Title: Bittersweet Realizations

Rating: PG-13 for language and violence

Disclaimer: Buffy tvs is owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, I'm just borrowing them for the purposes of this story, some scenes / dialogue is from LMPTM with added scenes before, during and after the episode.

Spoilers: Set during season 7 episode "Lies My Parents Told Me"

Feedback: May be provided here or sent to aeryncrichton@hotmail.com

Subject: Additional scenes before, during and after "Lies My Parents Told Me" furthering the Buffy/Spike romance

Part II - Underneath it All

The evening wasn't shaping up even close to how Spike had envisioned it. He'd pictured Buffy coming down the stairs, but not with the entire Scooby Gang and Giles on her heels. Being watched like an exhibit while he was in the process of being chained up wasn't exactly his idea of a fun way to spend the evening.

He'd been anticipating an opportunity to continue the discussion Buffy had started earlier. That would obviously have to wait until later. Much, much later, if the grim visages around him were any indication.

Spike sat on the edge of the bed, while Xander fussed with the steel manacles. He fastened one first to Spike's right wrist and then the other to Spike's left wrist, securely chaining him to the cement wall of the Summer's basement.

"We couldn't have put these chains back on a week ago?" Xander muttered under his breath. "No, we've got to work on Spike now." He shook his head thinking darkly of the fact that he wouldn't have a business soon, if he didn't find a way to put some more of his time back into XYZ Construction. And soon after that, he'd no longer have a place to live, because he wouldn't be able to pay his rent.

"What?" Spike asked sharply. It was getting tiresome hearing everyone talk about him as if he were an inanimate object. Being handled like one was more than a little off-putting.

"Nothing," Xander replied quietly.

Principal Wood continued to stare at Spike, finding it hard to remain still in the same room with the monster who killed his mother. But like before, he knew he had to bide his time, his opportunity for revenge would come. And it would be sweet indeed, when he had the chance to dole out the kind of pain and death Spike had served up to his mother all those years ago.

Spike looked up to see the unwavering stare of Principal Wood upon him. He didn't like the guy on principle; after all he'd tried to move in on his territory where dating Buffy was concerned. And there was a darkness behind the man's eyes that no one else seemed to notice. A hidden agenda lurked there, if he didn't miss his guess.

"What are you doing here?" Spike asked Wood. "You came to see the show?" he taunted.

"I thought you might need support," Wood replied in a deadpan.

'As if,' Spike thought darkly. "Ah, huh. Right, let's get this over with. What are you gonna do? Some hypno beam? A disarming spell?" Spike asked the approaching Giles. All the while running through Spike's head was the thought, 'whatever it is just let him get it over with quickly, so Buffy and I can find time to talk.'

Giles took out a box from his jacket pocket. "Not exactly," he replied. "The first has brainwashed you; there's something in your subconscious that it's using to provoke a violent reaction. So..." Giles began, only to open the box in his hands and pull a dark rock out of it. "We have to put this in your brain."

"Bugger that," Spike exclaimed, as he jerked back in involuntary reaction to Giles' matter of fact statement.

"The procrate stone will move within your mind to reveal the root of the trigger's powers. It can unleash ideas, images, memories," Giles revealed. "Hopefully once you understand what it is that's setting you off, you can break its hold on you." Rupert pushed his glasses back up his nose, thinking to himself, 'hopefully this will work, otherwise more drastic measure may be needed to neutralize Spike's danger to the group and especially the danger he poses to Buffy. She trust him entirely too much for her own good.'

"Hopefully?" Dawn interjected. "So it might not work?" That was definitely not what she wanted to hear. She wanted Spike back to normal, or as normal as he got anyway, instead of all triggery and potentially fatal to them all, especially Buffy. Ever since Buffy had told them about the trigger in Spike's brain, Dawn had been worried about them both, because she knew that it would kill Buffy if she was somehow put in the position of having to kill Spike to protect an innocent.

"The stone's just a catalyst for the process. The rest is up to Spike," Giles cautioned.

Spike looked up at a waiting Giles and asked, "And just how do you expect to get that hunk of rubble in my cranium?" Spike kept his eye on the steadily approaching Watcher. This whole thing sounded like something that was sure to give him a splitting headache and that was probably the best case scenario.

Giles motioned while he spoke one word, "Willow." Giles set the procrate stone back in the box he'd removed it from earlier.

Willow stepped up, all twitchy and unnerved about the prospect of being the channel through which to filter yet another blast of magical energy, even if it was for the purposes of healing. "Okay," she said, taking a deep cleansing breath. "I just hope my pronunciation is in the ballpark." A nervous laugh escaped, and then she turned to the open tome in her hands. "Cunami belig suction bok vada en keli bu morosh bokocay."

As the words of Willow's spell drifted into the ether, the stone transformed into something malleable and almost eel-like within the box.

Spike looked into the open box and shook his head in dismay at the squirming form inside. "You have got to be joking. What now?" he asked.

Giles got all bookish as he explained the process of inserting the stone into Spike's head. "It has to access the cerebral cortex via the optic nerve."

"Bollocks," slipped out before Spike had a chance to censor himself. He didn't like to swear in front of the Nibblet, she was still so young and sweet. He wasn't pleased to have to label himself as a bad influence on her. "All the rubbish people keep sticking in my head, it's a wonder there's any room left for my brain."

Giles smiled humorlessly. "I don't think it takes up that much space. Do you?" he asked rhetorically.

Spike quirked his lip in a smirk that was his only reply. He remained still as Giles brought the box close enough to his face to allow the eel-like procrate stone to crawl onto his cheek. It then inched its way across the cold flesh of Spike's face to enter through the corner of his right eye.

Regardless of how resolute Spike was trying to remain, as soon as the thing poked him in the eye, he felt first pressure and then burning as it burrowed into his head. He let out a howl and then screamed, successively louder, "Ow, ow, ow!"

Buffy rushed over to Spike, worry written on her face as she sat beside him on the bed and put her hand on his right shoulder to reassure him that she was there. "Spike? Spike? Listen to me," she instructed, when she got no response from repeatedly calling his name.

"Yeah," Spike replied in a distracted tone, while he looked down.

He didn't want to look directly at Buffy, especially not with every eye in the room on the both of them. His feelings for her were raw enough when they were laid bare to her alone, not that he didn't suspect that most of them could see right through him. Why else would he stay in Sunnydale? If not for his feelings for Buffy, he'd have long ago packed up and taken off for any other city in the world. He'd lived in Prague, Amsterdam, New York City. Any of those places without Buffy in them simply held no appeal. He couldn't leave her, especially not when there was a chance she might need him. Even if it was just for his fisticuffs against the First Evil's army. His hope that someday there might be more between them were his own and nothing to do with anyone else, not even Buffy.

"Are you all right?" Buffy asked, continuing to keep her hand on his shoulder, wanting to keep him grounded and in control of the process. She didn't want to see him fall back into the abyss she'd pulled him out of after The First had used the trigger on him before. Nor did she want to see him fall back into the psychosis The First had caused when she'd found Spike living in the basement of Sunnydale High School.

"How am I supposed to know..." Spike asked in a smart-alecky tone, then continued, "if this bug ugly is doing its jo..." he trailed off as his mind fell into the past, sights and sounds so sharp it was if he was reliving the moments rather than merely watching them in his mind's eye.

*** flashback ***

William stood before his mother, a stack of stiff, manila parchment papers in his hands. His gray suit was impeccably pressed, with a white linen shirt beneath it and his wire-frame spectacles sat on his nose as he read.

"Yet her smell, it doth linger

Painting pictures in my mind

Her eyes, balls of honey

Angel's hearts are there

Oh mark! Grant a sign

If crooked be cupid's shaft

Hark! The lark her name it hath spake

Cecily it discharges

From twixt its wee beak"

"Oh William," his mother sighed.

"It's just scribblings," William replied, a swish of the papers in his hand, adequate to convey his disparagement of his own work.

"Nonsense. It's magnificent," his mother admonished. "I wonder though, this Cecily of whom you write so often. Would that be the Underwood's eldest girl?"

"No. No, I do not presume," William replied with downcast eyes unable to admit the truth.

iSpike knew that the scene he observed was simply a memory, yet he had no power to break its hold over his mind. Then again, he shouldn't want to because perhaps it held the key to disarming the trigger in his brain./i

His mother could tell he was dissembling from his body language, so she pressed, "She's lovely. You shouldn't be alone; you need a woman in your life."

"I have a woman in my life," William announced firmly.

"You, nev...," his mother began, then when she realized who he spoke of she gave a short laugh.

William doffed his glasses. "Do not mistake me. I still have hopes that one day there will be an addition to this household. I will always look after you mother. This I promise," William vowed with his hand on his heart.

His mother coughed, fumbled for her handkerchief, which she brought to cover her mouth. When she lowered the white lace trimmed scrap, blood was soaked through the center.

William poured his mother a glass of water from the cut crystal decanter on the side table in the parlor and held it out to her. "Should I send the coach for Dr. Gull?" he asked, eager to find something he could do for his ailing mother.

She waved off his suggestion. "I'll be all right. Just sit with me a while William," she requested.

William walked over and sat on the floor in front of his mother, while she began to sing very softly.

"Early one morning, just as the sun was shining

I heard a maid sing in the valley below

Oh don't deceive me, Oh he'll never leave me

How could you use a poor maiden so."

*** end flashback ***

Spike's features morphed into his vampire game face, ridged around the nose and eye ridge, as his eyes turned yellow and feral without conscious effort or thought on his part, as the trigger brought out the demon and submerged the part of him that had regained his soul. He reached out, grabbed Buffy by the throat and then flung her across the room, before she had a chance to react to his sudden change in appearance and demeanor. Then Spike yanked at his bonds, testing the limits of the chains that held him to the wall, but he was unable to reach anyone else in the room directly. He reached down for the edge of the bed, which he toppled end over end, to hit Dawn and send her flying to the ground.

"Dawn," Willow cried, concern marring her face as she raced to make sure that the younger girl was okay.

Spike fell to his knees, howling in pain and clawed at his face. Then he tipped his head back and the eel-like procrate rock crawled out of his eye and dropped to the ground, transforming once more into its rock-like state, as it hit the floor with a sharp ping.

When Spike looked up, once more only his smooth visage was visible, a human mask that hid the vampire that lurked inside him. A vampire spirit that he'd been capable of submerging first with the help of modern technology and later with the metaphysical, through the regaining of his soul.

Now The First had planted some sort of a trigger in his head that he had no way to counter, no way to block. Just the sound of a bloody song and off her went into la-la-land without a clue as to what he might do to anyone he encountered. Except that it would definitely be bad.

Bugger.

to be continued...