Wil lay back down and tried to sleep. He wished he could talk to Spike, let him know what happened to the slayer and her sister. He deserved to have the truth.
"Oh why the hell not! Spike? If you can hear me I'd like to tell you that I know how Buffy died, who was responsible."
Wil felt stupid talking out loud to a presence that was inside him but he didn't know what else to do. He continued talking, recalling the entire conversation between him and Alex, even the part about Alex and Xander being one and the same. When he was finished he felt both stupid and relieved. Stupid for talking to himself basically, and relieved because if the demon had heard him and understood, perhaps it would give him some measure of closure, or even bring him back from where ever it was it was hiding. Wil felt incomplete without Spike, like half a man.
When Wil fell back asleep he dreamed Spikes' memories again. He remembered the initiative, the pain the demon had been put through, the tortures and the starvings. He wanted to wake up, to not relive these things but he was trapped. He remembered every single thing that led the demon to fall in love with the slayer, its mortal enemy.
Wil watched the whole thing as if he were merely a spectator, he remembered the pain the loneliness, the gut wrenching despair that drove him to Africa, that his only reason for being had turned him away and in his anger he had crossed a line that he swore he never would. He almost raped the woman he loved.
The years between the cave demon and coming back to Sunnydale went past in a blur. Time slowed once again to the night in the cemetery when he and his demon learned of the slayers death. Wil could hear the howling of the demon, could feel its rage and grief. It wanted to bring the world to its knees, to make everyone feel his pain as their own. And then Wil was left alone with his thoughts. The demon was silent. Just as it had been for the last twenty-eight years.
Wil woke up with a start. He was shivering and shaking, something vampires don't do. He remembered everything about his dream, he also felt.... different. Like something had changed within himself. It was time to get the shop ready to open, the wards had to be reset on a daily basis to keep him from frying in the sunlight that filtered in through the windows.
Wil showered, dressed, ate and then went downstairs to get the shop ready. After re-setting the wards, he put the cash drawer in the register, turned off the alarm and unlocked the door. He turned the open sign on above the door and waited for the first of the day’s customers to come in.
Alex got an early start that day, he wanted to find work and then an apartment. It would be weird living in Sunnydale again but for the chance to be with Wil he was willing to put up with it.
Work hadn't been hard to find, with his skills in carpentry and construction he was hired at the second place he applied to, amusingly enough it was the company he worked for all those years ago when he was still Xander Harris, donut boy extraordinaire. The next stop he made was the closest coffee shop so he could go through the classified ads.
While sipping his coffee and reading the reading the paper, Alex made a mental list of the things he would need to do once he found a place. Furniture, that was the first thing he'd have to acquire, unless he got a furnished apartment that is. Secondly, he would need to go by the storage company and make sure that Buffy and Dawns things were still there. He wondered if he should tell Wil that he still had possession of their things, maybe it would help Spike in some far fetched way to have something of Buffys'. Alex shook his head and sighed.
"Spike is gone, and he's not coming back. You heard what Wil said, he's damaged."
"Did you always talk to yourself Xander? Or is this a new thing?"
Alex looked up sharply at the woman standing in front of him. He could hardly believe it was her, he hadn't seen her in thirty years and he hadn't figured on every seeing her again.
"Anya?"
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