"Harmony, what did I say to you?" Angel said, sternly.

"Buy something for yourself," Harmony said, defensively.

"Harmony," Angel said between clenched teeth, "this" - he motioned his hand, encompassing the ten shopping bags resting at his secretary's feet - "isn't 'something'. This is 'everything' they had in the freaking mall."

"Did you at least remember to buy some clothes for Spike?" Wes asked.

"Of course I did!" Harmony exclaimed indignantly. "A 'thank you' would be nice," she muttered, glaring at Angel while handing Wes one of the bags.

"Harm, darling, is that a Louis Vuitton logomark I'm seeing?" Lorne asked excitedly.

"You shopped at Louis Vuitton with the company's credit card?" Angel bellowed.

Before Harmony could answer, a mud covered Spike stormed out of the elevator, leaving a sludge trail behind him as he ran towards them.

"Fred," he exclaimed excitedly, "did you know that crushed bedbugs stink really, really, really bad?"

"Oh, yes, they do," Gunn muttered gloomily as he, too, came out of the elevator, looking not so clean himself and, as the others noticed as he joined them, smelling like a whole swarm of crushed bedbugs.

"Yuck!" Harmony squeaked ever so tactfully, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "I've been to graves that smell better than you do!"

"I told you to duck," Spike admonished Gunn, while the lawyer glowered at Harmony.

"Well," Fred chimed in, giving the muddy pair an amused smile, "I think a nice, hot bath is in order."

"You bet," Spike said conversationally, while leaning forward to peer into one of Harmony's shopping bags. "Although I think you'd better put baldy over there on quarantine until the reek wears off."

"I'm pretty sure she's referring to you, Blondie Bear," Harmony said, quickly shooing the pint sized vampire wannabe away from her precious belongings.

"Not interested," he deadpanned.

"Too bad," Angel said, glaring at the muddy footprints that Spike was leaving as he wandered around the place, "because you're taking a bath anyway."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Yes, I am."

"No, you're… Hey!" Angel exclaimed indignantly as he realized that he had nearly fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

He narrowed his eyes at Spike, giving him the most menacing face he could summon:

"You're. Taking. A bath."

Spike crossed his arms in front of his chest and said, glaring back at him with a menacing face of his own:

"Who's. Gonna. Make me?"

Just as Angel opened his mouth to say that he was, it suddenly dawned on him that the little boy standing before him, covered in dirt and staring defiantly at him, was also his 124-year-old grandchilde. He flinched and glanced tentatively at the others, but they all quickly backed off.

"There's absolutely no way I'm gonna get in the shower with him!" Gunn said firmly.

"Th-that'd be… weird," Fred stammered, blushing, while Wes mumbled something about a book-related emergency and hastily took off.

Angel turned to Harmony and Lorne only to find out that those two had already disappeared, without even bothering to make an excuse; seeing that all his lieutenants had deserted him, he sighed in defeat and turned to Spike again.

"If you get in the bathtub all by yourself," he offered, "and only come out of it when there isn't the slightest trace of mud on you, I'll get you a battle-axe." Behind him, Fred gasped, and he quickly added: "A plastic one, so that you can play Big Bad."

"Can I take my axe to the bathtub with me?" Spike asked.

"Absolutely," Angel said, nodding. "But you must give me your word."

"I'll get in the bathtub," Spike said mindfully, "with my axe. And we'll take a bath, and we'll get out of it once we're all nice and clean."

"It's a deal," Angel said, grinning and inwardly congratulating himself. Now, that hadn't been so difficult, had it? The kid might be a little hellion but, come on! It was just Spike: he had always known how to handle Spike.

- x x x x x -

"Next time make sure you mention that he also must have his clothes on!" Gunn shouted as he, Angel and Wes chased a butt-naked, soaking wet Spike around Angel's private chamber.

"You're the sneaky lawyer here, not me!" Angel protested, nearly tripping on his own feet as Spike went running past him, hollering at the top of his lungs and spinning his battle-axe over his head.

"HI-YAH!"

Wes jumped forward, ready to intercept him, but the battle-axe hit the side of his head and sent his glasses flying across the room. While Wes groped around the room, desperately trying to retrieve his glasses, Spike dodged Gunn and did a running dash to the door; he was almost there when his wet feet slipped on the well-polished floor of Angel's bedroom, and he let out a small cry of surprise as he found himself sliding across the floor until he hit the wall with a painful thud.

"Ha!" Angel exclaimed as he jumped towards the boy. "That'll teach you not to…"- he stopped mid sentence, though, shocked beyond words to see Spike aka William the Bloody aka Hostile 17 aka the Big Bad suddenly burst into heartfelt tears.

Before Angel could react, the door was opened and Fred came in like a bolt, with Harmony close on her heels.

"What happened?" Fred asked, kneeling before the boy and giving him a concerned look while gently cupping his face between her hands.

"What have you done to him?" Harmony demanded, giving Angel a reproachful look while she kneeled on the floor next to Fred and reached out to fondle Spike's hair. "Did he hurt you, Blondie Bear?"

"Hurt!" Spike wailed, burying his face on Fred's chest.

"I didn't…" Angel started to protest when the two women glared at him, but he stopped when Spike spoke again.

"They laughed at me," the boy cried, "and there were chains, and the fire, and everybody hated me, and she bit me and it hurt, and the knives, and I hadn't a soul, but then I had one, and it burned me, and they chained me in the bathtub, and the whip…"

The grown ups watched in shock as the hurt of 124 years came crashing down on a five-year-old child who didn't even understand what was hurting him, since he didn't have the memories related to the pain.

"… and no one believed me, and I was beneath her, all alone in the basement, and it hurt my head, and I couldn't move my legs, and there were monsters, many monsters, many, many, many…"

He raised his head from Fred's chest to gasp for breath and cried out:

"I want my mum!"

"Sweetie, we don't…" Fred started to say, but Spike wouldn't listen: he wanted one thing in the whole world and he wouldn't settle for anything else.

"MUMMY!"

"But…"

"He's right," Wes hastily said, kneeling by Fred's side and giving her a meaningful look, silently urging her to let him handle that. "The boy wants his mum, and that's very understandable."

Having recently learned the circumstances of the death of Spike's mother, Wes was anxious to stop the flow of memories before the five-year-old was forced to deal with yet another traumatizing experience.

"But first you must put some clothes on," he said, motioning for Gunn to bring him the clothes that Harmony had bought earlier.

"And then you're gonna take me to my mum?" Spike sniffed, giving Wes a wary look.

"Now, you'll have to work with me here," Wes said gently, remembering that telling him about his mother's death had been Spike's own clumsy way of being supportive when Wes was in a rather bad place regarding his relationship with his own father. "We need to find out how you got here if we are to help you go back."

"To my mum?" Spike insisted adamantly.

"Yes," Wes said without missing a beat. Even if Spike still remembered that conversation after they undid whatever it was that the Senior Partners had done to him, Wes as sure that, as a grown up, the vampire wouldn't hold that lie against him.

Spike narrowed his eyes, not looking convinced, and Wes sighed. He felt a pang of compassion towards the boy sitting on the floor before him, still clinging to Fred's jacket, his face reddish and wet with tears.

"Look, little mate," he said, "I know that this is a lot to ask for, but I'm going to ask you anyway: I need you to trust me, and to believe me when I say that I mean you no harm and that I want to help you."

Spike tilted his head to the side, squinting his eyes and giving Wes a suspicious look. The boy glanced inquisitively at Fred, and she smiled and nodded her head:

"Wes won't hurt you," she said reassuringly. She looked at Wes and added with a soft smile that made him blush furiously: "I would trust him with my life."

"Okay," Spike said quietly, allowing Fred to help him put his clothes on while Angel took Wes by his elbow and made him stand up.

"Help him go back?" he repeated between clenched teeth, pulling Wes away from Spike so that they were out of ear reach.

"He's five," Wes replied in the same tone, "and trapped in a grown-up's nightmare."

Angel, who had played an active role in that nightmare, shuffled his feet, and replied with a sigh:

"If we revert him back to his previous self, we'll be back where we started, with two ensouled vampires in this realm, and the fabric of reality unraveling all around us."

Wes opened his mouth to argue, but Angel held up his hand, cutting him off.

"Gunn," he said, "go to the white room and tell the big cat that thanks, but no, thanks. We need them to restore…"- he arched his eyebrows meaningfully towards Spike - "… his former self and find another way to stop the apocalypse."

"I just hope I won't regret it," Angel grumbled, while Wes relaxed his assertive stance and Fred beamed at him, not the least fooled by his big bad vampire's façade.

"Harmony," he proceeded, "find Eve and tell her to meet in my office. Fred, go to the lab, gather your staff, see what they can find out."

He hesitated, remembering Spike's first reaction to the idea of being taken to the lab to have some tests run.

"And take Spike with you to, uh, to help you."

"No!" Spike said, frowning. "I'm going with Wes," he declared. "He's gonna help me find my mum."

He marched to Wes' side and then, much to the former watcher's bafflement, took his hand and demanded, tugging impatiently on it:

"Come on, we're wasting time."

"Fred will be working on it, too," Angel reasoned while Wes looked from Spike to the others, nonplused. "And she's gonna need your help."

"And what will Wes be doing?" Spike asked, cocking his head to the side.

"He'll be looking for answers in the books," Angel said. "Pretty boring stuff," he assured Spike.

"I resent that," Wes protested, frowning. "Books can be very…"

"Unless, of course," Angel said, giving his friend a pointed look, "Wes needs your help handling all those precious, ancient parchments and those very fragile and rare books."

"Did you know that Fred has a Leptons Linear Accelerator down in the lab?" Wes promptly asked Spike.

"What's a Leptons-whatnot?" Spike asked, wrinkling his nose.

"I have absolutely no idea," Wes said truthfully. "But I'm sure it's loads of fun."