TITLE: "Normal again" (8/9) part VI (Because of length, cut in six parts.)

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.

SUMMARY: Based on the episode Normal Again. Instead of Buffy, Spike was poisoned by the demon and his consciousness was transported into an alternative reality where he found himself incarcerated in an asylum.

THANK YOU: For your patience, your support and your comments on the story. And yes, I do realise that this chapter is far too long, but it's a necessary evil, trust me.

ACT 8; Solace (III)



SCENE 20

"Didn't Dr Giles tell us to lock him up?" Mike asked, furrowing a worried brow.

Buffy had just shut the door to Will's bedroom most carefully, making sure not to make a sound to startle him, but she didn't grab the bunch of keys dangling from her belt to lock the room.

"Yes, he did say that." She pulled a nervous face. "But he isn't here, right? And I really don't think Will is going anywhere like that."

"So why don't you just do what Dr Giles says? We didn't even restrain him to his bed. He could just walk right out of here if he decided to get semi lucid all of a sudden."

"If he does get out bed on his own, I will be so happy with it that I will let him." Buffy sighed, giving the orderly an anxious gaze. "Look, it's stupid and irrational. I know. But none of the other patients on this ward are used to getting locked up and Will knows all of them from his therapy group. I don't want to make an exception here that singles him out in front of the others. Glen came to see him just a minute ago and was really worried. I don't want them to think that Will has snapped out and has to be locked away because he's dangerous or anything."

"You're right Dr Summers. It's rather irrational." He paused, and Buffy had half expected him to add that he also quite agreed on this being a stupid way of thinking part. But Mike was wiser than that. "But on the other hand, so are Dr Giles orders. Keeping Will isolated from other people is only going to make it easier for him to slip away. It won't do him any good."

"So, you're going to leave the door open and keep an eye on him for me?" She asked, a bit wary.

"I'll do what I can, Dr Summers. But as soon as Dr Giles hears about this, I'm afraid I have to follow his orders." He turned his eyes to his paper slippers. "Perhaps we should tell him about what really happened to Will. I know I promised you that I should keep it a secret till you spoke with that his brother, but he's your senior after all."

"True." She said softly. "He's my senior, but he isn't always right. Giles can't find out about this yet. He will flip and call the police. I know he will. Please, you can't tell him." She looked him straight into the eyes till Mike gave a slight nod in agreement.

"What if he finds out by himself?" Mike asked.

"He won't. I will make sure Will's problems are all gone by the time Giles starts worrying about him again."



SCENE 21

Luce had transformed from a plain brown winged moth into a radiant dragonfly. The first thing she did after we jumped off the death cart was getting herself a change of finer clothing. She picked out a lady who was out taking a stroll with her male companion on the Strand along the river Thames, and was careful to judge her size correctly. I had half expected her to make a real mess and ruin the gown, but as she stride out of the dark alley where she had disappeared with the two of them, she was dressed in the stunning slammerkin the alive woman had worn just minutes ago; white satin with silver embroidery, so snowy was the cloth that her skin appeared blushing. There wasn't a single drop spilled on it.

"I just adore the pattern." She purred, rushing over to a small fountain at the square, she sat down by the edge and washed the dirt off her face. "Snakes and apples. Very Eden. Very seductive." She ranked through her hair with wet fingers, getting the worst knits out of the way. "Don't you need a better set of clothing, luv? I think her spouse has the same size as you. That tweed jacket he's wearing would quite suit you I think. It brings out the blue in your eyes."

I shook my head, wiping my dirt-covered hands over my muddy trousers. "No thanks. I think I just keep this. It suits me better."

Luce gazed at me, her raven eyes gliding over my outfit. "Right my dear, rags worthy to a beast of the field. If that's what you are."

"I don't need anything better. I'm a demon. I know what my purpose is."

I froze when a laugher as brittle and cold as ice shattered from her throat. "My dear boy! My dear - dear boy! Even now, you're in doubt, aren't you?"

She rose slowly, her pose that of a rigid statue.

"You are still in pain."

She dabbed her face and neck with her sleeves, leaving dark patches on the satin. Luce was lovely. Her black hair curled in wet strings around an angelic face that was cream with rose-peddle blushes. She licked her lips, plump and red and wicked.

"Why are you still trying to punish yourself?" Her words spilled hot into my ears, her mouth brushing my cheek. "Let it go William. Let it all go. Didn't you learn anything from me yet?"



SCENE 22

Buffy woke up that Saturday morning with a tiredness and vigilance pressing on her shoulders. She went through Will's files again and again over breakfast, hardly aware of her teenage sister's worried stare as she hid herself behind the papers and spilled her coffee over the rim of her cup. Her mind was constantly occupied. While driving back to the institute, she almost ran over a couple of schoolchildren as they were crossing the streets in a reckless pursuit of each other. After she arrived and rushed her way down to her office, she thought of the things she was going to say to him, carefully choosing her words.

- Liam, I must speak to you. There's something I know that you must know that I know but nobody else knows so far -

She shook her head, stupid clumsy line.

- Liam, I know what you've done to Will. I want you to stop. You are -

You're the one who is supposed to be locked up in here! Not Will. Will didn't deserve any of this! Hadn't he suffered enough already? What on earth made you do this to him?

Buffy shook her head to her inner voice of reason, aware of her rising disgust for the man. Bile souring her throat, turning her heart into stone. With effort, she sucked in a deep breath of air.

Anger wasn't what she needed right now.

-You are ill. Liam, you are ill and you need help. -

Please stop it.

Stop destroying him.

I love him.

She practiced till the lines sounded flat to her and no longer caused her emotions to stir. When she left her station around eleven, she still had four hours to prepare herself for her afternoon meeting with Liam Byron.



SCENE 23

The pub was full of costumers filling the place up with the smell of beer and sweat. Dices rattled, the loud clatter of conversations and dirty Cockney songs. Back in a corner, sitting at a battered wooden table, Luce was waiting for me to tell her everything. Her hot hands were holding mine. She folded my fingers, baring the palm of my right hand. It appeared clean, but if you looked close enough you could see the rusty lines of crimson that ran along the grooves.

"How many luv?" Her voice was husk, thick with anticipation.

"Five." I answered. I watched over my shoulders, making sure nobody else saw the blood on my hands. Blood that I was so eager to let her see as a good diligent schoolboy showing his teacher his first scribbling on the slate. - Look miss! Look what I did! Didn't I make a terrific mess? -

"Did they suffer?"

I leaned back into my chair. My other hand draped over the back and with one boot resting on the table, I grinned cockishly. "Did they suffer? Bloody well tortured the wits out of them!"

Her lavish lips curled, and there was this joy stirring, an itchy glee that struck me every time I did something that pleased her enough to reward me with that smile. I decided to tell her more.

"First, I dragged them to the stables. They didn't put much of a fight, considered what I had done to them already. Then, I used the ropes that I had found in the storage to tie them up. I made a noose for each of them, secured it around their necks."

There came a tinge of light inside her black eyes, and she leaned closer to hear my words.

"I tossed the ropes over a large beam running across the ceiling, then made them stand on top of a pile of crates, all in a neat row." I shut my eyes for a sec, and saw their faces. A butler, a young manservant, a maid, the mistress of the house and her two children; a tall girl and a sickly looking boy who cried piteously when I struck his mother across the face.

"How did it end?"

I opened my eyes again, looking into hers. There was a swirling in my stomach, a lightness in my head.

"They had four horses, as was to be expected from an honourable family like the Roberts. One stallion and three mares. I secured the two men, the girl and the maid to each of the animals. Then I opened the door of the stables and gave the horses a slap at their rumps. They swung like dead crows from a bare tree."

Her lips curled again, and split to show teeth, rewarding me with a small impious smile.

"What did you do with the mother and her son?"

I took a swig of ale and licked my lips.

"I strung up the boy myself, and made her watch. I had wanted to save her for my last kill, but she was already dead by the time the brat's fat little face turned un unnamed shade of blue."

"What happened?" She asked, not with disapproval for my little cock-up, but with an amused ring in her voice.

"She jumped off the barrels and broke her neck." I shrugged, taking another swig of ale. "Took her own life, so she wouldn't have to watch her own flesh and blood getting strangled."

"A true mother." She mocked, hate burning fierce in her eyes.

"Yeah, although she should have known that she was going straight to hell for this. It's still suicide. But I guess she wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the box."

"William." She was still holding my right hand, her fingers tracing the blood streaks. She cut with her nails along the bended lines, deepening each of them, creating new ones as her cuts diverged from the main trails.

"Only five?"

I cocked an eyebrow at her, trying to mimic bloody innocent confusion.

"You said you killed five. But I count six. The servants, the two children and the mistress. There were six of them."

I lowered my eyes and watched how she drew blood on my hand. I wondered if she was trying something with her seemingly harmless cut-games. I was no more a superstitious bloke as the next vampire, but wasn't it said that your fate was written in the lines of your hand? If I showed one of those fortune-telling swindlers down at Regent Circus mine, would they still recognize my existence in it? Or would they only see the knot of lines that Luce's jolly handy-work had left behind?

"What did you do to the boy?"

I showed her what I did. I didn't have the guts to tell her straight into her face. We left the pub, and I led her back to the Roberts family's dwelling, a stately mansion with huge windows and marble pillars. At the back were the stables. The broad wooden doors were still ajar and creaked in their rusty hinges.

Two of the four horses were still there, and kept the maid and butler swinging from the ceiling. Their bodies were already stiff and blue, drawing thin shadows on the beaten earth floor. The stallion and the black mare were gone, and so were the bodies that had been attached to their riggings. Behind the barrels, hidden first from our sight, came the sniffling of the boy. The noose still hung around his little neck like a rough necklace, a purple bruise showed where the rope had touched his skin. His mother's body dangled in front of him. Eyes closed. Her blue-lipped mouth opened as if caught in uttering his son's name.

Luce didn't say a word, just turned her heels and walked away.

"Luce! Luce, I'm sorry!"

She pushed open the doors and strode out into the courtyard, her back held rigid and her hands clenching on to her baggy skirt, lifting them to quicken her steps.

"Oi! I said I was sorry!"

I caught her arm and tried to hold on to her, but she twirled around and grabbed my wrist and twisted, her fingers tightening around it till it hurt like hell, and I thought that she would just snap it like a dried twig.

"You let him live." She hissed, her voice dripping poison.

Well, at least she was still willing to talk to me.

"I didn't want to disappoint you." I said, truthfully.

"You didn't disappoint me." Her eyes turned cold. "It had never been about me. Why are you so foolish, William? After all this time, after everything I've shown you, you're still conducting iniquity for the wrong reasons! What in the name of every wretched soul that's burning in the cosy fires of hell is wrong with you?"

I sucked in an unneeded breath and tightened my jaws, the painful pressure on my wrist reminding me that bones were fragile things, easily broken. Still, I didn't ask her to let me go. I was taught better than that.

"Did you think I needed you to kill him, for me that is?" She smiled oddly at me, a twisting of lips that spelled superiority. "The boy cannot escape me. His life is mine to take. Perhaps not today, but after what you've done, it won't be long before he's swinging from the gallows. I'll make of sure of that."

It struck me that she meant what she said. The young lad would be collared and dead before he turned sixteen, dragging a string of others with him into ruin as he grew up to become a thief or a murderer, his innocence poisoned by memories of what I had done.

So even when I make a mistake and try to do good, I end up creating more misery than when I would just do the things that I am supposed to, I thought bitterly.

"I wasn't interested in him. Humans with souls like his are sold twenty in a dozen."

Fear crept into my dead bones. There had been this feeling, this nagging suspicion ever since she rescued me from the gaols. But I had never enough courage before to think it through more properly, to draw my conclusions on her.

"What I wanted, was you."

She let go of my wrist. I wrenched away from her, my mind raced and recollected all her oddities, how she felt so incredibly hot to the touch for a vampire, how she knew my name that first night I ever met her. Her resentment to God and how she spoke of Him like a punished child bad- mouthing her parent.

Luce, Lucifer.

Satan.

"You're a special boy, William. A rare gem that I like to purchase for my own private collection to bring the green of envy into the Old Man's eyes."

She looked at me as I gazed at her, confusion written all over my face. But no fear. Never show fear to the likes of her. It would be like signing your own death warrant.

"It's like a challenge, you see. Time's a plenty. So what's to do with eternity otherwise? I don't like to be idle."

"Perhaps you should pick up sewing or housekeeping." The insult rolled out of my mouth before I could put a cork in it, and I bit on my tongue to punish the daft thing.

She didn't set me on fire with a snap of her fingers, or made the ground split open and swallow me all up into the blazing inferno of hell below. Nor did I shrink and did my limps become all slimy and bend as she turned me into a warty toad. She just stood there, only slightly lifting a dark brow at me, her arms crossed over her bodice.

"Witty tongues won't save you. You've already pawned your soul and lost the receipt. Why are you still doing this, luv? There isn't another path for you left other than the one I've decided for you. You're one of mine. Stop staring over the bloody borders, thinking that God's meadows look so much greener. Even if it's so, you won't set foot on it. Ever."

"For the last time, I'm not trying to redeem myself." I spat, the fear was thick, but the gut feeling that she wasn't fair to me was even thicker. "I'm over my guilt. I can kill without feeling anything, like any other demon. I'm NOT your special case who needs more attention or further persuasion to stick to his evil self."

"Bah! Even now you're blind for your own weakness!" She snorted, sticking her nose in the air like she smelled something vile rising from beneath. "Can't you see why you spared that wretched boy? Why you probably felt that pang of pain cut through your dead ugly heart when you saw the mother jump without her feet ever touching the ground?"

"No! I bloody well can't!" I shouted, anger rising in me like boiling acid. "So why don't you tell me what's wrong with me then?"

"You lack control! There's this evil inside of you, a great gift of power, but instead of being grateful you're continuously disgusted by it! All because you let your emotions take over so easily! You hate and fear and envy with the same intensity as did when you were still alive! As if you still had a soul to lose!"

I didn't know what to say and just stared at her.

"You are even able to love someone. True love, the very - it hurts so bad but I'm still prepared to sacrifice my demon hide - variety!" She spat on the earth before my feet. "It's just bloody sickening!"

"I won't do it again." I muttered, my head bowed in shame, asking her for forgiveness. What else could I do? "I won't lose control again. I'll do what I'm supposed to from now on. No more pity to cloud my judgements. I promise."

"You shouldn't do this for me, William! Hell! Do you still not get this? You should take over control for the benefit of your own self! Think of what they have done, what you have allowed them to do to you! You've tried to please Angelus and you end up abandoned in the gutter, discarded like dirt. You tried to take care of Drusilla, and she repaid your devotion and love with treachery and heartache. You attempted to do good -"

She lifted her hand and traced her hand over my cheek, her tantrum subsiding out of her tense body. Her touch was searing, blinding.

"You tried to love her, craving to be finally loved in return. And yet again, you end up alone, broken. As always."

"I - I d-didn't try."

She gazed at me now, almost lovingly.

"Believe me, if anything I tried so hard not to!" I muttered, my throat tightening around my words. "I knew that it was wrong. Perverse even, to the point of getting the bloody pukers! But -Buffy -" her name slipped past my lips and I was stunned that I could remember her. Knew who she was. It wasn't right. She didn't fit here.

"She is your weakness." She whispered.

"I love her." I pleaded, disgrace compelling me not to look her into the eyes. "Please, I don't want to hurt her. I rather dust myself or take a stroll in the sun."

"Who said you had to?"

I kept avoiding her gaze. Dark thoughts rattling inside my head like rats in a too tiny cage.

"I want you to take control over your existence, my luv. Not destroy it by taking away your childish dreams. One has to have dreams, to want to exist, to keep on fighting. Without that, life is just empty and we are as good as dead."

Relief and the tiniest speck of hope, and I finally found enough courage to look into my tutor's face again. She seemed so compassionate, so kind. All the poison of her rage and disgust with me had seeped out and had left her a tending mother, a forgiving father, and I was their long lost son.

"What do I have to do?" My voice was broken ice, cold and brittle. "Tell me. What do I have to do to make it all better?"

"Go back to her. Go back to your family." She wrapped her arms around me, devouring my flesh in scorching heat, like I was already burning in the eternal fires of hell. But to me, this was still better than the cold and loneliness that I had felt for so long. At least by her, I was accepted.

"Take your fate in your own hands, my luv."

Something smooth lay in my right hand, burning to the touch. I opened my hand and looked, a rusty piece of iron, blackened by heat.

Her smile was as seductive as ever.

"Angelus must be already waiting for you."



SCENE 24

The dark Sedan swept over the small secluded parking-lot, hurling a trail of yellow and orange into the air and coming to a halt with a loud shrieking of tires. He killed the engine and parked the car under the barren trees, his feet crushing dead leaves as he stepped out.

He took in a breath of cold air, inhaling deeply. Wet earth with a touch of decay, so very pretty depressing. The grey sky above hung low, heavy with rain. No wonder there were more suicides around this time of year. A man would put the barrel of a fully loaded gun in his mouth for less.

He started to move into the direction of the institution. His palms were sweating. His heart a quivering lump of flesh. When he reached the fenced gates, and looked up at the monstrous building with its red-brick façade and its barred black holes for windows, his breath became trapped in his lungs.

"Liam, I want to talk to you about William."

He had asked her what it was that troubled her. Meanwhile his suspicion was rising, nibbling at him like a maggot.

"It's something I can't talk about over the phone." She sounded different from usual, less compassionate, harsher, and the little maggot of worry inside turned into a giant flesh eating monster.

"Come to see me in my office, tomorrow at three in the afternoon. We can discuss things in private."

"I thought I still had a date with you for tomorrow night." He had said, trying to steer the conversation to an another topic. Something that didn't make his heart jump or made him as nervous as a rattling snake.

She didn't go in on that, only reminded him to come to their appointment. Her voice was as frosty as ice.

He couldn't sleep after that telephone call.

Now he stood before the gates of the institute, the so-called hospital where his very own brother had spent the last five years of his life in wretchedness and misery. He passed through the gateway, giving a slight nod to the guy sitting in the security station, who was idly flipping through a magazine. A buzz followed, and the gates swept close behind him, the loud clanging of metal on metal stabbed ice cold fear into his heart.

What if they wouldn't let him out again?

Would he be forced to spent the rest of his life in this nightmare place, deprived from his liberty, kept in claustrophobic white rooms, chained like a beast, just as he had condemned Will to such horrors?

Would it be punishment, or would it be mere justice?

His hand slipped into the pocket of his coat, and with his thumb he brushed over the smooth coolness of the hidden Colt firearm. The chromed lined barrel felt surprisingly hot to the touch, as if the weapon had just been fired.

- I'm not going to use it. - The thought of taking it out of his pocket and pressing the end of the barrel against his temple passed his mind and he shivered, though the temptation was as strong as his own despair. - It's there, just in case. - If she's not prepared to listen to me. - if she refuse to understand any of it like Will did so very foolishly. - It will be there. To put an end to all of this.



TBC