CHAPTER 4

“It wasn’t long after you died, Mum,” Spike mumbled. He’d lit a cigarette and was leaning against the nearest tombstone – fortunately his own – for a bit of a chat.

“The others – Angelus, Darla and Dru – were all getting a bit uppity with me. Seems I wasn’t good for anything; I was just part of the group so Dru had something to cuddle up to when Angelus was busy with Darla. I was bloody fed up, so I decided I’d show them I could be evil too.

“I went round to the house one night – Livvy was there, tidying things up. She looked up and saw me in the doorway. Her eyes grew round and she paled. ‘Will?’ she asked. ‘Is it really you? There was a young man – a body. Uncle Roger told us it was you. We thought you were dead.’

She waited for me to say something, but I just stood there. After all that time, I didn’t know what to say to her. Maybe she thought I was a ghost, or maybe she was so far gone in grief that she just didn’t care.

“Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Mama is dead, Will,’ she told me. ‘This house; it’s to be sold. I’m married now, to Robert Carmichael. We have a good home, with two little ones and another on the way.’ She was still as beautiful as ever.”

He ran a hand through his hair, smiling bitterly.

“I’d gone there with all the hate I could muster. Angelus drained his whole family when Darla made him, or so they told us. Why should I be any different? I wanted to do something big and dramatic – surprise them and get their attention, show them that I could be as evil as any of them. But in the end – she was Livvy. I could no more bite her than I could have staked Drusilla, in those days.

“She never invited me in. I don’t know whether she knew that much, or whether it simply never occurred to her. I could have waited outside on the street, though, but I didn’t. Instead, I put on my game face. She screamed; I ran back to the gang. Beat myself up over it for years; I felt I’d taken the coward’s way. I could never decide what was worse: showing her what I was, or not following through with what I’d set out to do. Either way, she should never have had to live with the knowledge of what I was.

“Nancy, tonight, was like her. Reminded me of the Niblet, too; must have been the endless questions. She told me Livvy went straight out and found a way to contact the Watchers’ Council. She never told those useless prats why she did it, so I’m guessing they never connected her to me. She kept the secret all her life, but Nancy decided the rest of ‘em needed to know. All the family know now, even the kids.

“I stayed for a game of Scrabble with Nancy. Poor old soul gets lonely. I promised I’d go round next week too; she was talking about getting the kids over there as well. If she does, I’ll be sure to have a word to them about neglecting the old folk.”

He paused, scuffing at the ground with his toe.

“I nearly didn’t go, Mum. After I saw that family, Livvy’s great-great-great-grandson and his kids. They were so happy. I figured knowing about me might just bugger them up – ’scuse the language, mum. ‘Meet my Uncle Will… oh, right, he’s the evil undead.’ And now, it seems they’ve known all along. Funny how things work out.”

He stubbed his cigarette into the ground.

“This might be the last time I get by. I’m heading back to Sunnydale; back to Buffy, I guess. Seems Willow – that’s the witch – might be headed for a spot of bother. Never saw myself as the Watcher type, but that’s what I’ll be doing. For Willow, that is; I think I’ll steer clear of Buffy. As much as I can, anyway. Best thing I can do for her, now. Tell Joyce not to worry, though. I won’t let any nasties near her girls.

“I’ll miss our talks. It helps sometimes to chat things out with you. D’you think Joyce’d mind if I dropped by her grave? Guess you could pop on over there yourself sometimes.

“Tell Tara, if you see her, that I’ll keep a watch over her grave as well. She had a wicked sense of humour; I think you’d’ve liked her. Don’t know what you’d have made of the other girls, though.

“Anyway, it’ll be light soon. I need to push off.”

He stilled, completely serious now.

“I’m sorry, mum. Really sorry, I mean. For everything. Before, I wasn’t sorry, and I thought I could change anyway. But now I have changed, and I have to go back to make things better. Or at least to try.” He stood, absently rubbing his shoulder. “Don’t know if I’ll be back. So I guess this is goodbye, then.”

He glanced around once, then bent to press a gentle kiss onto her tombstone. He patted it once, gently, then turned and strode away without a backward glance.

***

“So after Dru dumped me that last time, I ended up back in Sunnydale again,” Spike continued. “I was looking for the Gem of Amarra – it makes the vampire who wears it invulnerable. I found it, too.”

The children’s eyes were round; they hung on his every word. Their parents were trying to look more blasé, although the forkful of spaghetti held midway between Richard’s plate and mouth suggested that he was rather more engrossed in the story than he was admitting.

“Is that when you got your soul?” asked Stephanie in a hushed voice.

“Nah, I was still evil in those days. Went after the Slayer. I’d’ve killed her there, if it hadn’t been for that –  for a lady I associated with. She told the Slayer about the ring. Buffy pulled it off my finger and whipped my –er- defeated me soundly. I was lucky to get away.”

“Was she your girlfriend, Uncle Will?” asked Emily. Hamish rolled his eyes.

Spike looked startled. “No, love. Slayer’s too good to go dating demons.”

She giggled. “Not the Slayer, silly. The other lady.”

“Don’t tease your uncle, Em,” said her mother. “That’s none of our business.”

Spike nodded at the little girl. “Yes she was, Emily. Her name was Harmony, and I wasn’t very nice to her at all in those days.”

“Was she a vampire?”

“Yeah. I didn’t bite her, though. She was already a vamp when I came back to Sunnydale.”

“So what happened next?” asked Hamish, who had scarcely taken his eyes from Spike since he and Nancy had arrived and been formally invited into the family’s home.

“Next, I got caught by the government.”

Sarah looked up at this. “You mean the government know about vam – people like you?”

“It’s okay to say it,” said Spike, and the children giggled at their mother’s discomfort. “Yes, the government knew all right. They had their own private SS – full of young boys playing soldiers. They’d go out at night, catch all the demons they could, then take us back to their bunker for their scientists to use in their experiments. I was one of the lucky ones; they didn’t cut me up, just stuck in a chip in my head that meant I couldn’t bite anyone.”

“So was that when you got the soul?” asked Stephanie.

Nancy chuckled. “Slow down, dear. There’s no hurry.”

“Yes there is,” said Stephanie, “We’re not immortal. At this rate, we’ll be dead before he gets there.”

Sarah and Richard looked shocked, but Spike and Nancy chuckled at the girl’s directness.

“That’s when I started hanging out with the Scoobies,” Spike went on. “That’s what the Slayer and her pals call themselves,” he explained. “See, once I got the chip, I couldn’t bite anyone. I needed help, and Harmony wasn’t about to help me out. In the end, I was so desperate, I went to her Watcher’s place and begged them to let me in.”

“And they made friends with you?”

“Nah, not then love,” he answered Emily. “”They didn’t like me at all, but I made myself useful see. Giles – Buffy’s Watcher – I was able to do him a couple of good turns in return for a handful of dead presidents. Stayed at his place for a while, then I moved on to live with Buffy’s friend Xander. He works in construction now. In those days, he was dating Anyanka – she’d been a vengeance demon until Giles smashed her power centre.”

“Wow – so it was like a gang of four, and then you came along and made it five?”

“Not exactly. There was another Scooby – Willow. Back then, she was just starting out as a witch. Her girlfriend Tara helped out too.” He paused, eyes downcast. “Tara died last year. It sent Willow kind of crazy. She’s on the road to recovery, but it’s going to take a while.”

There was silence.

“Magic?” said Hamish in disgust. “You mean like in fairytales?”

Stephanie and Emily cast him equally disgusted looks. “We’re talking to our great-great-great-great uncle the vampire and you’re worried about magic?”

“I suppose it is kind of silly,” said Hamish. “But I’m not going to tell the guys at school I believe in magic.”

“That sounds wise,” Nancy chuckled.

“Please go on,” said Sarah to Spike.

“Well, next thing you know, Slayer has a little sister.”

“A baby?” asked Emily, eyes darting hopefully to Sarah and Richard. It was clearly a discussion they’d had before, without much success to judge by the tolerant looks on their faces.

“Nah. See, that was the funny part. It was like she’d always been there. Turned out, she was actually the key to unlocking one of the nastier hell dimensions.”

“You mean she was evil?”

“Not at all. She was just a normal teenage girl. A group of monks decided that the best way to protect the key would be to send it to the Slayer in the form of a sister.”

“Why a sister?” asked Stephanie, puzzled.

“They needed it to be something she would protect with her life,” said Spike. “We don’t always get along with our sisters –,”

“Or brothers,” interjected Emily with a grin at Hamish.

“We’ll always look out for them, though,” Spike continued. “They went further – they actually made Dawn out of Buffy somehow. She was a part of her. That’s important, because one of the hellgods was actually trapped here. She wanted to use Dawn to open a portal to get back.”

“But how?” asked Richard.

“See, there’s the thing,” said Spike sadly. “To get back to the hell dimension, Glory – the hellgod - needed Dawn’s blood. We all tried to stop her, but we were too late. She’d built this huge scaffolding, and taken Dawn up there. I tried to get to Dawn – I nearly had her safe - but one of Glory’s followers pushed me off the top of the tower.” He reached for his wine and sipped it slowly, remembering the horror of that night..

“Buffy made it to the top, though. She defeated a god and saved the world again. Saved her little sis, too. Only problem is, she did it by sacrificing herself. She died closing the portal.”

There was shocked silence. Nancy dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. They hadn’t expected this.

Hamish was the one to say it. “But she’s not really dead, right? I mean, she’s a hero.”

Spike shook his head sadly. “She died all right, mate. We buried her in the forest. Xander made her a tombstone and everything: ‘Buffy Anne Summers. She saved the world a lot.’ We didn’t tell anyone she was gone. Didn’t want the nasties knowing there was one less Slayer in the world.

“I spent five months beating myself up about it. Figured if only I’d been faster, stronger, more - something, I’d have been able to save her. Every night, I’d come up with a new way I could have done it.” He paused, reflecting, and the adults glanced at each other. Clearly the Slayer’s death had affected their relative more strongly than he was telling them. “Then one day I went over to her old house, to mind Dawn – and there she was.”

“Who?”

“Buffy. Turns out Willow and the others – Xander, Anya and Tara – had cast a spell to bring her back. Bad magics too – not the sort of thing they had any business messing with. I’m betting that was where Willow started to go wrong.

“Anyway, that’s the deal. Willow’s spent the last five months with a coven in Devon, being rehabilitated. They’re sending her back to Sunnydale for a visit, and Giles has asked me to tag along. I’ll be keeping an eye on her, making she doesn’t slip back into bad habits.”

“But what about your soul?” Stephanie reminded him. “When did you get that?”

Spike frowned and looked down at the ground. “I did something bad,” he said. “I never meant to, but I nearly hurt someone I cared about. Afterwards, when I realised what had happened to me, I realised that as long as I had no soul, I could never be sure I wouldn’t do that again. So I went off to Africa, to a demon I’d heard of. Had to pass a few tests, but I won my soul. And here I am.”

Each of them thought about what those tests might have entailed; each person decided they’d probably rather not know.

“Is Sunnydale near Disneyland?” asked Emily, suddenly.

“Not too far, I guess,” Spike replied.

She turned excitedly to her parents. “Can we visit Uncle Will in Sunnydale and go to Disneyland?”

Sarah smiled at her daughter’s enthusiasm. “We’ll see.”

“She’s been desperate to visit Disneyland for the past two years,” Richard explained. “We tried taking the children to EuroDisney but it just wasn’t enough for them.”

Sarah turned to the children. “Now it’s bedtime for you lot. You’ve stayed up late enough to listen to your Uncle Will. Off you go now.”

The children grumbled but did as they were told, each bidding Spike and Nancy a good night. Emily surprised him by climbing onto his lap to hug him.

“We’ll visit you soon, I promise.”

Spike grinned. “Just make sure you bring Nancy along too, love.”

The adults adjourned to the sitting room while the children went upstairs to bed. From their position on the sofa, Spike and Nancy could clearly see first Stephanie and then Hamish too sneak down the stairs to sit on the landing, eavesdropping on the conversation.

Their after-dinner chat brought out more of the truth of Spike’s relationship with Buffy and the Scoobies than he’d really wanted to share. It was uncomfortable and somewhat confronting for him to think about facing them again, after all that had happened.

Nancy covered a yawn, and Spike realised it was later than he’d thought.

“Best push off then,” he said, standing.

Richard and Sarah saw them to the door.

“Come back anytime,” said Sarah warmly. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

Richard nodded, shaking Spike by the hand. “I’ll hope we can bring the children over for a visit,” he added. “You say Buffy has the –er- Hellmouth pretty well under control?”

Spike nodded. “I’d say helping Willow settle back in with her friends is likely to be the hardest thing I'll have to face back there.”