By Jody E.
Chapter 1 May, 2006
The cab pulled up to a disreputable looking office building lodged between a tattoo parlor and a seedy delicatessen. The address, on Broome street, deep in Greenwich village, New York, was hardly a posh one, but that didn’t bother the passenger. He paid the driver, who was a bit nervous about the neighborhood at this time of night, and gave him a generous tip. William always overtipped cab drivers..it made them less reluctant to come to his address, plus it was a small reparation for a time, not so long past, when cab drivers had been his favorite victims. William strode from the cab, black duster swinging, boots pounding the pavement. As always, he stopped and looked at the modest plaque next to the door. Under "Psychic Readings by Madeline", and above the suspiciously vague "Import/Export Ltd." was his listing, "Big Bad Investigations. " The logo, a brown wedge, tipped with scarlet, could represent either a blood drenched stake or a railroad spike, depending on one’s interpretation or knowledge of William’s history.
William shoved his key into the lock and went into the dank vestibule, which smelled sour and musty like every other vestibule in every other ratty apartment building since the beginning of time. There was a lift of sorts, but it was out of repair most of the time, and moved like molasses on the rare days that it was in order, so William ran up the two flights of stairs to his office. Though it was almost dawn, and William had been out all night, he wasn’t physically tired, just weary and eager to be home. He had been fighting a Fyarl demon tonight..nasty thing. He hadn’t seen one since Giles…William frowned. He didn’t want to go there, so he turned his mind to tonight’s battle, and how he had evaded the Fyarl’s poisonous mucus, and slit its throat with a silver cake server. At the top of the stairs, and down a short hallway was a door. Etched into the dirty glass was a larger version of his downstairs logo. He unlocked the door, and went inside, turning on the lights, as he did so. The first thing that caught his eye was the flashing light on the answering machine. 15 new messages, the display read. Typical, but first things first. William took off the duster and hung it on the coat tree near the door, so it was the first thing the customers saw when they walked in. Worn and stained, with at least three poorly mended holes in the leather, the coat was as much a part of Big Bad Investigations as was William, and for that reason he put up with it, though he would have gladly chucked it long ago. Not to mention these bloody boots, William thought, big heavy clodhoppers, but again part of the image, as was the seedy office, and the crappy address.
William unlocked a back door and entered his flat. This was a far cry from the run down office, a lush space decorated with taste and skill. Heavy drapes covered the windows and one whole wall was devoted to an expensive entertainment center featuring a large screen television, and every state of the art device money could provide. William loved movies, music and tv..They were his only vices these days, and he indulged them. The other walls contained loaded bookshelves and several paintings, a few of which he had done himself. They weren’t very good, despite some night courses at NYU, but he wasn’t planning on inviting any art critics into the place, anyway. William would have loved to flop down on his leather sofa and see what goodies he had taped this evening, but first he had to get rid of "Spike." He went into his small bedroom and sitting on the bed with a sigh, pulled off the shitkicker boots. After that came the inevitable black tee shirt and black jeans, black belt flying across the room. Black! He was bloody well sick of it, but it worked, so he wore it. During business hours, that is. He stepped into the shower, washing out the gel that kept his hair slicked back into the same style he had worn since the 1980s. One thing he had done when he moved to New York was to let his natural hair color grow out..no more peroxide. Nobody here knew the difference anyway. He got out of the shower and dried his golden brown hair, which would dry naturally into soft curls. He put on blue jeans, and a soft gray jumper. Sticking his feet into supple loafers, he was ready to tackle his messages, and then relax and sleep until late afternoon.
Back in the tacky office with its ratty blinds and dusty disorganized desk, William took out his notepad and pushed the play button on his recorder. As he expected, 13 of the messages were related to cases past present and future. Spike took notes, planning to return calls later in the afternoon. One call was from Holly, his latest human girlfriend, asking him to some theater opening or other. She was beginning to sound a little too attached to him these days. It was probably time for William’s patented, "I’m a soulless vampire and incapable of love," speech. It was very successful, first, in getting the birds into his bed, since they all thought they could change him, and then in getting rid of them, when they realized that they couldn’t. Of course, it was all a lie..He could love, and did, but the object of his love was not here, and probably never would be. The 15th message was from Cordelia. It was very simple. Just "Call me, Spike, as soon as you can." With her home number, not the number of Angel Investigations.
"Shit," thought William. Why couldn’t she have left a bloody message? The call had come in at 3 AM his time, which was midnight her time. What could be so important that she would call him at midnight, but so personal that she couldn’t leave a message? He looked at the clock on the wall. 6 am..only 3 am her time. He was tempted to call her anyway....serve her right..Stupid bint torturing him like this. What if something had happened to Buffy? Or even Dawn? Surely she would have said! At least 4 more hours before he could decently call.
He tossed the message pad angrily onto his desk and stormed into his apartment. He would bloody well calm down. He wasn’t crazy Spike any more, tearing the furniture apart and doing rash things that ruined his bloody life. He could wait. He sat down on the sofa and turned on the TV. He would watch his tapes and maybe a movie, and then he would call Cordelia, like a civilized being..and tear her bloody head off! But as he sat numbly in front of the television, a mug of blood congealing in his hand, his mind was miles way from the silly soap opera in front of him..3,000 miles to be exact, in a little town called Sunnydale.
It was 3,000 miles and five years ago, shortly after Buffy’s mother died that they had finally defeated Glory and her alter ego, Ben. It had actually been a plan of William’s devising, after he had followed Ben one night and seen him morph into Glory. That bloody poofter, daring to be interested in Buffy..if she’d only seen Glory in those Intern Pajamas, she would have lost all her foolish notions of wanting a normal boyfriend.
But Buffy wasn’t interested in boyfriends then, normal or otherwise. She wasn’t even all that interested in Glory, though the hell god was an immediate threat to herself and Dawn. Buffy’s grief over her mother was like a big stone sarcophagus, locking her inside, and her friends and family out. Nobody could reach her emotionally, so physically she was a perfect target. When Spike…he was still calling himself that then..heard about Joyce’s’ death, he knew exactly how Buffy would react. He had commissioned a robot from a nerd named Warren. True, his original plan had had nothing to do with Glory..He had wanted the robot as a Buffy substitute, since the real thing had rejected him in no uncertain terms. But when he heard about Joyce’s death, all that changed. Putting his own grief aside..He had really liked and admired Joyce more than any human he had ever known..
He approached Buffy’s friends with his new plan. They, of course, wanted no part of him or his plan, but he finally convinced them to at least listen. It was Giles who finally came around, realizing that Spike could be either an ally or a threat and he was much better as an ally. Good old Giles. On the leather sofa, William ground his teeth.
Spike allowed himself to be captured and tortured by Glory for his information about the key. He finally, grudgingly "revealed" that the key was a blue crystal that Buffy wore on a chain around her neck, in exchange for Glory’s promise to remove his Government chip. He pretended to be unconscious when Ben brought Buffy back to his apartment where he turned into Glory and attacked her. Buffy, of course, was prepared for this and Spike watched as she fought Glory with a strength that she had never shown before.
Bursting his chains, he leapt into the fray, accompanied by the rest of the Scooby gang, who fought Glory’s minions. When Glory was finally knocked unconscious, Willow and Tara had put her into a binding spell. They all watched in fascination as Glory, continually morphing between herself and Ben, bound, and unable to move or to drain the sanity from others, slowly disintegrated into a howling wreck. Then, as the pressure built up beyond bearing, "her" human body exploded, and her energy and Ben’s was let free into the cosmos, formless and scattered. She never did find her key, which in the persona of Dawn was safe at home with the real Buffy.
Incredibly, once the threat to the key was dissolved the knights of Byzantium who had assembled outside in ominous numbers, simply dispersed. This was a major relief to all, since Spike’s plan hadn’t dealt with fighting a whole bloody army!
Finally, the Scooby gang was grateful to Spike. They actually thanked him, and Giles shook his hand. But, they weren’t about to welcome him into their little circle with open arms, knowing how he felt about Buffy. He could have stood their coolness, however, if Buffy had shown him any warmth. But she thanked him politely and coldly and that was all. No hatred, no fire, just ice and indifference. He really hadn’t expected her to throw herself into his arms, especially since his great plan hadn’t included her, or at least the real her. The fact that she even agreed to stay home with Dawn revealed to Spike the depth of her emotional detachment and pain. The old Buffy would never have stood by and let a robot fight her battle. And now she didn’t even seem to care that she had missed all the action.
Anger and hatred....that Spike could deal with..but apathy was more than he could take. Though Spike understood how she felt and what she was going through, he suddenly couldn’t be around it anymore. Thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to put a little distance between them for a while, Spike donated the Buffybot to the Magic Box, where it was put on display, and left for Los Angeles and Angel Investigations.
True, Angel and he weren’t exactly best friends in those days. There was the little matter of the gem of Amara, and some torture, for which Angel had every right to hold a grudge. But as Spike explained, family was family and besides he wasn’t really evil anymore..and could actually be an asset to the business. Didn’t he have "destroyer of hell god" on his resume? Grudgingly, and after a fairly intense fistfight, Angel took Spike in, gave him a room at the hotel, and hired him on at Angel Investigations. Wesley and Cordelia knew spike, of course, and regarded him with much suspicion, but he and Gunn really hit it off, since Gunn had no preconceived notions about him. Eventually he even became friendly with Wesley and Cordelia, especially after he began bringing in work. Lots of work..
Angel looked upon AI as more of a quest for redemption than as a business, while Cordelia and Wesley struggled to make ends meet. That all ended when Spike arrived. Not bothering to wait for Cordelia’s visions, Spike went out and drummed up business, hitting the demon bars and infiltrating the grapevine, playing up his Big Bad Spike image for all it was worth. Nobody here knew about his chip, or that he was a demon "turncoat." Soon AI had all the business it could handle, and Angel and the gang were out every night on cases, though Spike himself kept a low profile during the actual demon slayings, so as not to blow his cover. Desperate for news from Sunnydale, Spike turned to Cordelia as a friend and confidant, since she occasionally spoke to Willow. He found Cordy attractive, in a birdlike manner, but he quickly saw that she had her eye on Gunn, and he on her, though neither would admit it.
So, while the two of them seemed content to play Moonlighting ad infinitum, Spike decided to stay out of it. But he did talk to Cordy and confide his feelings for Buffy and the whole sorry sordid story. Cordelia really let him have it, in her no nonsense way, about the whole crypt disaster, the robot, everything. She agreed that the only intelligent move he ever made was getting away from Buffy until she got over her mother’s death, and forgot..A whole lot of things. Cordelia started phoning Willow once a month or so, just to keep in touch and she passed on the news and gossip to Spike. So all in all, Spike would have been fairly content in LA, except for just one little factor..Angel.
Angel Investigations was Angel’s baby, and Spike was turning it into a…success!. Angel only needed enough money to keep his beloved old hotel going, though he certainly didn’t begrudge Cory and Wesley making a living. What he didn’t like was Spike coming in and taking over, dealing with customers, charming them with his attitude and phony cockney accent. Big Bad Spike indeed! He’d known William when he was a poncy little poet who couldn’t even get a girl except batty Drusilla, who only chose him out of a kind of insane pity for his sniveling. Spike had been a thorn in his side ever since. Worse, the word from Sunnydale via the Willow/Cordy grapevine was that Spike had been a big hero in the Glory business, and that he was supposedly in love with Buffy.
Fortunately for Spike, Angel also heard that Buffy had righteously kicked his butt. Reluctant to evict Spike from AI for fear of driving him back to Sunnydale, Angel managed to be civil to his rival, but just barely. The tension between them grew thicker every day, especially since Spike had no compunctions about needling Angel about anything and everything, from his Shansu to his shampoo. The fact that he and Gunn and Cordy were now friends was almost more than he could bear. A soul wasn’t enough to keep him in torment..did he also have to have Spike?
Spike, for his part loved tormenting Angel. It put a spring in his step and a song in his heart. But he felt that Angel Investigations and the Shansu thing that fueled it was really holding him back. Spike had never really been a team player, even in the old days of the gang of Four, when he, Angel, Dru and Darla were the scourge of Europe. But he stuck it out for a year, while he waited to hear the news from Sunnydale via the Cordy/Willow grapevine. It was Cordy who told him about Xander and Anya’s marriage and the birth shortly thereafter of their first child. Not that he gave a bloody damn, but he would have loved to see Anya as a Mother. Hah! She’d probably try to trade the kid in for a new Mercedes! It was Cordy who reported that Willow and Tara had broken up. Not that Spike cared about them at all, but he would have liked to have placed a small wager on what flavor Willow was going to go for next..
And it was Cordy who told him that Buffy had gotten married, suddenly, and surprisingly. When he heard the name of the groom, Spike was extremely shocked but not terribly surprised. He understood Buffy all too well..He knew what she had been looking for, and what she thought she had found. Understanding, however, didn’t prevent Spike from breaking a whole lot of expensive furniture, including his beloved new large screen TV. A shocked and upset Angel found him in the wreckage of his room, and took him to Caritas, where the two old rivals drank way too much bourbon and sang way too many sappy songs. The Host was indulgent though; he could see what they shared and what they had lost.
Though he and Angel finally reached a truce that night, Spike decided it was time to put a little more distance between himself and Buffy, and moved to New York. He had lived there before, in the 1970’s in a little walk up in the village, not far from where he was now. He’d feasted on hookers and cabbies, and even snagged himself a Slayer, not to mention a new black leather duster. Maybe New York would be a good place to start over.
William looked at the clock on the wall..9:30 AM..Close enough to normal hours in LA. He picked up the phone and dialed the number Cordy had given him. A sleepy voice answered, "Hello?"
"Cordy, it’s me..Will..uh, Spike. I got your message..What’s wrong? Is it Buffy?"
"Huh..Oh Spike!" Cordy was suddenly wide-awake. "I’m so glad you called. No, don’t worry..Buffy is fine, So is Dawn and, uh, Emily Joyce."
Emily Joyce..Buffy’s 3 year old daughter, named for her two deceased Grandmothers. Cordelia had been responsible for that little piece of good news also.
"Well, than what the bloody hell is it, then? Willow and Tara break up again? You had me pacin’ the floor here for hours. "
William could hear that Cordelia had started to cry "No, it’s, it’s Mr. Giles..He had a heart attack...he’s dead."
"Bloody hell!" Spike was stunned and couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought " I-I see. Thanks, Cordy for tellin’ me. "
"The funeral is Wednesday. Morning. Same place as Buffy’s mom. Uh..Do you think you might go? To Sunnydale, that is?"
"I dunno. I’ll have to think. Gotta go now Cordy. Thanks again."
Spike hung up the phone, and stood there in a state of shock. Giles was dead. Rupert Giles, Buffy’s watcher. Giles who had reluctantly taken Spike into his home when the Initiative had captured him and turned him into a bloody lab experiment. Giles who had once offered him a chance to be a member of the Scooby gang, which he, stupidly, had turned down cold. Giles who had turned against him in a big way when Spike had revealed his feelings about Buffy, and had almost physically thrown him out of the Magic Box. Giles who had shaken his hand as though he were an equal after the Glory fight but who had shed no tears when he left Sunnydale. Rupert Giles, Buffy’s husband, was dead.