TITLE: "Normal again" (6/8?) part 2 (Because of length, cut in three parts. Geez, does this chapter ever end???)

AUTHOR: Richard Bachman

EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com

SITE: nope

FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this!

DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.

RATING: NC-17 Humor/angst

PAIRING: B/S

SUMMARY: Got this wonderful idea after watching normal again. Instead of Buffy, Spike gets a dose of demonic goodness inserted into his system. As his consciousness is transported to an AU where he finds Sunnydale is no longer the good old Sunnyhell he despises and knows so well, things are getting a bit surreal for the poor bleached wonder.

WARNING: This fic describes scenes of rape, and is dark and angsty but I suppose that we kinda got used to it after watching whole bleedin S6.

THANKS: To anyone for reading my senseless dribble. Love you guys. You truly make wasting my weekends worthwhile!

SPECIAL THANKS: To my patient beta reader Olga, it has taken a while before I could update but your work is surely not in vain.

CHARACTERS: Spike is knee deep in the AU thing. He discovers the benefits of team spirit, has some Angel/Liam interaction, and finds out that sunlight does indeed make him freckle (a bit).

ACT 6: The harsh light of day does not keep me restrained in darkness any longer.

SCENE 3

"Get your hands up Will, you know the procedure."

"Yeah, I know the procedure all right. Just don't try to stick your hand all the way up to my ass this time. I can't see the use in it, can hardly hide any pointy objects in there, can I?"

I smirked at the orderly, who was calling me a smart ass beneath his breath and kept feeling my legs and chest while I was standing spread-eagled with my hands against the wall. Paranoid much?

"He's clear." He yelled. An annoying buzz followed, after which the barred doors in front of me flew wide open and I got shoved inside the next corridor.

"Better step on it Will, your brother had been waiting for you ever since you came back from group therapy."

"And I thought that bad things never happened at once." I said sarcastically. "An angry mob and that poof Angel on the same bleedin morning, what are the odds of that happening to me?"

Mike led me through yet another door situated at the very end of the long hallway. This one was not as high tech as the first and needed to be opened in the old fashioned way, which meant that my mate Mike had to scrabble with his heavy ring of keys for a minute or two before he could unlock it. We entered a small room with a barred window and green tiled walls. In the middle of room stood a table and two crooked chairs. And oh, my grand poof Sire was standing there as well, looking as broody as ever.

"Here he is sir. You have a half an hour. If you need anything or if he starts causing any trouble, I'll be waiting at the other side of that door. Just give me a yell."

"Thanks Mike, but I don't think it will be necessary." Angel gazed up to the beefy Mikster for a sec, waited till the bloke had left the room, then continued to brood at me in silence. Eyes on the million miles mode, brows all furrowed. The "I am permanently worrying about my existence but I can't do a soddin thing about it" look that was gloomy enough to drive a happy vamp into joining a sun worshipping cult, let alone a less cheerful demon like yours truly here at the very present moment.

"So, I suppose this is a weekly thing then." I opted, trying to get over the first gauche moments to make him stop depressing me with his soddin brooding. "Tell me, are you always gonna come on Fridays from now on? B'cause if you are, I'm definitely going to hassle Rupert to let me reschedule that group therapy thing. Friday is starting to feel rather too action-packed with all this mental torturing going on in one single day."

Angel's face changed from troubled into guilt-ridden, which was absolutely peachy by me. Guilt was fine; as long as the poof didn't feel sorry for me being locked up in here and start to drown me in his endearing looks of sympathy, I was really ever so grateful.

"I had planned to come and see you every Friday. I wanted to visit on weekends too, but Doctor Giles told me that perhaps that was still a bit too early for you."

"Oh, bloody hell, the Watcher's definitely right. I need much, much more time. So if you're so kind to stay away from me for, let's say, the next twenty, thirty years, I think I will be a much happier mental patient. "

Now the poofter looked hurt, and once again, it did me good.

"Will, maybe you don't remember anything anymore, but I still do. I don't understand why you're acting this hostile towards me and why you think that you should hate me this much, but you are still my little brother. I want to take care of you. I can't just stop caring about you because you've suddenly fantasised in one of your less lucid states that I'm your absolute arch nemesis. Can't you at least try to accept me?"

Angel treated me on his sad-puppy look that got the Slayer into sending his precious soul directly back to hell in happier times. Didn't work on me though, and I wondered if Buffy ever noticed how much my grand sire's features resembled that of a daft broad-mouthed cartoon dog.

"Look, An- Liam. I'm sorry for being this blunt, but all I can remember, and dear doctor Summers is probably going to sent me to another balmy group session for this, is you being my grand Sire Angelus. You were the one who used to call me a whimpering wuss. You used to beat me unconscious with a large stick, tie me to a pole and fuck me from behind till I was bleedin my whole last meal out of my soddin arse. Excuse me for holding a bit of a grudge here, but my memories of you aren't exactly the stuff that daydreams are made of, unless you're really into bondage, of course. "

I parked myself in one of the chairs and raised my feet, putting them on the table. Leaning back and balancing on the hind legs, I waited for time to crawl by so I could finally get out of this soddin mess. If the poofter wanted a story about why his poor delusional sibling was wishing him dead, I certainly could provide him one. Just don't bloody expect me to feel any sympathy for this furball version of the Angel I know. Things with my grand Sire had already gone past the be-able-to-be-forgiving state centuries ago.

Angel remained silent and frozen on the spot for so long that I started to wonder if he had passed out unnoticed with the broad stick up his ass still supporting his frame so he wasn't tumbling over. Eager to elope the much dreaded half an hour with the fully conscious poof, I kept myself quiet, hardly daring to clear my throat out of fear of making him snap out of his rather convenient shock. However, after a couple of minutes Angel started to blink his eyes, and my hopes to escape this very daft confrontation went down the drain.

"Will, I've never done this to you. These delusions that you have, these disturbing things you describe, they are not real. I could never, * never * hurt you."

Angel paced around the small room like a caged animal, brooding engine turned on its maximum capacity, while guilt, sorrow, anxiety, and the whole soddin rainbow of depressing moods was showcased in this one very miserable man.

Very good, I thought.

"I don't understand how you can make all these ugly things up. I've always been a good brother to you, Will. Always. When dad died, I was there to comfort you, to take care of you. We were best pals, you and I. We used to go on deep sea fishing trips or camping in the woods together, remember? Just before .before all the bad stuff happened. You came to visit me in LA almost every weekend. When we were kids, we shared everything, even the same bicycle, but I always let you ride it first, even if it was my turn."

"And I'm sure that your sacrifices have truly shaped me into the man I'm today. It's just a bloody shame that I can really remember bugger of those heart warming, merry times." I mocked.

Poofter stopped dead in his tracks, eying at me.

" I guess that what I mean to say is that. I loved you, Will. And I still do. God, why can't you see that?"

He smashed his fists on the table, angry and frustrated. His eyes were tying to find any emotional sign of recollection in my cold and ignorant stare.

"Can't you remember anything about me that is real?"

I gazed up at him and slowly I shook my head.

"Listen to me, mate, if there was a way in this whole bleedin world that could make me forget about all that nasty stuff that you've ever done to me, I would be more then happy to oblige, even when it means that my testicles have to be smashed once or twice or that my brains have to be partly eaten away. But sadly, there isn't really a way to go amnesia on this one on a permanent level. I just have to settle with pissing you off and making a fool out of you whenever I have the chance to help me deal with the damage you've done, thank you very much."

I was starting to tire from this jabbering, must have gone completely daft indeed to even try to explain to this crackers version of the poof why I hated his guts. What was the bleedin point? The bloke wouldn't get it since he was bloody innocent of all of the ugly stuff I was blaming him for. The only thing that I would probably achieve with this was him getting even more winded up about it and having him around for another couple of hours, trying to convince me that he was just a fluffy little kitten and not the throat ripping tiger that Angelus was.

"Will, please stop. Stop telling all these terrible lies. Perhaps Doctor Giles was right. I shouldn't have come here."

He collapsed on the chair, both his hands entwined in his pointy hair.

"I really don't know what to do anymore. I had hopes that at least you would still trust me. Remember a tiny bit about me. But you don't. Not a thing."

"Look, I'm just telling the stuff that I do remember. Don't get your knickers all twisted. I guess to you these recollections are indeed complete baloney. You've got nothing to do with any of it. Fair enough."

"You're sick Will. You're very, *very* sick."

"What, for making these saucy references to dubious sex or calling you my grand Sire Angelus?"

Angel had been hiding his face between his arms, bending all over the table. Now he tilted his head a bit and gazed at me with his dark brows raised.

"No, I mean that you are seriously ill. I think you are going to need a lot of help to get you back on your feet again. You'll have to stay here for a while. If only there was another possible way."

I sighed and suddenly got the very urgent need to impale myself in front of the poof, only to get rid of the tosser. What's with the soddin pity already? Did I explicitly beg him for it or something?

"You have to believe me Will. If I could be in here instead of you, having you back healthy and happy again, I would take your place without doubting my choice for a second. But I need you to be strong now, and at least try to forget all these nightmares you've been living in for the past five years, and move on. Fight back. I know you can do it."

He grabbed me gently by the shoulders and gave a little squeeze.

"You have to fight back. Please Will, if you don't want to do it for me, then for God's sake, do it for yourself."

I gazed sullenly at him, for once not having an edgy remark or a cunningly crafted insult ready to throw right back at his face. Angel, or rather Liam, was at the brink of an emotional breakdown, all teary eyes and puffy red nose. I could have cared less, I wager, but somehow it seemed too low even for this evil soulless vampire to bash this broken man in front of me with the final blow.

"Hey, don't worry, peaches." I hesitatingly opted. "Fighting is in my blood."

A very faint smile appeared on Liam's face, reflecting a trace of hope.

"I guess it is. You've always been a fighter. I, however, am very much at the end of my dexterity here. Honest Will, I don't know what I'll do if I lose you again. I think the guilt will eventually drive me mad."

He folded his hands over his face, then held them in front of his lips as if he was a sinner in prayer. His eyes were averted from me.

"You don't know how it was for me these past five years. I blamed myself for everything; the bad memories, the fight, the car, even the damn slippery road. I thought that, if I could have stopped you from walking out of my apartment that day, or kept you there an hour longer, so the bad weather would have passed LA, then none of this would have ever happened."

Liam's voice sounded old and worn, reminding me of that night that Angelus came back to our little family after the absence of a decade. Only he hadn't been Angelus any longer, but Angel, cursed with a soul.

"But then, I guess I'm still trying to wash my dirty hands clean of everything if I'm trying to convince you that none of it was really my fault. B- B'cause it w-was, in a way. I shouldn't have let those ugly things happen to you Will. But I was scared. I didn't have the guts to stop any of it. I'm sorry."

Not understanding exactly what he was talking about, I figured he was still referring to his outsized guilt complex for letting me drive myself into a car accident. If the AU version of me was as much as a roadhawk as I was, I certainly could picture myself lying broken and bleedin at the side of the road with my head protruding through the front window.

Once again, could hardly blame furball here for me trying to commit suicide in very artful way.

"I'm so sorry Will. I really am."

The nonce was inconsolable, which was really sad, even for the poof's ways of nauseating behaviour.

"There, there." I sussed, and patted him awkwardly on his shoulders. "Don't cry now, you big fella, there is no reason to give me another opportunity to treasure this embarrassing moment of yours and hold it against you in the very near future. Believe me, I don't need more comical material to make you look like an idiot."

"You don't understand.I - I have let -"

"Whatever you've done or not, it can hardly be worse then the stuff your alter ego has come up with when I was stuck in that soddin wheelchair. Unless you've whacked on my broken legs with a spiked club before. If that's the case, please do remind me so, and I'm going to bash Mike on the head for his blunt keys to remove your testicles with in a very painful kind of way. "

Liam lifted his head, gazing into my eyes, and I gave him a wavering smile.

"But since you keep telling me we are brothers, I guess I should trust you on that one."

"Will, I would never hurt you. Trust me."

That was exactly what I was afraid of. The bloody wanker wasn't going to leave me any space left in my dead unfeeling heart to hate him. At least not this present mortified version of him, that was.

We stayed in the soddin room like that for what seemed soddin hours, till Mike got his ass back in and told the whimpering poof that I should be going. I've never felt so relieved in my entire existence, whether I was dead or alive. Just when I was going to escape through the door, Liam called me back for a sec.

"Will, I know that you don't want to see me for some time, and I'm willing to wait till you've settled back into life, but I would really like to visit you again once in a while. Just to see how you're doing."

I stared at my alleged elder brother for a moment without saying anything.

"It doesn't have to be a whole half an hour if that's what bothering you. I can keep my visits shorter and less frequent, like let's say, fifteen minutes once in a month. I could even pop in the recreation room for a moment and go again if you're more comfor-"

"Next Friday is fine." I couldn't soddin believe what I was saying, but it seemed that my brains had left the sinking ship for good. "Just don't be as gloomy as this week; I'm already on heavy medication, more Prozac will probably finish me off."

As I was finally able to leave, I caught a glimpse of a hopeful smile on the poofter's face that was warm enough to melt all the ice on the whole bleedin North Pole.

SCENE 4

"How is patient 17 doing?" The middle aged woman, dressed in a doctor's outfit and wearing a long white coat, sat cross-legged at the other side of his work desk, sipping her tea while flipping through William Byron's files. Giles glanced up from his papers, and gazed at his colleague, confused.

"I beg your pardon? I was somewhat distracted."

"Patient 17, he is still under your care, isn't he?"

Dr Walsh waited impatiently for Giles to reply, but as she observed that there was no change in the psychiatrist's puzzled expression, she sighed and clarified herself.

"Patient 17, otherwise known as mister Byron. Age 28, medical history indicating that he suffered from catatonia after waking up from a coma caused by a car accident in 1997. Currently under treatment for a severe form of an undifferentiated type of Schizophrenia. Do I need to provide you with more information Dr Giles, or do you finally recognize your patient?"

"Yes, of course, I do recognize this information as one of my patients' profiles. I was just not used to having them referred to as faceless numbers." Giles reacted agitatedly.

"It's the new institute policy. That way, we won't have to worry about the patients knowing that we're referring to them in corridor conversations. It is a good measure to keep order and peace over the departments. Although the staff will have to be persistent in their actions, of course, otherwise there is no use in any of it."

"Hmm, if I do remember one thing of last week's staffmeeting, it is that this numbering strategy is not mandatory. We can choose as a department whether to adapt this new policy or not, and I for one think it is rather demeaning for the patients. They are guests trying to recover from illness, Dr Walsh, not criminals in confinement."

"Very well, then." Walsh re-crossed her legs, irritated. "Then I will rephrase my question to suit your policy, how is the Byron patient doing?"

"He's doing fine." Giles stared at the woman for whom he felt nothing but ever growing contempt, shooting her what he hoped what was a very confident look. "William has suffered a lot over these past five years, but things are finally starting to look up for him. I've appointed my student Buffy Summers to look after him. She's currently trying to ground William more in reality by introducing him to group sessions with other Schizophrenic patients."

"Group sessions?" The female psychiatrist shifted in her seat and gazed at Giles with a sceptical look on her face. "Do you really think he's ready for that?"

"Although his behaviour is still slightly peculiar, it is really decent enough to have him out of solitary confinement and let him interact more with other people. Buffy and I do believe that by stimulating his social skills, we're helping him forward in the process of full recovery."

"But aren't you worried that he might suffer a relapse? For all the information that this file here contains, I can only conclude that the patient is still highly unstable. He might seem harmless and meek as a lamb, but there is something seriously wrong with his thinking patterns. If these results are right, he can turn extremely violent in a blink of an eye, when triggered. "

"I've read that evaluation report as well, Dr Walsh, but I can assure you that nothing will happen. As I said, William is a peculiar young man, he suffers from certain delusions of being this great evil vampire with no conscience, and he tries to sustain that image by talking and reacting in overly machoistic ways, visibly compensating for his insecurities. There is absolutely no harm in his kind of behaviour, or any drive to do harm to others."

"I still think you should be careful, you have the tendency to rely on your heart when it comes to making important decisions for your patients, and that's something only bad physicians allow themselves to indulge into. I don't trust my heart, Dr Giles. I trust science. If scientific tests had indicated that one of my patients is potentially dangerous to others and to himself, I'm the one who has to make sure that there are serious measures taken to prevent things from going terribly wrong. And although patient 17 is not under my direct care, I do urge you to reconsider your slack policy towards him."

Giles had taken off his glasses and was wiping them clean using his handkerchief, remaining completely silent, although he was growing quite angry of the bitchy doctor's unscrupulous comments. How on earth was this cold and obnoxious woman ever allowed into this humane profession, was still a great mystery to him. They really should screen more carefully before allowing someone like her become a practicing psychiatrist, if not for the sake of her colleagues, then certainly for the sake of the poor patients.

" I'm convinced that he's absolutely not ready to be let out of solitary confinement, and I doubt your mild therapies will have even the slightest effect on him. Perhaps you should schedule him for ETC if his delusional state persists."

Giles coughed in his fist several times. "Cough *Evil* cough *Fishwife.* cough."

Walsh gazed at Giles suspiciously, then opted. "Gesundheit."

"Heh, thanks. Must be the dry weather, I'm a bit allergic to drifting pollen, you see."

"I'm sure that can be very unpleasant, indeed."

"Dr Walsh, your concern about William Byron is, um, quite understandable, but really, there is absolutely no need to make things even harder for him by taking these drastic actions you described, he's adapting perfectly well to our group sess-"

"Giles! I want William out of my therapy group, now!"

Buffy stormed into the room, cheeks flushed with irritation, failing to notice the presence of Dr Walsh completely.

Giles looked horrified.

"Buffy, can you talk to me about this later, I'm in the middle of -"

"I've never had a patient that was this boneheaded! This is the second time that he messes up the morning session. I'm telling you Giles, he only comes to annoy me and to challenge the others to get mad at him and start a fight. I mean, can you even believe this? He is actually trying hard to get his ass severely kicked. If it weren't for me to stop the other guys, he would have been turned into William the Bloody by now. Literally, that is."

"Buffy!"

She stopped her ranting for a moment, and gazed at her mentor, brows furrowed.

"What?"

Giles coughed and cleared his throat, dead worried.

"Dr Walsh is here."



TBC

ETC: electro-convulsive therapy. Patients are treated with short sequences of high voltages (180 to 460 volt) of electricity to stimulate the "bad" part of their brains. If you ask me, it's freakin medieval torture.

Note: I know, this is the second time I've to split this chapter, but at least I'm productive (hey!). So, the next part is AU Buffy taking the Schizo boys out to play in the warm summer sun. Let's hope that I can really finish the chapter with that. I need to move on to the more interesting (read: sadistic) parts.