“Time traveling, huh?” Xander asked. “Haven’t had that in a while, eh, Buff?”

Buffy shook her head, her eyes fixed on the woman.

Two years after he was turned… 1882…

“Eh…” she said. “You were saying you should start from the beginning. Please, do.”

Sarah nodded.

“My name is Sarah Jill Macintyre and I was born in the year of 1855, one year after William. William’s mother was a seamstress and she made all my clothes as well as my mother’s dresses, she was very kind and I remember her well from being a child. Will’s father was…”

“Do you bloody well have to tell MY life story?” Spike interrupted her, and when Buffy looked at him she could have been willing to bet that, had he been human he would have blushed. “I mean, is it necessary?” he added and Sarah looked at him timidly.

“Why, yes. For certain,” she then said with a smile and he sighed, looking beaten.

“Fine,” he grumbled.

“Well, then. William’s father was a shoemaker and an excellent one at that, and I suppose you could say that both Mr. and Mrs. Kinsley…”

Spike winced, closing his eyes.

“Lord. Precious, is it ABSOLUTELY necessary to…”

“Oh, do hush up, William,” Sarah interrupted him impatiently. “You’re being quite awful right now and you know it, I’m trying to tell my story here and, well, you don’t seem to care.”

Buffy couldn’t stifle the laughter in her throat and covered her mouth with both hands as Spike shot a glance her way. He noticed that the Slayer wasn’t the only one grinning and he started mumbling to himself before speaking up:

“You seem to forget, my lady, that I’m not ALL William anymore, and that I’ve gone through some changes, happens when you live a century or so.” Sarah raised her eyebrows only looking slightly amused and he continued with some force: “And I believe I can interrupt you as much as I bloody well want without caring even the …”

“William Thackary Kinsley!” Sarah exclaimed, her voice sounding appalled but her eyes glinting with tease.

Spike’s eyes grew round in indignation.

“God, Sarah! Stop that!” he yelled, getting to his feet. “It’s bad enough having you tell everybody what my bloody folks did for a livin’, now you gotta go tellin’ them a name I’ve spent a bloody eternity leaving behind me!”

“That’s bloody right, I will,” Sarah nodded agreement and mocking him his use of foul language. “You do swear an awful lot, Will,” she said to bring out her point. “I don’t remember…”

“Sarah, I know this is all in fun, at least for you,” Spike said, his voice drenched in what almost sounded like helplessness. “But this is my world you’re entering here. I’m NOT William anymore, you must know that. And I can’t just go back. Seeing you again is… I can’t describe it, precious, but I still don’t understand what the…” he stopped himself and Sarah hid a small smile, he sighed. “What you’re doing here,” he finished.

“Well, silly, that’s what I have been trying to tell you, isn’t it? Now, if you would just let the William side of you rest with the objections about a life he has been trying to forget and which he can’t go back to, the details of which, I am regretful to inform him, is pivotal for my story of WHY I am here, I may be able to answer that and explain everything else,” Sarah finished.

Spike looked at her, defeated he sunk down on his chair again.

“Fine,” he once more grumbled, not able to look at the Scoobies, least of all that wanker Harris who probably was having a field day with the bloody information he had just received, but he didn’t want to look at Buffy either.

He remembered telling her that he had always been this way, always been bad and tough. He knew now that the lie would be put in its true light, and he didn’t want to see her reaction. It didn’t matter, anyway. All that was only part of his history and so far past him now that it simply didn’t matter; least of all in the ended story of the Slayer and the Vamp.

Sarah looked at him, smiling a little and with an expression on her face as though she had a secret only she knew.

“Fine,” she then mimicked him, turning the only way he refused to and searched for a moment where to pick up her story. “Ah, yes,” she then said. “Mr. and Mrs. Kinsley were working for my mother and father on a regular basis. My grandfather had been a good friend of William’s grandfather and so MY father was a good friend of Mr. Kinsley’s, my father wanted the best for William’s family and so was the arrangement of employment for them the perfect solution. England, and the times, are still rough on people I suppose, even if we ARE living in rather the Golden Ages. At least from what I’ve seen during my traveling,” she ended her sentence with a glance directed to a spot somewhere behind her and even though she hardly moved her head it was evident she was thinking of the mirror.

All of the gathered Scoobies wanted to ask WHERE and WHEN she had been other than the very room they now shared, but none of them wanted to interrupt her story and so they all held their breath, waiting for her to continue.

“William and I grew up together, even though we lived in different parts of Town we still played together every day,” she gave Spike a loving gaze and he smiled a little, still uncomfortable with having his past so pressing upon him, but not able to deny to himself that parts of the remembering was really pleasant. “Through circumstances I won’t get into, since William seems reluctant to opening himself up too much to such nice people as yourselves,” she said this with quite an amount of sarcasm directed to her childhood friend turned fiend, “William was sent to school and he was away for over a year. I thought I would die… But, he did write me pretty poems.”

With that Sarah’s face split into a radiant smile and Spike couldn’t help but laugh, shaking his head at her, the others not catching in on the joke of him being infamous to most back in good old England for writing awful poetry.

“You always were a teaser, weren’t you?” he asked as she laughed with him.

“Always,” she then said, still smiling.

Buffy looked at the couple, not able to retract the sinking feeling in her stomach. She wished she had never been weakened by that damned demon, turning her into a musical maniac singing her feelings out to him, leading to their first kiss. “You can make me feel.” Bah! Feel too much, that was the problem. She wanted this stupid jealousy gone!

At least all of her staggering and feeling sick earlier hadn’t all been caused by him; it had been caused by her not so smart choice of pushing nothing but the fact of her body needing food aside. Heck, maybe that was ALL it had been: hunger!

Her mind returning to the present and the easy way he conversed with Sarah made her painfully aware that it hadn’t been all, that it still wasn’t all. That she was jealous.

She started to get more and more furious with herself. How could she start to get back to where she had been last spring, before Glory and the sacrifice of her own life, if she couldn’t get past this petty feeling? Shouldn’t she want him to be happy? Hadn’t she known him long enough to want that for him? She knew SHE couldn’t make him happy! She just couldn’t.

And here was this girl, this woman and lady, from his past, who had known him as William and now sat there, laughing as if nothing had changed, only she was doing it with Spike.

Ugh, the so wonderful and entertaining world of referring to people in two names or in third person or whatever is REALLY loosing its glitter, she thought, shrugging.

“Hello, still not finished with the SO interesting story!” Dawn cheerfully reminded and Sarah turned to her, smiling.

Spike leaned back in his chair as Sarah did the same.

“Right,” she said. “So, where was I… Ah, yes. Will got back from school and we spent everyday together. Finally, I thought, he’s back to stay. Well, that turned out to be wrong because that summer he met this woman who… I don’t know how to explain it. Intoxicated him. When she one day declared she had had enough of his wooing her he…”

“Don’t we recognize that…?” Xander mumbled under his breath and got another elbow reprimand from Willow.

Spike just looked at him with such a piercing expression in his eyes that Buffy almost thought it would cut right through him.

Sarah either didn’t pick up on it or disregarded it because she continued:

“…Well, let’s just say that he wasn’t very happy during that time. He was depressed and even though he tried to be as social with me as before he just wasn’t up for it. One morning, that same fall, I woke up and he wasn’t in his bed, which wasn’t all that unusual, but what got me worried was that it hadn’t been slept in all night. I searched his whole room for a note or any kind of clue as to where he might have gone, but all his clothes, except for the ones he had been wearing the last time I saw him the day before, and most of his belongings were accounted for. When he hadn’t come back in the evening and there was no word from him my father and I grew very worried and we contacted the police.

“They searched for you for almost two months, William, but they came up empty handed at every turn and since you didn’t make any sign of contacting us they simply had to give up. I didn’t, though. I KNEW you were still alive and… Well, the details are long and very boring but let’s just say that I got in contact with a helpful man who introduced me to a whole new world of knowledge. And it didn’t take much to make a believer out of me, you remember our discussions, don’t you?” He nodded at that, now sitting silently watching her as she spoke. “Well, in the spring after you had gone missing I received a letter which anyhow cleared any doubt I might have had regarding the matter of you still being alive. It was a short note saying that you were all well and traveling and that you had left with your true love. Of course I immediately saw that it wasn’t your writing and the person signing it with a D. didn’t help her cause either. It was much later that I found out that it was Drusilla who had sent it.”

“What?!” Spike exploded.

Sarah smiled calmingly at him.

“Yes, can you believe it?”

“But, how do you know so much about Drusilla?” Buffy asked and Sarah turned to her.

“Well, the story is only getting started,” she answered. “I was engulfed with my own distress, knowing so many signs pointed to you being turned, Will, and not wanting to believe it. I started to meet with the man who had told me about the idea of vampires existing, in his quiet shop every afternoon. He had tons and tons of books and I started studying them, with his help and guidance. Soon I was able to read languages I could hardly speak and understand the ancient signs that filled the scrolls he kept at the back of his shop. And then one day he had a shipment come into the harbor and he was extremely excited to show it to me.”

“The mirror,” Buffy concluded and Sarah nodded.

“Yes, the mirror. He had obtained it from a friend, he told me, and that was the day he also let me know that he was dying. He said I had been so good to him, keeping him company, and now he was presenting the mirror to me as a gift and a token of his appreciation.”

“That’s what it said on the note on the box that I got,” Buffy pointed out and Sarah smiled wearily.

“Yes, I thought it fitting…” she said, sadness in her voice. “He was a nice man, and I wish he didn’t have to die, but he was sick and so in a way it was for the better. He showed me the way to use the mirror, told me that I needed to be careful and treat it with respect or it would surely turn on me, and make me change history in some awful way, planting my foot in the wrong soil and at the wrong moment could, of course, have serious repercussions. Still, with its help I was able to locate you, William. I was able to see what you had become and what you did with that wretched vampire at your side. How I loathed her for taking you from me, how I wished I could wring her neck. But I knew, somehow, that you were still in there, even though the demon had taken you over so completely I could see you. You’re in the eyes, William. You show in your eyes, and I don’t think you can ever get out of there.”

Buffy felt, to her utter detriment, that at those words her own eyes were quickly filling up with tears and she stood, mumbling something, that she couldn’t even catch herself, as an excuse and then rushed out of the room.


***


She didn’t know how fast she got there, but before she knew it she closed the door to her room behind her, the tears having already spilled over she started wiping them away fiercely with both hands.

“What the hell is the matter with me?” she asked her bed, her walls, her ceiling.

None of them seemed to have the answer and she sunk down on the first, sitting with her hands between her legs and slightly rocking back and forth, back and forth, trying to find the answer to her question out for herself.

“I’m sleep deprived, suffering malnutrition and I’m stressed out…” she said wryly. “Wonder if that covers it…” she added with a sigh. “No, I’m indecisive, too.”

‘The day you decide what you want there’ll be a bloody parade.’

“Oh!” she growled, getting off the bed. “Get OUT of my HEAD!” she then exclaimed to his voice, it seemed to always be lurking somewhere in her brainstem, just WAITING to make an input here and an input there…

Just then there was a slight knock on the door and she felt her heart stop. HAD she just been screaming at a voice in her head to get out of there…? Now, that must rank pretty high on the nutty-scale.

She hesitated a moment before dragging her feet as she walked up to the door, grabbing the handle she took one more moment to put on a calm face and then opened it up.

She had thought it would be HIM, but it was Dawn. Relieved she let her sister in.

“A-are you okay?” she asked, eyeing Buffy’s face. “I thought I heard you…um, talking to someone,” she added, looking down.

Buffy smiled a little.

“Oh, just the good old brain ghosts, you know. Needed to give them a little rattle, ask them to keep it quite up there for a while,” she said lightly and Dawn looked up, smiling as well.

“Okay… I mean, I’m glad that you’re okay,” she said.

“Yeah, me too,” a voice was heard from the doorway and Buffy looked up and into his eyes.

“Of course I am,” she said, trying to sound careless. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you kinda just ran off,” Dawn answered her. “It just didn’t seem like you were all fine.”

“I am, though. No worries. You guys can go down stairs and I’ll be down soon. Just have to take a moment. If that’s PERMITTED?” she asked, smile still on her face, and Dawn nodded.

“Sure! I mean, of course! Um, I’ll see you down there?”

Buffy nodded and watched her sister go. Then she turned around, facing her bed, and combing her fingers through her hair she took a deep breath.

“You don’t look okay,” he said behind her, and she sighed.

“I thought you left,” she stated, hoping he would get the hint and go back down.

“Well, you were wrong then, weren’t you, love?” he countered and she turned to him.

“I…” she started, trailing off as she looked at him, remembering all those times those eyes had rested in hers… on her.

She looked away.

“Can I come in?” he asked silently and her brain malfunctioned for a moment, her tongue slipping and she answered:

“Yes, sure, whatever.”

He could tell she wasn’t thinking, but it didn’t matter and he took his first step into her room. By the second step her head popped up, her eyes fully expressing her realization of what she had just done: enabled him to enter her private domain, the vampire code of no entry now over ridden as she had given her consent.

He stopped in front of her, her eyes suddenly looking vulnerable and almost scared.

“What?” he asked softly. “You think I’ll bite?”

A trace of a smile graced her lips and then she grew serious.

“No… Spike, I just…”

He smiled a little, taking the last step forward, her body close enough to feel.

“Don’t,” she said, but she sounded wavering.

His eyes locked in hers, his body so close, she felt weakened and frail. She wanted him so badly, and it scared her even more now than it had ever done to even think about telling anyone that fact. His mouth was so close, his eyes kept drilling into her, straight down to her core and she couldn’t look away.

“Why have you been crying, love?” he asked, his voice gentle.

She swallowed, her mouth was as dry as a desert and she felt almost as though she was out of her body… she was in his eyes…

Remembering vaguely crying before she didn’t know what to answer him.

“I don’t remember,” she mumbled, and that wasn’t really a lie.

She just didn’t want to add: “Right now I can’t even think because…”

Then his hand found hers, his fingers gently sliding over her wrist and she felt an overwhelming wave wash over her, carrying the pictures of their nightly escapades with it.

He wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing, but the feel of her warm skin was bliss, and he had missed it, and it was too late to go back now. He could see in her eyes how much she wanted him, and he had never been able to resist that knowledge before.

She was getting lost. She was getting lost in those deep pools which were always pulling at her to dive in... cool off. She had worked so hard to avoid this scenario, and now it all felt like a waste.

He was leaning closer now, his mouth, his lips parting slightly… She bent her head back a little, the submissive gesture making him suddenly freeze, looking down at her face.

She was so beautiful, and her eyes…

“No…” he suddenly said, his voice hoarse. “You don’t want this and I won’t do this so you can have one more thing to blame me for later.”

With that he took a step away from her, gave her one last look and then he turned around, leaving her.

She stared at the empty doorway.

Then she furrowed her brow a little, crossing her arms over her chest before walking out of her room and starting downstairs.

She walked into the kitchen; she was still hungry. Her head was buzzing with thoughts and she almost felt like hitting it against the fridge door a couple or so times, but she figured, having already talked to the voices in her head, that would probably not be a very good idea.

She wanted to shake the feeling of him off, but that was even harder.

There was one thing having your need satisfied, there was a complete other to try to ignore it after practically being able to taste it.

“That’s me,” she said as she opened the fridge-door and let her eyes wander over the contents inside. “Just your regular junkie.”