After they arrived back at Buffy's home, Xander and the Slayer each took a deep steadying breath, neither quite ready for what further trauma's might lie within. Niether even tried to find a fake, forced smile, stony faced they made their way in to the living room. A sea of equally strained faces turned to look back at them.
"Oh!" It was all Buffy's exhausted, emotionally drained mind could come up with. The pain she saw in those before her was the exact same as she felt sure her friends could see in her face.
Not only was Anya and a soundly sleeping Dawn there, Willow, Tara and Giles were there too. Each of them looked like they had had yet another sleep deprived night. Buffy looked around the room at her friends and gave thanks for them. Even when they were annoyed with her, or she with them, there they were, still together. Bearly a week since her mother had died and was buried, now they were together again, mourning again. Only this time they were almost as guilty as she for Spike's... No, they weren't. Only she was guilty. That much she would freely admit. Her friends weren't the one that had phoned Angel and sicced Angelus on Spike.
"H..how was patrol?" Giles asked, looking for some echo of normalcy to cling to. A routine he knew and one that threw up no shocks, just the expected demons and vampires that were inexorably drawn to the hellmouth. And hopefully no Angel, no Angelus, Giles knew there was little chance of Buffy ever forgiving the dark haired vampire for invoking her name in his gross acts of cruelty. Even less for his having performed said acts in front of her sister. And none what so ever for his having caused another being to suicide. The Watcher could only pray that none of his charges, his children would ever have to face a fate such as the one Angel had bequested to Spike.
"Vampires, lots of them." Xander offered, hardly pausing to even take a breath let alone notice Giles' concerns. "No you know who, however, that is definitely of the good!" Then again, maybe he had noticed. Either way Giles was relieved his children were safe.
Xander carefully put the pump action water pistol against the wall then shrugged off his jacket. As he turned back he noticed that Buffy hadn't moved. He flicked a quick glance to her troubled face and realised she was unsure of her welcome in her own home. She simply didn't know what to do next. His friend's world had crumbled leaving her without a foundation to support her. After her mother had died it had been Angel, sweet, generous, caring Angel that had held her, comforted her, gave her solace. Who, then, would comfort her this time when it was Angel that caused her grief and guilt. Last time Angel had hurt her this bad she had had her mother's support, sort of, and Spike to conspire with. To save the world with.
It was then that the young man realised just what Willow had meant only a few days back, that Spike had not left a card with his flowers. He just wanted to offer his comfort for Buffy and Dawn's loss, for his own loss. The only person who didn't treat the bleach blond vampire as a freak had died. Now the vampire had died and no one was bringing anonymous flowers to Buffy's door. There was no comfort, and Buffy new it!
The dark haired youth reached for Buffy's coat, silently guiding her as to her next required action. Stupefied, the slayer followed his lead, incapable of making her own choices. Scared she'd make the wrong one once more and someone else would die.
"Coffee's hot, and the doughnuts are fresh. There's chocolate and jelly and sprinkles." Anya gushed to fill the silence she almost fully recognised as a member of her former demonic family. Oppressive, fearful, damning, vengeful. All states of being she was more used to seeing enacted on humanity than experiencing first hand.
"Thank you, Anya. It was really cold out there tonight." Buffy tried to smile and was pleasantly surprised that she did not in fact spontaneously combust. "What's everyone doing? What did we miss?" She smiled once more, slightly less strained, still looking as if she sat precariously balanced between numb and a soul destroying grief.
"We were copying the tape, Anya had a good idea, she wondered if anyone had warned Cordielia that Angel was.. that he wasn't Angel. We got no answer from her home number, nor Wesley's so we decided to send a letter and the tape by courier first thing in the morning." Giles answered, he clasped a hand on the former vengeance demon's shoulders in support of the confused girl as he felt her tremble slightly under Buffy's unnaturally sharp gaze.
"Good thinking there Anya!" Xander enthused at his lover's idea, a good, caring idea for once. He rushed to sit on the floor by her side and took over the physical comfort that Giles had been offering.
"Yes, it is. Good idea. Cordielia should be warned." Finally Buffy moved into the group and sat down, the better to hide the trembling in her legs. Lifting her soundly sleeping sister's head onto her lap, needing the physical closeness with her sister.
"Here, drink, eat, you look shattered." Willow offered over a cup of coffee and a doughnut. "Sustenance for the warriors!" she tried her best to smile, it too came out strained.
"I revoked my wish, it was unfair of me. I was just.." Tara faltered as she offered her explanation to Buffy.
"We all were, Tara, no biggy. It was just another big shock, after mom and all. Of all the people you would expect to go on for ever, a vampire should be right up there on the top of the list. I just never ever thought he'd ever want to kill himself. No matter what, Spike always seemed so... there! You know?" Buffy took a bite out of the doughnut and needed a sip of the coffee to get it passed her suddenly dry mouth.
"He did try it once before. Staking himself. Me an' Willow stopped him. It was right after he got the chip an' was living in the basement with me." Xander stopped talking, aware that his words were really not helping the Slayer cope with her feelings of guilt.
"He did?" Buffy squeaked in her surprise. Yet another thing she hadn't known about Spike. It had been hard enough to find out he was capable of loving a human, but that he could sink into the very human state of depression too? Who was the demon and who the human? Spike had displayed far more human tendencies than Angel ever had even with his soul intact.
"Yeah, he didn't think he could go on, not being able to hunt, feed, fight. Nothing. He got better when he found out he could fight demons though." Willow stopped talking, lost in her memory of trying to watch television with the hyper energetic Spike trying to persuade her and Xander out on the hunt for evil doers. The smile that memory engendered was one of pure delight. "Xander? Remember, later, when Spike wanted to go out and save the world from evil? To make it safe for innocents, children, puppies and Christmas?" She looked directly at Xander, the only living soul that shared that memory with her.
"Yeah, talk about eager. The fervour of the convert. He wanted us to go out on the hunt, just the three of us, to save you from having to do it all, he said." Xander flicked a glance at the stunned slayer. "Of course it was all because he had just found out he could kill something, even if it were his fellow demons." Then a thought occurred to the young man, a thought that chilled his heart. "That wouldn't have made him very popular with the other demons would it? In the end... he didn't really have anywhere else to go did he, but Hell." Xander felt his stomach churn at he idea of having let someone down so much, Hell and all its tortures was preferable than staying on earth with him, them, any of them.
"It didn't, he wasn't and Hell was all he had left." Anya leaned into his arms as she spoke. "He received a lot of messy, painful beatings for helping Buffy. And demons really know how to hurt eachother, creatively. He used to take me to the Bronze for a beer occasionally. You know, when life as a former evil demon got too bad, off we'd go have a drink and talk." A sudden, Earth shattering thought occurred to the former demon. "Who am I going to talk to now? Who else is going to understand?"
"I was a demon once, okay, it was for the one day and I had to pay Spike to help me sort it all out. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I discovered that Spike could understand me. I guess I was as bad as the rest of the world for taking him at the most obvious level. If not worse. After all, I had read all the available information about Spike, from first turning forward. Even a little of his mortal life was available, a rare thing with vampires. They normally destroy everyone they ever knew in their mortal lives. Spike didn't." Giles looked off into the middle distance, obviously reacting to things only he could see. And just as obviously not liking what he saw there. Self recrimination, like hind sight, had twenty-twenty vision, only sharper claws. "Hell, I've even read Gronmann's journal, a copy only I grant you, but an accurate copy none the less. It's believed that the original is with Spike. Or was rather."
"What do you mean, there wasn't a single journal by anyone even remotely like Gron anything. I know, I packed up his things myself." The slayer was surprised to realise that she had infact eaten almost the entire doughnut and drank all her coffee. At least some small part of the gapping emptiness inside her was filled. "Who's this Gron person anyway?"
"A Trasker demon, and Spike's step father." At Giles' words the last mouthful of Buffy's doughnut was catapulted over the coffee table.
"Step father?" And a strangled gurgling sound was all Buffy could manage. She hurried to make sure she hadn't woken Dawn, certain that her sister slept on, she returned the revelations going on around her.
"Oh, yes, see, unlike normal vampires Spike wasn't buried, and he wasn't guarded by his sire and clan for his own protection either. Angelus turned him and left him to die in his first morning. Regarded as a heartless act even within vampire clans. Only Spike, or William Mansfield as he was known as then, was better aware than most mortals. Even for the Victorian era when such things as vampires were more readily accepted by the general public, William knew far better. He hid until dark and then went home to his mother." Giles absently reached for a doughnut and another cup of coffee. Needing something to do with his hands rather than wringing them one over the other again and again.
"His mother? Then what? He ate her?" Xander thought he knew and understood just what drove all vampires. Yet he couldn't deny the shocked tone in his voice at the idea of Spike turning on his own mother.
"Good gracious no! He went home 'to' his mother. She looked after him, her erm... companion, Gronmann the Trasker demon, taught him to be a successful demon. Or so the journal said. Young William Mansfield wouldn't harm his mother, or any of his family. In fact he tried for seven years to fit in to human society. And he managed quite well, seemingly; he continued to work, as best he could given his vampiric state. But the unusual thing was that he did indeed manage to hold down his former job. Until his mother died that is." The Watcher took off his glasses to polish away the mist that seemed to have settled on them. It was that or sit there dabbing his eyes to mop up the tears he found himself ready to shed, not for Spike per se, but for William Mansfield.
"What job did he do? Was he really a bad poet?" Buffy found herself enthralled at this glimpse into the secret history of the vampire she thought she had known as Spike. Only, now she wasn't as sure that she ever knew him at all.
"He was a lawyer. He graduated from Oxford with degrees in Law and Mythology. The company he worked for moved; lock, stock and barrel, as the saying goes. Took up offices somewhere here in the USA, in this state I do believe, as a matter of fact. Changed their name I seem to recall reading, when a couple of the senior partners died rather messily. One William Mansfield may, or may not have been responsible for their demise. Even Gronmann didn't know and respected his step son's privacy too much to ask him out right." Giles put his glasses back on and coughed to clear the obstruction that was not unvoiced grief for the dead vampire, no it wasn't.
"Can vampires leave wills, and who would get his death benefits, if any?" Xander laughed, not harshly. "Excuse me, I'm William Mansfield, aka William the Bloody's executor, you are now due one hundred and twenty eight years worth of employee's death benefits. Now, wouldn't that go down well, not?"
"Yes, quite." Giles scowled at him, more out of habit than ire. "It was 'Connor, Wolfram, Becker and...' Oh God, damn it who was the last one? Give me a minute, I know I know this. Haven't read the damn book in almost ten years, what was that last name.."
"A lawyer, I didn't know he knew law! Did you know he knew law? Or Mythology, did you know he knew that, either of them? That he'd graduated from Oxford? I could have gone to Oxford, sat where he sat, studied where he studied. Did you know any of this?" Willow filled in the silence by questioning Buffy directly. And at length.
"He could have helped with that Mythology class and all those pesky assignments!" Buffy realised.
"Our Spike, the legal eagle, or bat rather?" Xander was impressed with the revelation of Spike's first career, before he went into the firm of Europe, Scourge of and co.
"Hart!" Giles called out and blushed slightly at the confused looks he received for his trouble. "The other partner, the law firm Spike had worked for, remember, I mentioned them a moment ago? 'Connor, Wolfram, Becker and Hart', William Mansfield work in their specialist property department. Buying, selling property for whomever the clients of the firm were." Giles rambled to another stand still.
"So why did he stop when his mom died? Did he finally kill her and have to hide out?" Xander asked, recalling the first part of Giles' tale of Spikedom.
"No, she died quite naturally in fact, of old age. When he lost his mother, he went out and found the vampire that sired him and made his life, or unlife rather, an unliving Hell on Earth." Then Giles recalled the next part of the tale and looked pointedly at his wrist watch. "Good lord, is that the time, got to get some sleep tonight. If you'll excuse me, I'll bid you.."
"It was Angelus, wasn't it, not Drucilla?" Buffy's brittle tone could have cut glass. "Angelus sired Spike, didn't he?"
"Y... yes, it was. But I still have to go. It's still late. Who needs a lift?" He looked around the hands waving at him. Old school habits died hard. "Right then.." Giles retrieved his jacket and donned it with out further comment, just a gentle smile touching his lips and eyes as he held Buffy's glance. "Do you need a hand upstairs with Dawn?" He finally asked, indicating the slayer's still sleeping sister.
"Nah, I'll cope. Get yourselves home, sleep people!" She eased out from under her sister and saw her friends to the door. "And thanks for coming over." She hugged them all, including Anya and Tara. "Pleasant dreams, all of you!"
"If I were still a Vengeance demon I could do something for Spike, but all I can do is hurt." Anya hugged Buffy rather briskly, still unused to the concept of physical comforting, but trying her best to do it.
"If anyone could come up with a good vengeance, it'd be you, Anya. You were nothing if not a true professional." Buffy smiled at her friend's girl friend and got a brief, honest answering grin. "Sweet dreams Anya, you too Xander."
"You too, pleasant dreams Buffster!" Xander kissed her cheek and headed for Giles' car with Anya in his arm.
"We renewed the protection and exclusion spells." Willow whispered as she hugged her friend.
"We let Dawn help, she seemed to need to be doing something and it's a safe enough spell. We thought it might channel her... erm, natural talents somewhere safer than last time." Tara added.
"Thanks, good idea. Dawn's a fighter, all us Summers girls are, we'll get through all this, all of us, together as always. Take care yourselves." She hugged Tara.
Both witches smiled at her and they too walked arm in arm to Giles' car.
"If you need me.." He left the rest unsaid, as it should be, but Giles did hold her glance as he made sure for himself that she was indeed all right.
"I know." Buffy reached up and kissed her Watcher's cheek. "Get some sleep!" She chided him as she ushered him out the door, waving as they all got in to the car and drove away.
"Okay, kido, bed, now. They might be fooled, but I'm not!" Buffy folded her arms and tried to scowl at the not really asleep lump that was her sister.
"Bloody hell, sussed again!" Dawn muttered one of her favourite Spikeisms.
"And stop cussing. What do you think Spike would say to hear you cussing like that?" Buffy tried the mild guilt route to get her sister to curb the bad language.
"Put more feeling into it?" Dawn hazarded a guess as she ran up the stairs out of Buffy's immediate reach.
"Probably." Buffy whispered, smiling. "Then again, he was fickle enough to just as probably have a handy dandy hour long lecture on proper language and discourse for young ladies." Imaging that lecture Buffy locked up the house and cleared away the coffee things. Finally, she went up to bed herself, ready for sleep.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Guest appearances by members of the Greek Pantheon.