"I'm dead?" he asked for the seventh time, though now it seemed as if he were trying to process the information rather than expecting Cynthia to confirm it. She smiled sympathetically at him.
"I knew you were dead the moment I saw you. You can't be in Limbo unless you're dead," she whispered. Spike could hear the sorrow in her voice, but he didn't much care about that.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he implored. She cast her eyes down, unable to look him in the eye. "I'm dead, and you didn't tell me."
"I'm sorry," she muttered. As her tears threatened to spill over, she pressed her palms against her eyes so he wouldn't see. But she couldn't hide the hitching of her shoulders.
"Ah, pet, I'm sorry," he said. He rose from the table and tenderly pulled the crying woman into his arms. "Shh, I didn't mean to make you cry. I'm not mad at you, I'm just…confused, I guess."
Cynthia sniffed loudly against his bare chest and he rubbed his hands in soothing circles on her back. "I'm not crying because you're mad at me, and I know you are, so don't deny it," she argued. He sighed, but didn't say anything, because, as always, she was right.
"You're a horrible liar, by the way," she muttered, and was rewarded with a chest-rumbling laugh. Cynthia looked up at him and gave Spike a weak smile.
"So, explain this to me one more time." She sighed and tucked her hair behind her ears before hopping up on the table.
"Okay, so this necklace you have was created by the original Watchers Council, these crazy African monk guys, thousands of years ago. It was to be worn by the Slayer's Champion in what was supposed to be the Final Battle with the forces of darkness.
"The way I understand it, the Watchers wove a spell into the necklace that would draw out the wearer's soul and turn it's purity against the evil, effectively destroying everything impure, but also killing the host." Cynthia rubbed at her temples.
"But what I don't understand is why, if you did indeed wear it, the First Evil's army wasn't destroyed. Because if it was, then theoretically I would be released from my duties here. I mean, without any evil threatening the world, there's no need for a Slayer, and if there are no Slayers, I won't be obligated to do the whole meet-and-greet.
"Maybe something went wrong, and that's why you're here. Maybe it wasn't the Final Battle yet, but the necklace was given to you anyway. Or maybe there's something else we need to figure out."
Spike stared at her for a long time. He looked at her, really looked at her, and realized she hadn't been telling him the whole truth. Aside from the part where she had known all along that he was dead.
It wasn't supposed to be this way…That's why my grave is out there. I was the Slayer before her…If there are no Slayers, I won't be obligated to do the whole meet-and-greet…
"What is it that you do here, exactly?" he asked her. She looked out the window at the setting sun, as if trying to decide something.
"I wait," she answered. "I wait for the day the Powers That Be tell me I've paid for my mistake and I can move on to the Higher Plain."
"What mistake?" he asked.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "When a Slayer dies, she comes here, to Limbo. Her job is to dig the grave of the next Slayer and wait here until her death so that she can teach them what to do.
"Rachel, the Slayer before me, she told me that when Buffy died, I would have to recite an incantation that would bind her to this plane and release me to the next. But…Buffy didn't stay dead. I had dug her grave, and her body appeared in it. I began the incantation and started to cover her body with dirt. I was doing everything right, but then…"
"Then what?" he asked.
"She disappeared. Somehow, she was brought back to life. And I was trapped here, having performed half the spell. She was bound to Limbo, sure, but she was no longer here to take my place. And I didn't have the chance to finish it, so I couldn't ascend. I should have waited, made sure she was truly dead… I was later contacted by a mouthpiece for the Powers. Whistler explained what went wrong, and that for my mistake, I'd be trapped here until they decided I could go. Until they decided I had truly repented.
"I was pretty angry, and more than a little upset. What did I do to deserve this, you know? I mean, it was bad enough when this strange woman showed up at my house and told me that I was the Slayer and turned my life upside down. And you can't help but blame the Slayer before you, because if they hadn't died, you wouldn't be called, right? So I was angry at Rachel. I didn't know her name back then, but I hated her anyway.
"I fought for three years before I got in a battle with a few too many vamps and my Slayer days ended. But that was okay, I was ready for it. I knew it was coming. What I wasn't ready for was to be trapped in the middle of cosmic nowhere for seven years and counting. That was definitely not in the brochure.
"So here I've been, doing nothing but play solitaire and tend my vegetable garden. Nothing here actually exists, so I suppose I don't even need to eat, but it keeps me sane.
"And then you showed up. At first I thought you were here to relieve me of my duties, but then I realized you were a guy, and Slayers are always girls, so that wasn't it. Then I realized that you were obviously part of something - you knew Buffy. So since you got here all I've had are questions, and no one to answer them."
She gave a little shrug, as if what she'd just told him wasn't a big deal. But it was. They were both dead, both trapped here in Limbo, and neither of them had a clue what had happened in Life. But there was something else that was bothering him.
"When I first woke up here, you called me William. How did you know my name?"
"Oh, that's easy!" she answered. "When I was alive, you were infamous. Lots of entries in the Watchers Journals about William the Bloody."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
She looked at him quizzically. "From when you were the Scourge of Europe. You know, when you were all 'grrr!'" Cynthia made a scary face and crooked her fingers like claws.
"I still don't get it," he replied. Then all of a sudden she gasped and a look of complete shock crossed her face.
"Oh my gosh, I just assumed - I mean, I thought you knew…"
"Knew what?" he demanded, becoming visibly shaken and sounding more than a little irate.
"You're a vampire," she answered. His eyes went wide for a moment, and then he clutched his head in agony before falling to the ground. He was unconscious.
'He's gonna be pissed when he wakes up,' she thought to herself before hefting him over her shoulder and taking him to his room.
****
In his dream, he was at the beach with Buffy and Dawn. They were playing Frisbee in the water, splashing around and laughing. He could feel the hot sun on his skin and knew that his fair skin would be burnt in a few hours. But he didn't care; he was spending an afternoon with his girls.
Dawn bowed out, wanting to get an ice cream cone. She waded out of the water and left Spike and Buffy tossing the bright orange disc between them. Buffy grinned mischievously at him before racing towards him and jumping into his arms.
"Oof!" he said as he caught her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him soundly on the lips. He tingled where their skin touched, and he wanted to touch of all of her, memorize every curve of her body with his hands.
They fell in the water together and she giggled, a high-pitched trill that caused his heart to sing. "I love you," he whispered in her ear. She pushed his wet hair out of his eyes, his unruly curls made straight by the water.
"I love you more," Buffy murmured against his mouth as she stole another kiss.
'I must be dead,' Spike thought to himself, 'because I think I'm in Heaven.' Waves started rolling in from the ocean, rocking their bodies to and fro as they kissed and touched in the water. But soon the waves were too large and began crashing over their heads.
The lovers pulled away from each other and saw storm clouds rolling in unnaturally quickly. Spike pulled Buffy to her feet and began to lead her back to shore. But she pulled against him and tried to head back out to sea.
"What are you doing?" he asked her, but his question was lost over the howling of the wind and the crashing of the waves. She yanked her arm from his grasp and began walking towards the oncoming storm.
"Buffy, no!" he cried and lunged after her. Spike watched in horror as his hand passed right through Buffy's shoulder. She continued her death walk and there was nothing he could do to stop her.
The waves pulled at her body, and the clouds tore apart to reveal an evil so dark, so sinister, that even Buffy quailed at the sight. A flaming hand reached out of the sky and scooped her up. She began burning, but that didn't stop her from fighting.
Buffy kicked and punched and bit the hand, trying to get it to free her. Spike stood knee-deep in the water and cried; she'd never make it.
"Don't worry William, this isn't real." The voice came from beside him and he turned.
"Tara?" he asked. She smiled and nodded shyly. Then she touched his hand and the world disappeared.
He was back in the nothingness he had lived in before arriving in Limbo. But this time he was not alone. Tara was still holding his hand and he could feel magic pulsing from her palm to his. It traveled up his arm and as it did he became visible.
"How did you do that?" he asked, watching in awe as his legs and feet slowly appeared below him.
She gave a little Tara shrug. "Magic," she whispered. He nodded. He understood; not everything can be explained.
"What's going on?"
"The Powers sent me with a message for you," she replied. She waved her free hand and it left a trail of tiny sparkles in its wake that congealed into Technicolor images of a raging battle.
"This is the future - about three hundred years from now. It's the Final Battle between the First Evil and the Slayer and her Champion. As you can see, you're not present. It was not the time for the necklace, for Mi'iha's Strand; a group of people that have been trying to initiate the apocalypse tricked Angel into believing it was. Wolfram & Hart thought that by activating Mi'iha's Strand, they would move up the end of days. But they were wrong. All they did was ensure that another prophecy came to pass - the Shanshu.
"When a vampire achieves a certain level of repentance, they are given the gift of life and become human. However, the Shanshu was meant for Angel, and Buffy threw a wrench in the Powers' plans when she gave the Strand to you to wear, which caused you to sacrifice yourself to save the world, qualifying for Shanshu. You've been stuck in Limbo because the Powers can't decide what to do with you.
"They could send you to Judgement, which is where normal people go after Life. However, you're not a normal person. Vampires usually go straight to Hell, but you are the only one to ever seek a soul. The Powers wanted to reward you somehow, but I believe they were thinking along the lines of freeing you from the emotional turmoil your soul has left you in."
Tara paused and tried to gauge his reaction. Confused, yes. Angry, probably. Perplexed, most definitely. But will he pass the test…
To be continued…