"What?" Laramie started forward, only to be stopped by the older gentleman's hand on his arm.
"Laramie?" Spike looked up, his eyes wide, confused, and very, very William.
Without thinking, Laramie plowed his fist into the Councilman's face, ducking under his arm and reaching Spike's captors, one of whom Spike was already fighting with a mechanical determination that sent a chill down Laramie's spine. The nineteenth-century Watcher brought the side of his hand down on one young man's wrist, making the young Council member howl in pain and release his quarry.
Spike bared his teeth in a growl, slamming his hand into the other Watcher's nose and feeling a sick sort of satisfaction when he felt bones crunch. He reared his fist back, lips peeled away from his teeth as he breathed heavily through his mouth. He was going to hit the guy again, and again; if he just kept hitting him, there would be something, right? Some kind of—
He was yanked off the man, thrown aside. Laramie swept his dark, long hair out of his face, and his eyes signaled rage, clear and deadly. "What are you doing? You wish to stay here forever, you simpleton? Or perhaps you wish to become a murderer again." He turned, leaping over the unconscious men lying on the floor, and exited the room, leaving Spike to follow him.
Stupid, he cursed himself. Stupid for bringing him here, to the Council. They would have killed him if given the chance, because it was in the rules. It was in the rules that anyone without a soul was considered an "other." An enemy.
"They didn't know we were coming." Spike caught up with Ramie outside the building. "Seems like they would have known you'd go there first, brainy ponces that they are." He was cruising on the adrenaline of the moment, relishing the burst of energy it had given him.
"The Council… the Council in my time… they would not have made note of you, of your plea. And once I disappeared, they would have erased every record of me in case I had taken the Hub. Though this is a different time, they would not take the risk." He rubbed his eyes and slowed his pace a bit. "They told you, William, they would not aid you in creating paradoxes. They would not tolerate their own, either."
"And they wouldn't tolerate me, eh? As a soulless human, I s'pose I'm the biggest paradox they've seen." Spike grinned joylessly, and the thin tether Ramie had placed on himself snapped.
"Are you in there somewhere? Anywhere?" He grabbed Spike by the shoulders and shook as hard as he could, sending the floppy curls into disarray, shaking the sneering grin off his face. "Or am I cursed to be the bloody handmaid of an empty husk for the rest of my life?" Frustrated, he tossed Spike aside and muttered, "I'll let your precious buggerin' Slayer take care of you."
"I don't like it any more than you do," Spike called after him, causing the Watcher to stop. "I still remember her, Ramie. But now all I remember… all I remember and feel from her are the bad things. The things that were wrong between us."
"What things?" Ramie kept his back to Spike, listening intently.
"The fighting. The bloody declarations of hatred." His voice dropped to a rasp, but his next words were audible. "The time I almost raped her even as I claimed I loved her." Silence ticked by, and he added, "And now that's what I am again."
And that's why you need me, Laramie thought silently, turning back to Spike. "So do you want to find her?"
Spike laughed, a bitter, humorless sound, but when he spoke next, it was William who supplied the words, as it had always been. Spike's moments of eloquence had always, always been holdovers from an educated, rejected young man who had been too close to his mother.
"Even the bad moments with her were better than my best moments without her. I can't feel it now, but I know what it felt like, Watcher. I don't need my soul to know I needed her. I never needed my soul to tell me I needed to feed, did I? And now, I still know what she is to me, and it's just… a fact, a barren fact. But I'll find her, even if, even though I don't have it in me to care, just as you eat when you are not hungry, or talk when you've nothing to say." He clutched a hand into his curls, and the uncertain, needy voice of William poured out.
"I-I have lost something, and I am not at all certain how to get it back." His eyes met Laramie's, the pain evident in them, and he tilted his head. "You promised you would help me, did you not? That was you?"
Laramie dropped a trembling hand to his friend's shoulder and prayed for the strength to keep his promises. "That was me."
~~~
"Well, this is a completely unpleasant and not altogether surprising situation I find you all in." Giles looked at the trio of bruised and broken men gathered in the small room of the Council's makeshift offices and shook his head. His voice hardened in a rare show of temper. "Why do you think so many of us defied the Council, left you when we had to, why do you think my Slayer disobeyed you time and time again?" When he was given no answer, his voice raised to a roar. "You're too bloody stubborn. There is no black and white, gentlemen, there are shades in between, and you lack the finesse and the imagination to comprehend as such."
Wesley felt like applauding but kept it to himself. Instead he stood in the doorway, arms crossed, an expression of cool distaste etched on his features.
"I am ashamed of you. I am ashamed of the fact that there are idiots like you protecting mankind." He took off his glasses and rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. He felt travel-worn, his eyes grainy and his skin too tight. "I am ashamed to be associated with you."
"We told you there might be someone," Wesley said.
"There were two men." The older gentleman, Ian, finally spoke up, touching long, elegant fingers to his split lip. "You said there would be one man."
"We promised nothing," Wesley said casually, crossing the room to look down at Ian. "You say one of them was a Watcher and the other was lacking his soul. They came to you for help and you attacked them."
Neither Ian nor his two helpers had any response for that.
"We're wasting time," Giles said quietly. "We need to look for them."
"This will come to no good," Ian cried out, standing up. "You have no rules, you have no standards. Being a rogue never got anyone into anything but trouble."
"It's gotten us out of more than one Apocalypse," Giles said quietly. "During which you undoubtedly stood around wondering how on earth you were going to help without getting your skirts dirty."
It would have been a perfect exit if Wesley hadn't laughed.
~~~
"All right, everyone, I've got some news." At the scattered moans that went through the group, Buffy rolled her eyes. "It's good news, and it will only take a minute. The class has gotten so large—" A cheer went through the group at this. "That I'm going to have to split it up. Those of you switched to the earlier class will have a different instructor." Protests started at a low roar and increased in volume. Though it dismayed her to think she'd disappoint the people she had come to care about, it gave Buffy a little thrill to know they were so attached to her.
She'd never had so many people attached to her, ever. And if she died, she knew there wouldn't just be someone else called to replace her immediately.
"Hey," she raised her voice so they could hear her. "It's not so bad. It's someone you know." Gesturing to Kelly, she grinned. "See? It's Kelly! Now all the guys can check out her butt easier, she'll be in the front of a class."
"Buffy," Kelly hissed, barely resisting the urge to put her hands over the mentioned part.
"We have sign-up sheets outside the class," Buffy added. "Now go home!"
As the people filed out of the classroom, Kelly sighed miserably. "No one's going to sign up for my class," she said. "They all love you too much."
"Nah." Buffy smiled at Kelly and added, "Trust me, plenty of people have found it easy enough to leave me."
Kelly said nothing, but thought of the people in Los Angeles who were working their butts off to help the legendary Slayer. No, she doubted it was easy for anyone at all to let go of Buffy.
She hoped, for Buffy's sake, that would hold true for one person in particular. She'd been having dreams, every other night like clockwork, that showed her two men in various places, with various people.
One of them couldn't be described as anything but beautiful, his skin a dusky gold color, his eyes too pale for her to pin down a color, and his hair inky black and spilling around his shoulders. He looked angry, he looked sad, he looked hopeful.
The other was a man with a chiseled face and cheekbones Kelly herself would have killed for. More often than not, his mouth was in a pouty smirk and his sandy hair was in complete chaos. There was little to him, though, little action, little passion, and when he turned, she could see that his eyes were a bright, shocking blue.
"His eyes," Buffy had said insistently when she'd spoken of her own dream, and Kelly could see now why she had.
There were ghosts in those eyes, ghosts and demons and pain and… suffering that needed to be eased.
Kelly was fairly certain her dreams held the one person who didn't find it easy to leave Buffy.