TITLE: "Normal again" (10/10)

(Last and Final Chapter, THANK GOD!!!)

AUTHOR: Richard Bachman

EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com

SITE: nope

FEEDBACK: Always welcome, keeps me motivated to write.

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: Olga, for editing my work. And thank you Pat! I couldn't have done it without you! Also, to every reviewer I got during these 10 long months, thank you for every kind word and helpful suggestion. You guys kept me writing and now the bloody thing is finally finished!

WARNING: Character death.
ACT 10; Normal Again.
SCENE 1

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty thou art

For thy habitation is the heart

Which love of thee alone can bind

G. G. Byron, 1816

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The ceiling seemed to move.

Strips of harsh fluorescent light travelled across a vision that was only severely limited. He could not move nor turn his head. His limps were sluggish; heavy. They seemed a mile away and fully detached from his perception. There was the sound of wheels on the floor, a heavy double door swung open and closed again.

Alien faces hovered on both sides of him. A young woman checked the dripping bag of saline that dangled from a metal stand from which tiny tubes slithered down and disappeared somewhere into his distant body. It was surprising that the bloody thing was able to catch up with them at all and he could only imagine the girl pushing it along while they were rushing down an endless tunnel. There seemed to be no end to this odd journey, no real destination, although he should have known where they were heading. At least, they had explained everything to him beforehand. It was really his own fault if he had forgotten it again.

Whatever it was, he believed firmly that he was at peace with what was going to happen to him. He thought he might perhaps even desire it, much like a wretched prisoner would crave for the gallows after years of suffering and neglect.

He would have done anything to stop himself from remembering.

The cause of this almost stubborn determination, were the nightmares that he had suffered once before. They had returned one by one, assassins in the night, silently and in stealth when he had become too tired to allow himself to be tortured by guilt. The things he had done, the dreadful crimes of his loathsome, made-up past created demons that haunt him to the point of insanity. It didn't take long before the sedatives; the chlorpromazine and the liquid diamorphine, were no longer able to help, and he would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, pleading to imagined spirits to leave him alone, alarming the whole ward and rousing the other patients to indulge into their own insanity. He would also, in the short moments of blissful ignorance granted to him, cry out for Buffy to come and help him to chase his monsters away. The bolted door leading into his smal claustrophobic world would open, and he would look up with a naïve shred of hope, imagining hearing her voice coming from the corridor. But She never returned to him. There were only harsh hands and distant faces, followed by the stab of a cold needle, and then the agonizing realization that he would never see her again. That she was truly gone. Forever.

There was nobody now, so it seemed, who could protect him from his own demons. Nobody, but perhaps the ever-inquisitive Dr Walsh.

She came to see him one morning, after he had caused much trouble during the nightly lockdown. He had somehow managed to free his hands from the straps, and had used this opportunity to claw his cheeks to ruins. There was crusted blood under his nails the following morning, and a crimson rust smeared all over the cotton of his trousers, when the staff finally bothered to check on him. They found the inmate hiding underneath the bunk bed like a frightened animal, and he had fought, cried and spat on the orderlies when they dragged him out of his hiding place.

Something had to be done. No patient in the highly respectable D ward was allowed to throw such a distasteful display without being severely disciplined afterwards. So Dr Walsh was informed about his ill behaviour and appeared in his cell dressed in her immaculate white lab-coat and wearing a bleak face like steel. He knew that things were not right whenever she came to see him; the inmate had a deep rooted, almost instinctive fear for the woman that had something to do with the way she looked at him, like he was a specimen of an interesting species of insect to be examined and dissected. However, the poor boy couldn't help but to also feel a bit exhilarated by her visit. Except for her, nobody else of the staff ever spoke a single word to him. The silence and the loneliness he was condemned to face in his small cell was almost as much a torment to him as were his imaginary demons. No, the strict doctor seemed to be the only one who still wanted to listen, who was still interest in this pitiable, wretched being, and he was more than grateful for her company, however intimidating that was.

"This therapy will help you to recover and stop you from having these delusions." She said, and glanced over the charts, making some notes on her clipboard, her head shaking slightly as she read the observations made by the staff describing his behaviour for the last twenty-four hours. He didn't like her reading it. He knew how bad he had been last night, waking up the other patients and cutting himself. Cutting in his own arm so his demons didn't have to do it for him. Although the woman asked a lot of questions, and tried her best to understand, she was also disapproving, perhaps even disgusted by his madness. Dr Walsh made him feel ashamed of what he had done. She reminded him that he was a very sick young man, and needed to be cured for everybody's sake, because his insanity was extremely dangerous. He knew very well that she was right, and there wasn't a moment in his now most wretched life that he didn't cursed his illness, didn't hate him-self for being such a fantasist, for being insane. He tried to be a good boy now, to behave well and not to act inappropriately. Well, at least not in her presence, but it wasn't easy. Most of the time he had to remind himself to press his lips tightly together and bite in his tongue to prevent his mouth from hurling obscenity right into her face, so overwhelming was his fear for this particular woman. He was particular affraid that she might force him to remember what he had done. He still remembered their last visit to Dr Giles, and he didn't want to become that sobbing emotional wreck again, although most of the time, he came very close.

But today he needn't to be afraid. She wasn't here to poke in his head and reduce him into a weeping maggot. She, apparently, was here to offer him help. A possible way out of this hopeless and miserable situation.

"Don't be afraid." She said. "It's not painful. You won't feel it when it happens, and the benefits to your health will be tremendous."

"Is that really so?" His voice sounded pitiably small. He was hardly able to speak to her. He was in no position to ask questions. Really, he should be grateful that she was taking care of him in her own frightening yet distantly affectionate kind of way. But still, the frightened little boy inside of him needed some reassurance.

"Can it make them go away? Everything I've done? Everything terrible and bad? Make me forget?"

"It would stop you feeling so very anxious all the time. You won't be so frightened anymore."

He gazed up at her with wide eyes, chewing on his lower lip as if it was a piece of pink bubblegum while the tang of copper spread in his mouth. "Can you make me normal again?" He begged. "I don't want to be crazy anymore! I want to be normal, just good little William, nice little William."

Dr Walsh reassured her poor delusional patient with a smile that was colder than the north artic wind. " Of course we will try!" She replied with faked enthusiasm. "But we can't rush things. The healing of such a highly disturbed mind like yours takes time. So for now, let us see how far we get with the ETC, shall we?"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The lights were dim and pale blue, like at the bottom of a lake. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, urine and overheated engines. He himself lay propped up on a hard surface, his body restrained by two black leather belts, crossing over his chest. They had stripped him bare from any clothing, leaving him feeling horribly vulnerable. A harsh light was shone in his eyes and he squinted, seeing dots of red and green drifting before his corneas. A man in a white lab-coat, his face half hidden behind a paper mouth mask, looked down at him. His white brows knitted into a serious knot of utter concentration.

"Patient's heart rate?" He inquired, firmly.

"90 and slowing down, doctor." An invisible female answered, the voice coming from out of the shadows on his right.

"We should wait. Is he hooked to the machine yet?"

Fingers fluttering over his temples. There were hands and arms and possibly a whole body attached, but he could not distinguish a person, felt only the plastic touch of gloved hands. Smooth and cold steel was pressed onto his skin.

"Patient is ready doctor."

A low and constant humming filled the room, as if there was a fat hotel guest snoring in his sleep. It came from the back of the room and he couldn't see the possible source. The faceless nurse standing by his side lowered a switch on a panel and the humming burst into a loud roaring not unlike that of a plane just minutes before take off.

It was absolutely terrifying.

"Pulse rate, nurse?

"85 doctor." The woman informed. The buttons on the small panel lit up, green and red. A needle moved over the face of a dial in concert with his heartbeat. There was a soft wheezing sound of respiration, as a set of artificial lungs cooled down the boisterous machine's heated bowels.

This wasn't what he wanted. He was frightened to death. The gag filled his mouth with an acid taste and it was sweltering hot beneath the sheet, transpiration making his skin all slippery like that of a snake. He realized then that they were going to hurt him. The doctor and the nurse had awakened a terrible monster with their fancy button - pushing and switch - levelling, a dark creature with a booming roar whose intentions were everything but benign toward his hapless and maddened self. The monster was not a being of light, like the Slayer, but a creation of evil. It was going to devour and destroy, not comfort or heal. He was so sure about its intentions that the sheer fear of it caused him much difficulty to breathe. Besides, if Dr Walsh was right and this monstrous device was going to take away his anxiousness, all these fears and nightmares locked up in his troubled mind, wouldn't it also demand something in return for this great favour? Wouldn't there be a terrible price to pay?

Unable to move, to protest or even beg the staff for release, he quietly started sobbing, pushing out ragged breaths of air against his gag, his cheeks blowing up like red-flushed balloons.

"75 now doctor."

"Excellent! Nice and steady."

All that he could do now was look up at the ceiling where metal pipes and railings were crossing each other in chaotic zigzag patterns. The harsh light that had blinded him was still there, but had been removed further away. He stared at it, waiting for the pain to start. Waiting to be punished for his wicked illness and for his ground-level stupidity to allow all of this to happen to him. In his teary eyes, the light blurred into patches of colours that pulsed on the rhythm of his slowing heartbeat.

It was then that he heard a voice. One as familiar as his own. It was calling out to someone.

"Spike."

"Spike!"

He stirred, but mainly to move away from it. He didn't want to listen that voice. Monsters, he reminded himself, monsters and demons. Only they would still call him by that cursed name.

"Spike? Spike! Good Lord, what have they done to you?"

The bright coloured particles shifted, moving themselves out of chaos to form a most familiar face. He panted loudly through his nostrils as he realised who was appearing before him. It was as if he was staring into a mirror.

William August Byron gazed down at the paralysed young man, his concern about his situation only visible by the way he wrinkled his brows.

"Hate to tell you this. But don't say I didn't warn you."

He made a muffled sound behind the gag, his eyes caught in a maddened twitch. William reacted with a deep sigh and an overdramatic eye-roll. "Spike! It's me your bloody soul! Look at me! There's no need to be afraid! Anyway, you better save it for whatever these folks are going to do to you."

A memory was recovered out of the fog of his mind, and he recalled the visit that his soul-companion had paid him. He remembered fragments of their conversation and he particularly remembered not liking his spiritual counterpart very much.

Bloody hell! Why? He thought bitterly. Why did he have to come back to see me like this, right now, at this specific moment, when he was about to get tortured with his own whacker's consent to escape the torment of his mental illness? Was he here to mock him? Laugh at his stupidity? Scorn him for every terrible mistake he had made that had destroyed so many lives?

Wasn't he already punished enough?

"So, this is it then?" William Byron said, tightening his jaws as he observed the straps, the wires and tubes snaking in and out of his body, the sheer desperate and pitiable state he was in. "This is your great plan? Let these sadists shock the last bit of good reason out of you? Is that how you want it to end?"

There came no response other but a dull look in his eyes.

"Come on Spike! You cannot just give up like this! Speak to me, dammit! I know you think you deserve it all and perhaps you're right, but it's not going to bring her back! The only thing you're going to do here is that you're going to make Luce really happy by getting you and me closer to the cosy fires of hell. Is that what you want? Let Miss Serpent Breath have the last laugh and get her hands on both of us?!"

A slow blinking, but except for that, his features were that of a marble statue. Let him speak. He thought. Let him mock. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing mattered except to be able to forget.

The nurse moved the lamp away and the Victorian squinted as the beam of harsh light hit him and shone right through his eyes. He moved away and worriedly, he watched how the girl checked on the machine standing at the head of the operation table. It was a rectangle box of ordinary size, with a façade marked by dials and lit buttons. The whole thing sat on top of a trolley and red and blue wirings sneaked away from the device into a medical tool that looked much like a screw with two separate spoon-shaped ends that were pressed on each side of the young man's temples. William turned back to his demon-half, nervousness getting the better of him. There was no time to squander around.

"Really Spike. I thought much more of you." He tried. "Buffy, she would have thought much more of you."

That last statement seemed to have finally caught his attention; the inmate looked back at him, blue eyes flashing and jaws that tried to clench but where held back by the rubber gag.

"Oh! So you still care, then? Not completely brain-dead yet?"

"70 doctor."

"Perfect! I think our patient is ready to receive the first dose."

William's already pale features paled even a shade whiter and fretfully, he lifted his spectacles.

"Spike! For God's sake! Snap out of it! They're about to fry our brains! At least talk back to me you bloody git!"

A slow blinking. His eyes kept staring at him. Then the nurse screwed the instrument tighter, pushing the electrodes deeper into the skin. Her actions elicited a frightened moan from him. Somehow, the restrained patient was able to struggle a little despite of the sedatives.

William lifted a brow. "Okay, so you not too keen on the idea of getting zapped either. Got that. Now what?!"

He lobbed forward, trying to get up, but the straps held him back. He was barely able to lift his head from the table. Then he tried to spit out the rubber gag, forcing it out with his tongue. He almost succeeded if it wasn't for the nurse. She pushed the offensive thing all the way back and bound a leather band over his mouth, keeping him from trying again. Panting loudly and looking up at the Victorian, he begged with desperation in his eyes.

"Hang on there a minute, you do want to talk, don't you? Only you're gagged, right?"

Despite of his own misery, despite the fact that he was frightened as hell, he still managed to roll his eyes at his soul.

William didn't even notice his weak attempt to be defiant. " You think you can't answer me, only because you're physically not able to. But you don't need to use words. Just listen and talk to me through your mind. Chains have never been able to restrain you, so what good will silly rubber gags do in silencing your stubborn tongue?"

He swallowed again, eyes blinking feverishly now.

"Spike?" William tried, gently, almost cautiously.

- What -What are they doing to me? -

The thought had barely crossed his mind, or a wave of pain flooded in, sharp and bright, searing like fire and yet paralysingly cold. It flashed through his skull like thunder splitting a tree. The agony was almost familiar, as he was vaguely reminded of some sort of device that he had once imagined being implanted inside his head to correct his murderous behaviour as a vampire. Only now, it fired totally out of control. He couldn't cease with whatever he was doing to stop the pain, for he had done nothing wrong to invoke its wrath in the first place.

- Stop it! Stop it! Not doing anything! Make it stop! -

As suddenly as the pain had started, it ceased. He breathed hard through his nose, his teeth biting so hard on the gag that it was almost splitting it in half.

- Oh, God, thank you! Thank you! -

A slight movement of the masked doctor's hand, and it was back again, the needle on the dials on the machine crept all the way up to 140, and held that position for a short few seconds. However, to the agonized patient suffering the treatment, it seemed that the violent onslaught of electricity lasted forever.

William tried to reach him again.

"Spike! You have to get out of here! You have to -"

- Stop! Please! The chip, it's burning! Can't hunt! Can't think! Please! Make it stop! Make it stop! -

"It's not the bloody chip! You know that!"

- I can't - I -

The pain ebbed away again, leaving him cold and paralysed. Sweat cooled on his brows. The short time between the shocks began to wrap him in a painless bubble of relief, isolated him from the outside world. William's face hovered close, his spectacles slipping half off his sweating nose- bridge. He knew that face so very well, he knew every dimple and every line it would form if his soul-counterpart were to smile or to frown. He wondered if it still belonged to him after all this time. Whether he still looked like that if he happened to take a look into the mirror. He stared at the sandy brown locks, curling in unruly strings over a pale, sharp face. Funny cheekbones, he always thought they looked rather comic, too gaunt. Blue eyes, which were vigilant behind thick glasses and were seemingly full of spirit.

He stared at that face with an almost childlike curiosity, as if he had seen it for the first time and a thousand times, and realized that he wasn't too different from the man he wasn't supposed to be after all. The notion didn't drown him in self-loathing nor did it frighten him, but filled him with a sense of peace he had not known for a long time.

"Spike, listen. Listen to me. I've got to tell you the truth here. I know you think I'm able to help you out, but I can't. I can't save you. No-one can. Not Buffy, not Dr Walsh. Not the Watcher. Not even the real Slayer. You have to save yourself." William shot a worried glance at the doctor, who was leaning over the patient's chest, listening to his breathing with a stethoscope, tapping here and there to check on proper function. "You got to fight back, you got to leave this place on your own strength, and you have to hurry, or we'll be stuck here playing defective vegetable for the rest of our life."

- Can't leave. Can't move.-

"Look, it's not about the straps or the drugs. Those are not the things that keep you from going back! Think about it! You can still communicate with me even when you're not moving your lips or your tongue right now. Isn't that enough proof that physical confinement isn't the soddin problem here?"

- Can't. Can't go back. -

"They're gonna need you Spike. The Slayer and her friends are going to need us BOTH."

- Can't go back to her. Not after - not after -

"Bloody hell! Can you stop drowning yourself in useless self-pity for a moment?! Stop seeing yourself as the Morbid Martyr and start acting like some-one a bit more useful again?"

William had hardly the time to finish his lecture as a new shock hit the patient, flashing through the sides of his temples and straining every muscle in his body, stretching them like cords on a violin. This time however, the wave lasted longer and was more violent. It ripped through his skull, like shark-teeth ripped through flesh, leaving an injured mind with gaping holes where there was once order and continuity in thought.

He had trouble holding on to his own thoughts. Through the agony and the dread, he finally realized what was happening to him. That monster, that dark ugly machine that they had attached to his temples like a leech to an exposed part of skin, was destroying his memory. A lifetime worth of recollections were stolen, memories he hated, but also memories he treasured more than anything in the world and that had been all that he had left.

He wanted to scream. Stop them from destroying William Byron, but the electricity paralysed his tongue and jammed his jaws together. So the destruction continued, and the memories that defined his personality in this reality, told him who he was in this life, were torn away from him one by one.
*~*~*~*~*

Buffy, dragging him out of the therapy group after he had literally turned the whole bunch of mental patients against him with his thoughtless remarks. She had been so angry with him, telling that he was rude and obnoxious, but she also told him that she didn't see him as a monster. She saw him as a man.

Liam, visiting for he first time, telling him that he cared. Because he was his little brother. Because he was family.

The sun beating down on his face. Hot orange glowing through his eyelids. She being there and sharing that perfect summer day with him.

The smell of a paperback copy of David Copperfield, Penguin edition. A smile that could drive him mad with happiness.

She, holding him, comforting him.

She, telling him the one thing he had ever wanted to hear, telling him that she loved him.

*~*~*~*~*
-Don't! Stop! Please! Stop this! Stop this!-

"Spike!"

-Help! Help me, please! They're killing me! They're taking her away! Don't even let me keep her memory, don't even, don't-

"Stop holding on to all this! You don't belong here anymore! Don't you see that, you silly twit? There's nothing that keeps you in this place, keeps you from going back except for your self! Believe me, nothing can hold you here but your own emotional attachment to what once had been but will never be again."

- I'm - I'm scared. - Please help- Help me. Don't let them make me forget! I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget about her, please -

"Some things were meant to be forgotten. Some things were never meant to be." William whispered, and he placed his hand on his with sweat gleaming face, gently covering his eyes. Light kept shining through his transparent skin, while hot tears spilled through and rolled down the patient's cheeks. "Listen Spike. Give up on this place, will you? Soon there won't even be a memory of her for you to hold on to anymore. There will be nothing left for you here but misery."

He looked up and saw how the sadistic doctor was about to return to the machine to give his patient another shock.

"Spike, are you listening to me?"

- At least, let - let me keep one of them. One memory of her. Let me remember it. Let me keep it. Let me take it away with me.-

"Are you still trying to bargain with God? Christ! Spike, for the sake of you and me and everything you hold dear, please, just let it go!"

- It's all I ask. One thing to hold on to. To keep me going. Please. There might not be a chance for me to be with her again. It may be all I'll ever have. Don't take this away from me. Let me remember it, let me -

His string of thoughts were cut short when the very last wave of electricity hit his body, wiping out every shred of memory he still had of the last twelve months of his life.
SCENE 2

Dawn was dancing by the side of her mother's bed with the buzz of panic in her long adolescent limbs. "Oh my God, this is not going to work! You're going choke him to death!"

"It is working! We just have to keep him steady! Willow! The antidote!"

Buffy held the blond vampire's head back. She had forced a tube into his mouth and the piece of former garden utensil sneaked its way down the undead's throat, ending somewhere nearby his stomach. Spike had gagged a little on the intrusion, but except for these reflexes and some occasional moans, he hadn't struggled much against this harsh treatment: Something that Buffy found alarming, but she had decided that her concern was best kept secret. If anything, Tara's remarks in the kitchen had taught her that she should to emotionally remove herself from the blond vampire even more than she had done up untill now.

Willow appeared with a plastic funnel and the notorious Mug filled with Yuk, and the whole room immediately started to reek of stale urine stained toilet-bowls.

Buffy caught herself wrinkling her nose. "Tara, Xander, you both hold on to his legs. Don't let him roll off the bed! Will, you pour that icky stuff down his throat. Make sure he gets every single drop of it! I'll hold on to his arms." She grabbed Spike's hands and twisted them on his back, while pushing a shoulder against his spine to keep him in upright position.

"What can I do?" Asked Dawn.

"You can stay away from him so I wouldn't have to punch him afterward for breaking BOTH my little sister's arms."

"But -"

"No buts, no whining, or you can forget about calling ill today and pack your bag to go to school. Will, are you ready?"

The witch nodded and cautiously, she approached the unconscious vampire, fitted the cone at the end of the tube, and pinched his nose with two fingers, eliciting a frown on Buffy's brows.

"It's for security reasons." Willow explained. "You know, for in the case he is still able to smell anything. I don't want him to get all nauseous again."

"Good thinking."

The others watched as the witch aimed the mug at the brim of the funnel and slowly, poured the repulsive solution into the vampire's gullet. The liquid was thick, and Willow got an unpleasant feeling in her stomach as she saw little air bubbles rising to the black surface like gas escaping out of a swamp. It reminded her of little animals drowning in tar pits or badly cooked oatmeal porridges.

"Is it working?" Tara asked, her hands clumsily fixing the vampire's legs to the bed by leaning her whole weight onto it. She knew what Spike could do when he was to come back to semi consciousness, she had seen the blue bruises on Dawn's injured arm, but she wouldn't mind a bit trashing of the legs if it was a sign of his recovery. But for now, Spike remained perfectly still, and that started to worry her a great deal.

"Well, at least he's swallowing it." Willow replied, holding the mug upside down to get rid of the stubborn strings of gooey liquid. "And I think I got all of it inside him now."

"He's not moving." Dawn muttered.

"Maybe the antidote needs time to work its way through his system. Get distributed by his bloodstream." Willow opted.

"What bloodstream? I don't think vampires even have a circulation." Xander said. He was still restraining Spike's legs. You never knew when the crazy bloodsucker was regaining consciousness to start kicking like a mule. He didn't want one of the girls to get hurt again. "Does that mean that rancid stuff is going to sit there in his stomach till it evaporates?"

"Maybe the antidote didn't work."

"Don't say that Dawnie! Spike will be all right! Just like I said, I think the antidote needs time to -"

"If this doesn't work, do we have any backup plans? Some other way to raise the evil-undead?" Xander opted.

"But -but It has to work! Right Willow?" Tara opted, hopefully. "We did everything exactly as it was described in the book. A poisoning by the glarghk guhl kashma'nik has to be counteracted by an antidote brawn from the demon's own venom. This is the only way to reverse the effects."

" So you're saying that this is all we got to help him? If the poison doesn't work, there's no other way to get him back?"

"Dawn, he's not gone yet! Spike's still here! He's a vampire and vampires don't just die leaving a whole corpse behind. Willow is probably right, the antidote needs some time to settle." Buffy explained.

Dawn crossed her arms over chest and shot a resentful glance at her sister. "You just don't care, do you?"

"What are saying?" Buffy said, irritated.

Dawn shrugged angrily, tears glossing behind her eyes. "From all the people in this room, you are the one who wants to have nothing to do with him. And I know about the others that they won't be too upset when Spike is gone."

"That's so not true!"

"Oh come on Buffy! Admit it! You hate Spike! Hate him for having that crush on you. Because he isn't Angel, because all he has is that chip and not a soul. I may be a teenager but I'm not stupid! Things will be so much easier for you once he's gone, wouldn't it?"

"I dragged him home by my own, Dawn! Do you have any idea how heavy he is? I didn't leave him on the street after he was stabbed, and didn't I just try to move some dangerous sort of demon across murky dimensions to get the antidote for him?! If I really hate him that much, do you really think I would still do these things to save his ass?!"

Dawn stared at Buffy, a cold look in her eyes.

"You wouldn't have to save him if he didn't try to help you in the first place."

"I didn't ask him to."

"Exactly. Spike helps us out even when he doesn't have to. You on the other hand, will never lift as much as a finger to help him if he was in trouble. But that's not just you, is it?" Dawn glanced around, distributing her emotional teenage wrath equally over the others. "All of you won't. Because to you, he's not worth the trouble. He's not considered one of us, is he? Not important enough to waste any tears on. Not human enough to be a real person."

Buffy was silent for a moment. She was still holding on to the vampire, but her grip on his wrists was no longer firm, and Spike's body was more leaning against her for support than it was that she was trying to restrain him. How wrong Dawn was, she thought, how terribly, terribly wrong! She didn't hate Spike. Perhaps she loathed him for what he had made her do to him and to herself. Perhaps she didn't saw him as a person, a real person with feelings that could be hurt and with a heart that could be broken. But she never hated him that much to wish him dust. She couldn't imagine, could hardly bear the thought of not having him around in Sunnydale. Spike was the one who had always accompanied her during her lonely nightly strolls over the cemeteries these last four years. Irritating her, mocking her, fighting her. He was the annoying but necessary presence in her life, the only thing that was as certain as the sun rising each morning in the east or the stars appearing in the cloudless sky at night. He was the only one who had never left, and she would miss him horribly if he was gone.

Absorbed as she was in her own thoughts, she hardly registered the faint movement in his limbs as he started to stir, and became only aware of it when a string of gagging sounds came from him as he ineffectively tried to hurl up the disgusting fluid that had been forced down into his stomach.

"Spike? Spike!" Buffy blinked her wet eyes in bewilderment, and within a moment, she had recomposed herself. "Guys! Grab his legs! Will, get that tube out of him!"

"Holy Godfathers one and two! Tara! His ankles! Grab hold of his ankles, but be careful!"

Tara was just in time to keep his legs down as Willow pulled the tube out of the vampire's throat. Spike started to shiver all over his body as if he was struck by seizure or was getting zapped by waves of electricity coming from his chip.

"Spike?! Spike, do you hear me?!" Buffy yelled, and wrapped her arms around his waist to keep him from bouncing off the bed.

"What's going on? What's happening to him?!" Dawn asked.

"Maybe it's the antidote. Some sort of side effect." Willow tried, pushing the vampire back against the bed.

"Spike! Spike! Stop this! Wake up!" Buffy tightened her grip on him, nudging her chin again his trembling shoulders as much as to stabilize him as to provide comfort. You have to wake up, she thought, we don't have anything else left to get you back, and you can't just leave like this.

I need you.

William. You have no idea how much I need you.
SCENE 3

I don't need any of this. I really don't.

Still, I dragged myself reluctantly to the ladder, and waited at the foot of the steps, considering to climb up to the crypt, where seconds before, the loud banging of the heavy metal door had alarmed me, yanking me out of a nice and comfy alcoholic stupor. For a short moment, I thought I was able to pass this one over, and hide myself in my lair behind a couple of trunks till she lost her patience with me and went away again, but she wasn't exactly in a quitting mood today.

"Spike? I know you're in here!

No I wasn't. Not if I kept myself very quiet.

"I want to see you! You can't keep hiding yourself from us."

Yes I could. Watch me. All I needed was a human-lifetime worth of fags and a truckload of pigs-blood and cheap booze and I would have been half way down to a happy, Scoobies-less existence.

I heard her sigh. My Slayer obsessed mind couldn't resist picturing her rolling her eyes rather impatiently.

"Spike, I know you're in your crypt. Your duster lies here on the floor and besides, it's three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun is shining, where- else could you be?"

Got me there. I really shouldn't leave my clothes lying around like that. Bloody Slayer.

"Are you down there?"

No answer, still trying to keep myself very quiet, you see.

"I have enough of this! If you don't come out to show yourself quickly, I'm going back home and find myself a wooden pointy stick and then come down there to MAKE you talk to me. Or I'm gonna torch this whole place up just like last time."

"Hey! Hold your nuggets there, you bloody mindless vandal! I just got the place tidied up again!"

As I climbed out of the shaft, she was standing nearby, her arms crossed over her bosom wearing a small triumphant smile on her pretty face.

"If you call this tidy, please don't show what a clutter looks like in your eyes."

"Mock all you can, pet. What are you here to see me for?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to check out on you. You know, it's kinda strange when an injured houseguest leaves without saying a word, disappears for whole month. Doesn't show up for the meetings or patrols. Even if the guy in question is a rude and obnoxious vampire with serious behavioural problems, I can't help but wonder if something horrible has happened to him. But hey, that's just good old soft-hearted me talking. The rest of the gang just want me to find you to give you a good nagging."

"Is that why you're here?" I leaned back on the stone tomb that I used as some sort of bunk bed after my real nest had been blown to bits by the Slayer's resentful ex. The ever-tactless Captain Cardboard. That stupid wanker with his Easter egg-hunt obsession, you know what I'm talking about.

"Why else would I be here?"

"Are you ill or something?"

She frowned at me. Her expression was fifty percent confusion and fifty percent annoyance.

"It's just, I thought you didn't care." I clarified.

"I don't. I mean not too much! Obviously enough to see if you're not dusted by some old acquaintance of yours, but nothing special." She rambled. "Not that I care more about you than I would care about any of my friends if they were trouble."

"Is that what we are now? Friends?"

"Yes. And that's all we ever will be. Unless, you don't want us to be and have suddenly decided that you want to have nothing to do with me or the gang anymore."

"It's not like that."

"Well, you were trying to keep yourself away from me. I came by to see you often enough, and every time I came into your crypt there was no sign of William the Bloody. If it wasn't for me threatening to smoke you out like a rat you wouldn't have fled out of your hiding place to talk to me."

I stared at her. I knew she expected me to spill the beans. Tell her why I was acting like this. Why I was no longer following her around like a love- sick puppy with only half a brain of wit. But I kept my gob shut. She wouldn't understand, even if I did try to explain it to her. The things I remembered, about us, they were just too confusing, too mind boggling to describe. I wouldn't even know the words for it to do so.

She sighed, her patience running short, I could tell by that look in her eyes.

"Spike, why have you been avoiding me? Does it have anything to do with that incident?"

That incident, that was what she called it. She wrinkled her nose as she spat out the word, like something vile. That rather unfortunate incident. It boggled my mind to hear her even speak like that. Definitely not something you would normally find in the Slayer's vocabulary. Did she memorized this whole speech or what?

" Please Spike, Tell me what's going on."

"You know, even if I wasn't too embarrassed to tell you, you wouldn't understand a thing of it."

"Try me! I may be a college drop-out but I'm not really that dumb."

I sighed, and leaned back on my tomb-turned-bunk-bed for support. How could I tell her, I mean really describe, in any of the bloody languages I knew, demon or human, what was spooking through my mind for the last month? How could I put all the feelings I now had for her into a couple of simple sentences?

"Do you still have those visions of yours?" I tried. "The ones that are connected to you because of you being the slayer?"

"Yes, sometimes." She looked confused. I couldn't blame her. "Although I haven't had them for months now, thank God for that! They were never much fun, always forbidding some great disaster coming up. Makes you wonder why they don't sent dreams about me winning the lottery or having a particular nice day or something. All that gloomy life threatening stuff doesn't really encourage me to get all enthusiastic about this special bonus to my Slayer abilities." She shook her head to get rid of her own ramblings. "But what does that have to do with what's bothering you?"

"Let's just say I had one of those more pleasant visions which are so much envied by you."

"You dreamed about winning the lottery? What were you going to do with all that money, buy yourself a bloodbank?"

"No. Not that." And before I could help myself, I was rolling my eyes at her. "I dreamed about us. And it wasn't just dream. It was, well like I said, it was some sort of a vision." I tried to explain to her most desperately as I saw how she started to turn her eyes away. "More than a vision, that was. It was bloody real. It sits in my brains like a soddin memory."

"Spike, you were stabbed by a exotic species of demon and was ailing on its venom in my mother's bedroom for hours. What else do I need to say to convince you that it wasn't real?"

"You kissed me, Buffy." I said, swallowing hard. "I remember you kissing me."

"Of course you remember! I've kissed you before Spike. That poison must have jiggled with your brains."

"Not like that. Not like - like you really - cared. About us. Or about me."

She stared at me with a pang of guilt on her face and an injured look in her eyes.

"And I remember you telling me something. Something very important. You told me you loved me."

"That's not real Spike." Her voice turned cold, deprived from any emotions.

"It never happened."

"It did happen, I remember it! As clearly as I remember how was turned or my first taste of human blood! Buffy, you told me that you loved me. You told me that I was a good man. You showed me that you cared!"

"Okay, what else did I do? Did I marry you? Did we have a bunch undead kids together? Were we living in crypt with a white pickedy fence?"

"Look, I can't remember anything else but that what I just told you! But it's enough."

"It was a delusion, Spike! Not a vision. If this is what was keeping you here sulking in your crypt all day you really should snap out of it!"

"God! I knew this was going to happen!" Yelling at her now because there was no other way for me to get rid of my frustrations. "Let me remind you that YOU wanted to know what happened to me! I didn't want to talk until you tried to drag it out of me through my nose on the pain of getting bloody dusted!"

"And I'm so regretting it right now for bringing this up. Maybe I should ask Willow to make you another portion of antidote, if you're still that crazy."

"I'm not crazy!" I snapped. "It was real! More real than anything else I have experienced in my life. Buffy, you have no idea how real it was."

"Spike."

I raised my head and stared at her. She wasn't angry with me, not really. Maybe she couldn't be after everything we have been through together.

"I told you it was over between us. Please Spike. Move on. Let me move on."

It was not a statement, not a question, but a plead. She was pleading to me to let it go. Forget about the feelings I ever had for her. She wanted me to forget the memory about everything that could have been between us, what still could be. She didn't understand that it was already too late for me to forget, not with that smitten of hope burning inside my dead heart. Not with the memory of her words lingering in my mind.

She was moving toward the door, her hand already on the handle as I tried once more to make it clear to her. That I wouldn't give up, not in a million years.

"Suppose there was a way to change all this. Would it still be impossible for you to love me?"

She turned around, the blankness in her expression hiding away her feelings.

"You see, I don't think the trouble lies with us, having these feelings for each other. I do believe against any better judgement that you still care. The REAL problem is - this-" And I raised my arms, gesturing around me with my hands. "All this is wrong. Ain't it? You being the Slayer is wrong. Me being a vampire is wrong. This whole entire world is soddin wrong!"

"Spike -"

"And don't you tell me that I'm completely out of my bloody mind again! I've seen it Buffy! I remember it! I know you can love me for who I am. If only you would be given the chance."

"You can't change anything! You can't change the entire world just because you like it to be different from what it is! This is how things are. I can't change what I am, and neither can you. So stop dreaming about us. There is no us, William."

"There never will be."

She left soon afterward, slamming the door shut behind her, leaving me to slowly stew in my own misery. It took awhile before my mind stopped spinning and I had regained some sense of wit to answer, although by that time, she was of course no longer there anymore to hear me mutter these words to myself.

"You're wrong slayer. You got it all wrong. I know I can't change the world. And I know I can't change you."

"But I can change myself. I know that now."

"For you, I know can."