping him in between the fridge and a stake. He gazed up in confusion at Conner, whose eyes flickered with raging fire. He bore down the point of the stake into Spike's chest and yelled, "Vampire!"

TBC……………