To my readers...Thank you for all your kind words and patience. I hope this was worth the wait.

William slowed to a walk. He didn't know where he was going, or what he was going to do. He didn't know if he was hallucinating, like before or if it was really happening. Buffy had killed something, and it had disappeared. While that was really odd and scary, that's not what unnerved him the most. He had seen the exact scene countless times in his dreams. The exact moves, the exact sounds...it was crazy. How does something like that happen? It wasn't normal, and he really didn't know what to think. His mind was racing. Flipping back and forth through what had just happened and his dreams. Trying to find something that helped it make sense. He knew he should calm down, to breathe, and to just let it go, but he couldn't. He was actually starting to hyperventilate. He needed to go somewhere quiet, somewhere out of the way, so he could process all that had happened. Someplace where he couldn't be found. William stopped and took a deep breath, willing himself to calm down. With a determined , he changed his course. He knew exactly where he could go.

Buffy couldn't find him. She had taken off after him, but had lost him after a few moments. It wasn't hard to lose him. It was a cool night and everyone was out in mass enjoying it. Buffy was even running, bumping into people, almost running over an old lady, all in her search to find him. She checked in the alleyways, in the shops, pretty much everywhere, and she still couldn't find him.

How did he get away so fast? He only had a few seconds head start on her. This was so weird to her. Why would he run? Spike never ran. He liked the confrontations and fights. The Spike she knew would have stayed and helped her. But William wasn't her Spike. Well, at least not for the moment. He had been about to tell her what had been going on and thanks to Murphy's stupid law, a vampire had to show up. And now Spike, William...er amnesia guy was off running scared.

It wasn't like she was in Sunnydale. When he had run off that time after the man-worm incident, she knew the town, and she knew Spike. It wasn't hard to find him...well, not too hard. He had gone to his cemetery, and she only had to check a few crypts before she'd checked the church. Oh, and the whole vampire tinglies helped as well. Now, she had nothing. No vampire tinglies, no familiar territory, and no idea where he would have gone. Who knew that a human guy could run so fast? Stupid adrenalin. After checking a few more side streets and stores, Buffy gave up. Las Vegas was just too large. There was no way she could do it on her own. She was going to need help. Good thing she had at least part of the Scoobie gang here.

She arrived back at Xander's apartment about a half hour later. Completely deflated. Buffy knocked on the door. She had thought about what they could do to find Spike, but she still hadn't come up with anything. She knocked on the door again. What was taking Xander so long to answer the freaking door? Just as she was about to knock again, it opened revealing Dawn on the other side.

"Dawn! What are you doing here?"

Dawn answered with a smug grin. "Midterms are over."

"But you still have school!"

"Get over it, Buffy. I'm here. You need my help, and there is no way I could wait any longer."

Buffy sighed, and walked past her sister into the living room. She wouldn't admit it, but she was really glad her sister had come. "Wow, Giles. It looks like a tornado touched down in here."

Giles looked up at her from the book he'd been reading and rolled his eyes. He gestured toward the stacks of books, printouts, and note filled paper. "Research...on Spike. We still aren't completely sure what happened to him." Going back to his reading, he quickly added, "What are you doing back so soon? I wasn't expecting you for quite awhile. Xander said you were with Spike."

Dawn grabbed her shoulder. "You were with Spike! How was it? How was he? Did he ask about me?"

Buffy groaned. "Dawn, you have no idea how much I wish I could give you a positive answer for even one of your questions." She then moved to sit down on a chair, but had to stop in mid action. "Giles, you do know chairs are for sitting, right?"

"Oh...right." He quickly stood up and grabbed the stack of books and papers off the chair nearest to him. "You don't sound very optimistic. Did something happen?"

Sitting down, Buffy tried to explain the events from the past few hours. "He was opening up to me, and then we were interrupted by a vampire, who I had to stake. It freaked him out, and he took off. I tried to find him, but no such luck." She then added rather dejectedly, "I have no idea where he is."

"Oh, wow. That really sucks."

"Stating the obvious, Dawn."

"Buffy, despite the unfortunate turn of events, did Spike tell you anything new?"

"Actually he did, Giles! Right before the vampire attacked, he told me that he had been having dreams."

Giles grabbed a pad of paper and turned it to a fresh sheet. "Dreams? Really? Did he give you any details about these dreams?"

"He said that we were in them, and that he hadn't been sleeping well as a result." Giles started scribbling furiously on the paper. It was good to see that some things never change. It was almost comforting to see Giles in research mode. It made her feel safe. Like everything would be okay. She imagined it was the same kind of feeling that little girls get when their dads were nearby. Seeing the expression on Dawn's face, she could tell that her sister felt the same way.

Giles looked up. "Did he say anything about when they started?"

Buffy thought about the conversation. Once she had seen the vampire, she kind of zoned out. She had just been so shocked that the stupid vampire was actually attacking, that she hadn't even really payed attention to the majority of what Spike had been saying. She tried to remember the last words he had said through her mind. They were on the tip of her tongue. "Um...um...yes?"

"Are you sure?"

Racking her brain, Buffy finally recalled what Spike had said. "Yes. I remember. He said that he'd been having the dreams ever since he woke up in the alley, but they've been getting worse ever since he moved here."

Giles wrote a little more and started thinking out loud. Always a good sign that he was close to a conclusion. "He must have started regaining his memories. Especially after he met Xander and the rest of us. That must be the reason."

Dawn finally decided to pipe in. "That actually sounds like a logical conclusion. I vote for that one."

Before they could get any deeper, Xander walked in. "Buffy? What are you doing here? Never mind, what I'm about to say just makes so much more sense. I just saw Spike getting on a bus, well at least I think it was him."

"You did! That's great. Do you know where the bus was headed?"

"No, but I did get the bus number. It was bus 5."

"Hey! We could get online and look up the route. That way we could find out where Spike was headed." Dawn added.

Buffy smiled. She really missed this. Everyone helping and solving a problem. Now they just needed to find Spike.

Xander cleared off a space on the sofa and then said, "Um...I don't mean to sound even more stupid, but what's going on? I thought everything was going okay with him because of the whole date thing."

Dawn answered for her. "Buffy staked a vampire, and Spike freaked out and ran off."

"Well, that's kind of different. Most first-timers tend to freeze up."

Buffy decided to put her two cents in. "Before the vampire jumped us, he said he was having dreams with us in them. I think, and Giles agrees, that he's regaining his memories. So seeing me dust a vampire made his dreams real. It's understandable that he'd be freaked. The real problem now is trying to find him and make sure he's okay."

Xander rubbed his hands together. "Well, lets get cracking then. Dawn, lets get on the computer and look up that bus route."

Buffy looked up at Xander. It was times like these that she realized how much she loved him. For all of his asshole ways and his petty moments, he really stepped up to the plate. She would always be grateful to Anya for how much she made him grow as a person. It hadn't been the happiest of times, but Anya had helped him become the person he was. In a sense, it was like Xander was a walking memorial to her. And right at this moment, looking at Giles, Dawn, and Xander, she wouldn't trade the past nine years for anything.

Sitting on the edge of a boulder with his legs hanging over the side, William looked up at the stars. He could see them so clearly. Everything was so peaceful out here, in the middle of nowhere. Taking a deep breath, he reveled in his solitude. Before he left the city, he had stopped by a convenience store and bought a cheap flashlight. Then he got on a bus that took him to the outskirts of town. After getting off, he decided to follow some paths that led out to a group of boulders. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, especially since he had just discovered that vampires were real, but he really didn't care. All he wanted to do was think about things, and surrounded by the noises in the city he just couldn't focus.

He also wanted to hide from Buffy and her friends. He had left her rather abruptly, and he got the feeling that she would be looking for him. William really didn't see how she would be able to find him out here. It was so desolate and alone. It was exactly what he needed. She wouldn't understand that. From the few days he had been around her, he could tell that she was the problem solving type. Buffy wouldn't feel comfortable until she had helped him. As much as he appreciated it, she just made everything so much more confusing. He couldn't think straight when her and her friends were around. Everything was just so jumbled. It made sense, but it didn't.

As he sat there he pondered the dreams and visions he'd been having the last few weeks. Now that he knew differently, he could admit that they were most likely real. They actually felt more real than his current life. When he concentrated on the dreams and his place in them, he didn't feel so lost, but they were different and definitely not normal. After seeing Buffy kill the vampire, he knew that he wasn't crazy.

He didn't know what to think. Here was this girl, basically recreating one of his dreams...and he was awake and lucid. What do you do with that? How do you react? Now that he had time to calm down and think about the events of that evening and of the past week, everything was starting to make sense. Xander's weirdness, Buffy's stalking tendencies, and the dreams. They were all connected. Somehow they knew him. They must have known him before they alley, and for some reason he was involved with helping them kill vampires. He didn't know who the other people were in the dreams, but at least now he could make sense of Buffy, Xander, and Mr. Giles. Why they acted so weird, and why they were so eager to help him and why they were so interested in him.

Dwelling on the events of the past few days weren't exactly helping him discover what was going on, so he cleared his mind of all things involving Las Vegas, except for the dreams. He concentrated on the events themselves, on the surrounding, on the people. Buffy was in them more often than not. In fact, every time she was there he couldn't help but feel an almost loving feeling toward her. As he played the images over in his mind, he saw her fight, and felt moved. He couldn't ever remember being in love before, but if he had to imagine how it felt like, this was it. She was beautiful. Fighting and ferocious. She was a warrior. A bloody Goddess. His love.

As William sat there, studying the images, he realized that the vampire attack in the park had actually been a good thing. It opened something up in him. Made him realize something. It let him think of the dreams as real, and not as hallucinations. With this, he was able to look at the dreams completely different. His thoughts turned to the vision he had in the shower. Now that he could see it for what it was, it opened new doors.

Playing the images through his mind, he focused mostly on himself. He was in the leather duster, and he was in a crypt. The crypt actually had a sense of familiarity about it. He lived there maybe...? Giles, was there. He looked younger and less gray. It felt like something from the past. William examined his feelings. He felt perturbed by the man's presence. Why wouldn't Giles leave him alone? He didn't want to help the bloody Scoobies. Why wouldn't they leave well enough alone? Oh...he had helped the watcher for payment. Giles had been a demon?

William could picture Giles the demon talking to him. He understood what he was saying. It was a different language, though. A guttural, non-human language. William gripped the edge of the boulder. Now that he was letting it, the images were almost flooding his brain. One after another. He could see all of the people in his past. A beautiful raven-haired woman. She was dangerous, but he loved her. A teenage girl, an older woman...his mother. Tara, Angelus, Fred...names and faces flew through his mind. Smiles, frowns, laughter, and tears. It was almost too much, but he wouldn't let himself turn it off. Whatever was happening to him, he needed it. It was important. He needed to know himself. Somehow, it was all coming back to him. It was painful, but he was remembering and he wasn't going to force it away. He closed his eyes and reveled in the forcefulness of it. It invaded his senses. He could remember the smell of the flowering onion in the Bronze, he could remember the taste of Buffy's sweat as he kissed her neck. He could remember the pain of his soul...he could remember...everything.

Buffy walked up the slick rock of the boulder. Dawn and Xander had found out that the bus went out to the edge of the city, where there were several bike paths that led out to some large boulders. She had spoken with the attendant at the bus station, and he'd said that he thought he noticed a man walking out toward the boulders a few hours ago. She really wished he still had the bleached hair. It was so easy for people to remember that. When she reached the departure point for several of the paths, it wasn't hard for Buffy to pick one to follow. Maybe it wasn't vampire tinglies that were needed after all. For some reason, she just knew where to go. As she reached the top of the rock formation, she saw him sitting on the edge. A flashlight on the ground near him. She walked closer, but he didn't turn around. He seemed to be lost in his thoughts. She called out to him.

"Spike?"

He turned around and answered. "Yeah, luv?"