Title: The Assistant, part 64
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 thought about the monk's last words all that day and lay awake that night thinking over what that he had said. They had taken an empty vessel and poured a mystical essence into it—somehow purifying the vessel and changing its nature. She absolutely hated this kind of stuff. It was like a story problem in math where they give you all the elements and you're supposed to put together some impossible equation to come up with the answer. And on top of this whole Key business, there was Spike. Something about the vampire was different. He told her he was changing, becoming more like the man he'd been. That meant that his nature as a demon was being altered somehow. She sat up suddenly in bed. Oh no!
Turning to her husband, she shook him awake. “Giles, I have to talk to you!”
“What? What is it, Buffy? Can't you sleep?”
“I've been thinking about what that monk told me. I have a crazy idea that I might know what the Key is.”
Giles blinked, now wide awake. “What? What do you think it is?”
“You're going to think this is crazy. I think it's crazy. But I also kinda think I might be right.”
“Well, tell me!” Giles was impatient to hear her theory.
“It's Spike. The Key is Spike. He says he's changing. The monk said that the mystical essence of the Key had been poured into an empty vessel. What is a vampire but empty? No soul, no eternal spark—just a big soul-shaped hollow place waiting to be filled with a Key.”
“No, surely not!”
“That's what I said. Then, I thought about it some more. Then, I thought, oh no! Then, I woke you up.”
“I've got to tell the others!”
“Yeah.”
Giles got out of bed and knocked on Wesley and Faith's door, then on Thomas Paine's, then on to Joyce and Merrick's room.
The sleepy family gathered in the living room downstairs. “What seems to be the problem?” Merrick yawned.
“Buffy has a theory about the Key,” He explained what she had told him. It caused the Watchers to set up straight in amazement.
“Do you really think?” Wesley asked her, wonder ringing in his voice.
“I don't know. But what else could it be?” She paced restlessly around the room.
“The monk said they had sent it to you to protect it,” Thomas said in confusion.
“Yeah. And here comes Spike—he's been gone for months and then suddenly he's back and he's having a moral crisis.”
“What?” Merrick asked her.
“He's changing. He told me he's turning back into the good man he was before he was turned. His demon doesn't know what to make of it so he's fairly conflicted.” Buffy continued pacing. “Is there some sort of test we can perform? Some magic thing to tell if he's got this Key thing in him?”
The Watchers looked at each other. “We could check his aura. It would give us a base reading—enough to tell if there was something different about him, at least. As a vampire, his essence would be black, indicating the basic wrongness of their nature. If he was changing, he would have some color to his aural light,” Wesley spoke slowly, thinking it through. “I believe we should test him.”
The others agreed. Giles turned to Buffy. “Do you know his resting place?”
She nodded. “He's got a crypt up in Restview.”
“Go there and bring him back. He can stay in the basement when the sun rises,” Merrick decided.
“Who's going to do this aura thing?” Buffy asked.
“Any of us can do it, but a competent witch would be best,” Giles said absently, lost in the possibilities. “I suppose you should get Willow and Xander as well.”
“That's going to take too long, Giles. Send Faith for Willow,” Buffy told him. “Xander can drive over on his own.”
“I'll have to change first,” Faith said with a grin. “I wasn't planning on a late night run to the campus after bed.”
“We should all dress. This is going to take a while,” Merrick agreed. “Meet back down here as soon as you can. Buffy, you go get Spike.”
She nodded and raced upstairs to dress. She stopped only to look in at her sleeping daughter and give her a tiny kiss. “Stay here with daddy, Dawn. Mommy will be back as soon as she can.”
Running down the stairs, she grabbed a stake and exited the house. Faith followed close behind her on her own retrieval trip. The men gathered magic stores to perform various tests on the vampire. Joyce decided that since everybody was up, she might as well cook breakfast. Anna offered to help.
Buffy found Spike reading in his crypt. “I need you to come with me back to the house, Spike. We may know what's making you change.”
He looked up, puzzlement on his face. “If you say so, Slayer. It's pretty close to daybreak, though.”
“You can spend the day in our basement, no problem.”
He shrugged. “OK, just let me get my coat.”
“So, what do you think it is?” he asked her as they sped along.
“I don't want to talk about it outside. Wait till we get home,” she told him.
They arrived back at the house just as the first rays of the sun came over the horizon. Spike dashed through the open door, a bit of smoke trailing him.
“Does somebody want to explain what this is all about?” Spike asked, somewhat plaintively.
“We need to wait for Faith and Willow to get back,” Buffy told him. “It shouldn't be long. Um, want some pig blood while we wait?”
“Nah, Not hungry. Wouldn't mind a cup of tea though.”
Everybody stared at the blond vampire. “What?” he said, looking at their stunned faces.
“I didn't know vampires drank anything besides blood,” Thomas said hurriedly.
“Well, of course we can. Be a pretty bloody stupid way to live if you could only drink blood,:” Spike told him. “My body's still mostly human, you know. I can eat and drink, it just doesn't provide any nourishment for me. Most vamps don't bother with it, but I never really got over missing texture to my meals.”
Joyce carried in a samovar filled with tea and Anna brought in cups, cream, and sugar. Everyone helped themselves to the hot beverage and sat around waiting for Faith and Willow. To say the atmosphere was tense would be to belabor the term. Spike ignored the tension and sipped his tea in comfort. He had eternity, after all.
They heard the front door open and Faith came into the room more or less dragging a groggy-looking Willow behind her. She was carrying her satchel of magic paraphernalia. Xander was trailing them tiredly. “You guys have to start having meetings at normal times of the day. Times not normally designated for sleeping,” he told them blearily.
“Faith said this was important,” Willow mumbled, still half asleep.
“Willow, we need you to look at Spike's aura and tell us what you see,” Giles told her. “Buffy believes, ah, something may be, ah, different about him.”
“Oh, sure. I can do that. It's not hard. Um, Spike? Could you take your coat off, please?”
“Alright, Red.” He slung the leather garment over a nearby chair.
Willow closed her eyes momentarily and when she opened them, Spike's aura glowed before her. “Holy Crap!” The Wicca stepped back in surprise. “I've never seen anything like that before!”
The Watchers crowded round her. “What? What do you see?” Merrick wanted to know.
“Let me show you! You won't freakin' believe this!” Willow's eyes were wide with disbelief.
She put her hands on either side of Merrick's face and directed him to 'see through her eyes'. Everyone in the room watched as his eyes opened in shock. Willow released him and his vision went back to normal. “Rupert, Wesley, Thomas, you absolutely have to see this!”
Willow ended up performing the same spell for everyone present. “I don't know of any natural phenomenon that would explain this,” John said excitedly.
“No, nor I,” Rupert admitted. “I hate to be the one to say it, but it appears that Spike is...growing a soul.”
“That's what it looked like to me,” Willow said, rubbing her forehead. The spell hadn't been hard, but repeating it so many times had worn her down some. Joyce saw how tired the girl was and offered her some aspirin and a cup of tea.
“Thanks, Joyce.”
“What did you see?” Spike demanded.
Willow took it upon herself to explain. “Normal humans have an aura. Healthy ones glow yellow or orange, sick ones are brown, very sick ones look black. Vamps normally have a solid black aura—because, let's face it, that's pretty sick for a human body. Anyhow, your aura was solid black—I checked it out a couple of years ago. Blacker than the Ace of Spades,” Willow confirmed. “Now, though, there's this central glowing...thing inside you. Greenish white, very beautiful, glowing like a miniature sun. And the black aura around you is being...permeated by rays of this sun. It spread even as we were watching you.”
“Is it the chip? Is the bloody chip regrowing my soul?” The vampire looked frightened.
“No. Whatever it is, it isn't from the chip. I'd say the chip has nothing to do with this other thing,” Willow told him carefully. “Whatever is happening to you, whatever is growing your soul, I don't think it's, uh, mechanical in nature.”
“Then what the bloody hell is it?” Spike demanded.
Buffy ruffled her hair back. “Sit down, this is going to take a while.” She explained to him exactly what the monk had told her and how she had remembered that Spike himself had admitted he was changing. “What we think is, these monks got this Key thing and dumped it into you and now, it's spreading. I guess it's regrowing your soul.”
“Bugger!”
“Yeah, pretty much,” she agreed tiredly.
Xander looked up. “Do you realize what this means?”
“What?” Anna asked him curiously.
“We've got another vampire with a soul. We could have dusted Angel after all.”