Title: The Assistant, part 61
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: R
Summary: Merrick didn’t die. AU
Spoilers: season 4
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters.. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
Buffy trained like a demon to get her physical strength and agility back after the pregnancy. Luckily, Slayers were resilient and she bounced back very quickly. She, like her sister Slayers, could tell that something very big was going to happen very soon now. The event that had pulled three Slayers together was finally underway.
Faith and Anna would normally have told their Watchers about the man they had found on patrol but Dawn’s birth had knocked it out of their minds. Thus, it was nearly a week later that Faith thought to mention it to Wesley.
“And you say this man was insane?”
“Not like raving or anything, but he was just so…lost, I guess would be the best explanation.”
“The hospital had five others with these same symptoms?”
Faith shrugged. “That’s what the doctor-guy said.”
Wesley called the other Watchers together and let Faith and Anna recount the story again. He looked deeply puzzled. “This almost feels familiar to me for some reason, but I just can’t quite put my finger on why.”
Buffy, who had stopped training for a few moments to listen to the story, interrupted. “Do you think it was something you read about?”
“Possibly,” the Watcher admitted.
“Recently?”
“No. I’m sure it’s been years. Possibly when I was in college…” he trailed off.
“I wonder if Willow could hack into the hospital records and find out more about these guys?” Faith proposed.
Giles nodded and reached for the phone. He explained the situation to Willow who replied that she would be over in half an hour with her new laptop. She was actually there in twenty-five minutes and had brought Xander along for the ride.
The Watchers started assembling texts dealing with loss of self, personality disorders, and spell-induced amnesia. Surprisingly, there was quite a bit of information available. Buffy looked at the stack of books and groaned, mentally wincing over the vast amount of pointless reading they were going to have to do before somebody actually found something helpful.
Willow settled down and began her usual computer wizardry. It took her fifteen minutes to hack into the hospital database.
“Hey! Look at this! The hospital has fifteen patients in their new ward now. All of these people were found wandering on the street.” She typed some more. “Clinically, there’s nothing visible wrong with them, their brain chemistry is fine, they just…don’t connect…any more. Most of them have been identified by relatives who said they left their homes perfectly well and then turned up hours later wandering around aimlessly.”
“Are there any physical marks on any of them?” Buffy asked.
Willow typed some more. “Some of them had minor bruises on their faces.”
“That doesn’t sound like enough to do the kind of damage they seem to have sustained,” Giles pointed out.
“Not unless it was something mystical,” Anna said darkly.
“I think we need to patrol,” Faith said.
“Not yet, if you please,” Merrick told her. “Before I send you girls out there, I’d like to have a slightly better grasp of what we’re looking for.”
“What if it isn’t in a book?” Buffy countered. “What if it’s something we just won’t find out about till we meet up with it?”
“Unlikely,” Giles pointed out. “We have millennia of Watcher diaries available to us. In all that time, a great deal of the supernatural fauna has been cataloged.”
She sighed, grabbed another book, and settled down with her two sister Slayers. Three hours later, they had nothing concrete. Wesley still couldn’t remember why the mention of the crazy people sounded familiar and Buffy was getting cranky. She stood up.
“Where are you going?” Giles asked her.
“Baby.”
His face softened at the mention of their daughter. “Oh. Well, give her a kiss from papa.”
Buffy smiled and slipped out the door. She really did need to check on her daughter. Dawn was awake, not fussing but quietly kicking her feet and playing with her toes. She squealed like a tiny piglet when she saw her mother.
Picking up the infant, Buffy sat in the rocking chair Giles had purchased for her and rocked. She had grabbed a bottle of formula from the fridge and heated it slightly in the microwave before going to the baby’s room. Feeding time was fun; it was just that it led to diaper-changing time, which was considerably less so.
She used the book-free moments to think about her daughter. This little person had come from her and Rupert. It still amazed her that such a thing could be possible. Not just the fact that she got pregnant, lived through it, and had produced a healthy, viable child, but that making love could lead to such a thing in the first place. On the face of it, it seemed so unlikely. It was a wonder to her that anybody had ever figured out what caused babies to happen. It wasn’t an obvious connection, she thought. One day you have sex and then nine months later you have a baby. How did people ever figure out the reality? How did they know that you just didn’t get pregnant when you hit a certain age, for example? It wasn’t as if every time you had sex you had a baby, after all. She smiled to herself. She had brought up these questions to her husband one night and had nearly driven him spare. He couldn’t even put his mind in a place where somebody would think about such nonsense.
The baby had finished her bottle and had fallen asleep so Buffy kissed her gently on the forehead ‘for papa’ and put her back in her crib. She wasn’t ready to go back to researching so stepped quietly out on the back porch to get some fresh air.
A flash of movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned and was in time to see Spike slipping up their driveway. He approached her cautiously since the last time he had seen her, he had been in the act of betraying her to Adam.
“Spike.”
“Slayer.”
She sat down on the porch swing and was surprised when he joined her.
“Did you want something?”
“Just to talk,” he said, then fell silent for a long moment. “I still have that bloody chip. I’ve been all over the world trying to find somebody to remove it. No luck.”
“Oh. Well, good for us, I guess.”
“It’s just wrong, Slayer. I’m a demon. I shouldn’t be like this!”
“We’d have to stake you if you got the chip out, you know that.”
“But that’s just the proper way of behaving, isn’t it? I mean, you’re a Slayer: I’m a vampire. We have our assigned roles. Now, I can’t bite and you won’t kill me. What’s the bloody world coming to, eh?”
“Blame it on the Hellmouth,” she told him consolingly. “It works for us.”
“Yes. I suppose you’re right about that.” He was quiet again for a couple of minutes. “The thing is, Slayer, I’m changing. I think the chip is changing me.”
“How so?”
She could see he was reluctant to speak. “Do you know anything about me?”
“You’re a vamp, about 140 years old. English. That’s about it.”
“When I was a man…” he hesitated.
“Go on.”
“I was a good man. I lived with my mum and took care of her—we took care of each other. I was in love with a young woman who couldn’t have cared less about me. I was bookish and idealistic. I thought that if I could just impress her, she would see how much I cared about her and would come to love me.” He sighed. “I suppose I was also hopelessly naive.”
“What happened?” Buffy asked quietly.
“I wrote a poem for her. Poured my heart into it and forced her to listen while I read it to her. She was horrified. Told me I would never be her love, that I was beneath her. I was heartbroken. I ran out of her parlor and into the street and straight into the arms of Drusilla. Vampires love pain and I was broadcasting on all channels that night. She turned me. Changed me from poor, soppy William to Spike, happy-go-lucky killer. I went home and turned my mum. Because even then there was some William left. I didn’t want her to suffer anymore. She had TB and was dying.”
“Harsh.”
“Very.” He lit a cigarette and took a puff before continuing. “She said some things to me that echoed the pain I had felt when my girl didn’t want me. I staked her. I staked my own mum.”
Buffy put her warm hand over his ice cold one. “She was better off.”
“Yeah. I know that now. It was bad at the time, though.”
“Still is, I’m sure.”
He nodded silently. “I’m turning back into William. I’m starting to care about things no self-respecting demon should ever even think about, let alone be concerned with.”
“You think it’s the chip?”
“I don’t know. That’s part of it, I guess. It takes the bloodlust, the need to kill away. I still want to drink blood, but I’m content for it to be from an animal now. That just feels wrong.”
“Big problem for a vampire.”
“Tell me about it.” He took a puff off his fag and stubbed it out. “The thing is, I was wondering if I could talk to your Watcher.”
“You want to talk to Giles?” She didn’t know why she was so surprised.
“Or the older one. Hell, I’d even settle for Faith’s beau.”
“Stay here and I’ll fetch somebody.” She got up and walked inside. Entering the room where everybody was still grinding away over their books, she walked up to her husband.
“Can I see you outside for a second, Giles?”
He looked up. “What is it, dear?”
“Something you need to see.”
He stood up and Merrick watched him go, curiosity flitting across his features at this strange behavior.
Giles stepped out onto the porch and felt the presence of the vampire immediately. He was reaching for a stake when Buffy’s hand stopped him. “He’s here to talk.”
Keeping his hand on the stake, he nodded warily at the vampire. “Talk then.”
“Something’s happening in town again,” Spike began. “I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but something is driving ordinary citizens mad. I’ve had my ear to the ground for a while, but people are afraid to talk about it. Whatever it is, it’s bad.”
“I see. And you’re telling us this out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you,” Spike admitted. “It just seems like I need to…do something.”
Giles looked skeptical. “Mmmhmm.”
“I was telling the Slayer, I think it’s the chip.”
When the Watcher showed no signs of believing him, the vampire ran his hands through his hair in frustration. Buffy noticed that he had quit painting his fingernails black.
“I think he’s telling the truth, Giles.”
Her husband turned to look at her in amazement. “Buffy, he’s an evil vampire. He doesn’t have the option of telling the truth or doing good or any positive thing, especially for someone else. Demons, as a rule, are not known for benevolence and for their spirit of good will towards man.”
“I know. But he’s different. I can feel it.”
“Very well.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “If you wish to aid us, see if you can find out what is causing this plague of madness.”
Spike nodded. “I’ll try.” He gave Buffy a long look and faded slowly into the darkness of the night.