The Other Side

By Meltha

Sixteen

Buffy wasn’t exactly sure where she had been expecting to find William, but this certainly wasn’t it. This was no flower-strewn valley or wood-paneled library. It was… nothing. For a long moment, Buffy was not even certain if she had opened her eyes because everything was so dark. Then, very slowly, she started to make out dim shapes in the blackness, like smudges of deep gray on ebony.

She was in what seemed to be a room in a house from long ago, perhaps when William was alive. There was no detail in it, though. She could make out walls and the openings of windows, the forms of chairs and tables, all without color. The only bit of light that was in the room came from a fireplace. A few embers lay dying in the grate, casting the smallest of glows, and before them, sitting in one of the strangely blank chairs, his back to her, was William.

Somehow, the stillness in the room made her even more nervous. It was obvious that William was lost in his thoughts, and she felt she was intruding, but she was not about to leave him like this. She began to walk towards the seated figure, making certain that her footsteps broke the silence.

From the moment the first noise reached his ears, William’s posture stiffened defensively, but he did not turn around. When at last Buffy pulled up a chair next to him and sat down, the soul finally looked up at her.

“How did you find me?”

The tone he said it in almost frightened her with its total deadness. His eyes, usually such a luminous blue, were as faint in light as the fire before them.

“I asked Dru to send me to you,” she answered simply, and he blinked as though this was not the answer he had been expecting.

“Where are we, anyway?” Buffy asked with a note of distaste. The place was far from her liking.

William looked around them as though taking in the surroundings for the first time, then laughed without the slightest trace of happiness. “Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Missing a lot of the details, of course, because I wasn’t concentrating on them, but this is,” he paused for a long moment, searching for the right words. “It’s a place where I was quite unhappy as a human. All it needs are the mocking ladies and gentlemen of distinction and the sounds of a string quartet.”

Buffy couldn’t pretend to understand any of this, but she could tell in a glance that William was deeply uncomfortable and sad.

“Look, what Darla said,” Buffy began to say, but she broke off, not exactly knowing how to proceed.

“Go on,” he said softly, his face glued to the dying fire before them. “I have never lied to you, Buffy, and I never will. Ask whatever you wish.”

The shadows created by the fire skittered about his face, making him look remarkably like a statue. The slayer studied him for a long moment before finally asking the question.

“William, is what Darla said true?”

He sighed deeply before answering. “Not exactly.”

Buffy’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I’ve been in love with you for three and a half years, not two and a half. Darla never was much for mathematics. Of course, she wasn’t on this level back then, so perhaps it can be excused.”

He looked down to the floor and said no more as Buffy did the mental calculations. He’d been in love with her since the first time she’d met Spike?

“Will you look at me for a minute?” she asked carefully, and he raised his head from its lowered position until he was turned towards her. “I’m getting the feeling there’s more to this story than you’ve told me. What exactly happened?”

A small frown appeared on William’s face as he shut his eyes a bit before he answered. When he looked at her once more, the guarded look was gone, and the expression that replaced it was one she remembered from the moments when Spike was his most human.

“I was along with Spike, as usual, when he came to Sunnydale. My influence with him was better than most souls have over their other selves, but I was still mostly helpless against anything he planned. That night at the Bronze, I was there.” He took a deep breath. “My God, Buffy, do you have any idea how beautiful your soul was that night? You were like the heart of a diamond, radiating fire, warmth, perfection itself. From the moment I saw you, I was unable to think of anything else. It was like finding a missing part of me. I was in love with you completely at a glance.”

His eyes held her own, and she realized that there were tears forming in the sapphire depths, but he refused to let them fall.

“Spike, of course, saw nothing but another Slayer to kill at first,” he continued with a note of anger in his voice, “and there was nothing I could do to keep him from that raid on the school or cornering you on Halloween night. I was in agony over it all. When at last Spike was forced into a wheelchair, I had a bit of a chance. The weaker the demon was, the more I was able to insinuate myself into him. By the time Liam returned here, Spike was starting to be more open to my suggestions until finally, when Angelus attempted opening Acathla, I was able to convince him to go to you.”

“You’ve been having talks back and forth with Spike?” Buffy said in confusion. “He was, like, hearing voices or something?”

“No,” William answered patiently. “I started to become a part of him, in a way. It was like the smallest possible bit of his conscience was returning. But it became more pronounced as time went on.”

“So, if when Spike gets weaker, you get stronger, then the chip…” she began, starting to figure things out.

“Exactly. It began to muzzle the demon inside so effectively that more and more bits of me started to seep through. It took almost a full year for me to become deeply rooted enough in him to send him the dream that made him realize I was in love with you. Strangely enough, the demon had been having… feelings… for you as well, though they were of a, ehm, less than pure variety, shall we say? As soon as that happened, more bricks in the wall that kept me out of Spike started to crumble.”

“That night,” Buffy said slowly, “on the back porch, when my mom was so sick…”

William nodded. “Yes. I was really quite concerned that he was going to kill you that time. You see, it was only when I could convince him in his own mind of the love he felt for you that I was able to have some degree of control. The conversation from earlier in the evening had plugged into a lot of my worst memories and had begun convincing him that what he felt for you was worthless and foolish and bound to end in disaster. But when he saw you in distress… when I saw you…” His words drifted off painfully, and he looked away.

“You kept popping up from time to time from then on, didn’t you?” Buffy said wonderingly. “When Tara was crazy, when my mom died, when Glory was torturing Spike, that last night at the house.”

“’You make me feel like a man,’ I believe he said, and he had no idea how close he was to the truth. So, there it is, just as I promised you. The truth. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going,” he said, standing abruptly.

“Why?”

“I’m aware of the fact that I have made an utter fool of myself. Or rather, Darla did it for me, but the result is still the same,” he responded without turning.

A hand fell gently on his shoulder and gently urged him to face her. Buffy looked up at him with a bittersweet smile on her face.

“Whoever she was, she really messed you up bad, didn’t she? William, has it occurred to you that you might, just might, possibly have even the smallest of chances with me?” she asked with a little smirk.

“Ehm, no,” he said in surprise. “No, of course not.”

“And why not?”

“Well, there’s Angel for one thing,” he explained uncertainly.

“Yes, there’s Angel,” Buffy said in agreement. “But, as much as I love him, and as much as I always will, we both made the decision that things weren’t meant to be between us. Considering we’re no longer even on the same plain of existence, I’d say there were insurmountable odds, wouldn’t you?”

William’s jaw dropped in bewilderment. “Huh?”

Buffy’s eyes rolled as she let a smile break over her lips. “I’ve dated two other men since Angel, although, honestly, they were both mondo disasters. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I wasn’t going to spend eternity waiting for him, and I’m not going to do that now that eternity has literally turned into eternity.”

William looked at her as though she’d started spontaneously doing summersaults while reciting the collected works of Milton and juggling llamas.

“You’re just not getting this, are you? Look, when I was on earth and Spike would do those kind things for me, let his eyes tell me everything that was in his heart without saying a single word, I thought I was going crazy because I felt myself just barely starting to fall for someone who was a vicious killer. Now that I find out that the soul behind those eyes isn’t a homicidal maniac, well, you get the picture.”

“You’re saying I have a chance? You might possibly at some point in the far distant future perhaps…”

“Apparently you don’t get the picture, wordboy, so I’ll give you the remedial version,” she said with a mock-irritated pout as she put her arms around his neck and gave him a single, soft kiss on the lips. “We clear now?”

The smile that greeted her lit up the face of the soul so brilliantly that she was dazzled. In a heartbeat, everything around her changed. Lights blazed forth from the ceiling and walls, and the rich, warm colors of the Victorian home around her came to life. A string quartet began to play a merry waltz, and he grabbed her around the waist, his strong, gentle hands lifting her high into the air in a swift movement that made her laugh hysterically. He twirled her through the air madly before setting her delicately on her feet and beginning to lead her through the steps of a dance that was equal parts bliss and wonder.

At long last, their steps slowed and their arms held each other tightly. Buffy smiled up at William happily as she played with the hair at the base of his neck. In turn, he softly rubbed the length of her back, his eyes warm.

“I do love you, you know,” he whispered quietly in her ear. “Forever. I know you don’t feel quite the same way, not yet. But if you’ll give me time…”

She laughed once again, wrinkling her nose at him. “I like what I’ve seen so far. I like lots. And we have plenty of time,” she murmured as she began to pull his head downwards into another kiss.

“Oh, blast! Time! Of all the moronic idiots! Buffy, we need to discuss your situation, why you’re here, and all that. I’d almost completely forgotten,” he said angrily.

“Discuss later. Kiss now,” she insisted firmly as she put her lips against his.

He sighed contentedly into their second kiss, this one much longer but no less delicious than their first, a slow, perfect embrace that had them sipping each other’s lips like ambrosia and then deepening into something more, something that was beginning to speak of passion. At long last, even though breathing was not a problem, they parted, Buffy giving William’s shoulders a parting squeeze.

“We do need to talk about this, though, Buffy. Perhaps we should return to the others?” he suggested, although he was most reluctant to leave.

She wrinkled up her face in distaste. “Spoilsport,” she accused playfully as they turned to leave.

Silently, William hoped with all his might that the circumstances that had brought her here wouldn’t take her from him once again, but he didn’t want to be selfish. For now, he wanted nothing more than the feel of her hand in his as they walked out the front door of Cecily’s mansion, the past finally behind him, and went together through a springtime forest that they had just begun to create together as they made their way back to the others.

Seventeen

Buffy and William took their time returning, wandering together contentedly, laughing quietly over small things and generally enjoying each other’s company. By the time they reached the valley where Darla and Harmony still sat, Drusilla had awakened from her nap and rejoined them.

“Um, sorry,” Darla mumbled quietly as she saw the pair approaching. Then she noticed their linked hands. “Or maybe not.”

“Things seemed to have worked out for the best, Darla,” William said with a smile. “Don’t let’s mention it again, shall we?”

“Mention what?” Harmony asked as she looked up from what appeared to be the latest issue of Cosmo.

Drusilla rubbed a hand over her face, but Buffy was fairly certain she heard the faintest of giggles coming from behind the long fingers.

“Oh! Right! The thing about William being in love with Buffy. I remember now,” she cried with a smile. “Yeah, so, how’d that go?”

“We’re kind of taking it slow, Harm, just seeing where things go,” Buffy explained, making sure to use little words.

“In any case, I believe we should explain to Buffy why she’s here. Drusilla, you seem to have the clearest idea of what exactly happened. Highly irregular, really,” he added to Buffy. “I’m not entirely certain I understand it myself.”

“Sit down, my dear,” Drusilla suggested kindly as five large beanbag chairs appeared in a circle nearby. “This may be a little difficult to understand.

“Beanbag chairs?” Buffy asked in disbelief. Of all the furniture she’d expected Drusilla to bring about, the tie-dyed rainbow hippie puffs were about the last thing she’d expected.

Drusilla shrugged. “I liked the sixties. Flower children and all that. Anyway,” she said as they each settled into a seat, Harmony momentarily tumbling backwards and being yanked back into her beanbag by an incredulous Darla, “I’m sure that by now you’ve grown quite curious about why you’re here rather than heaven.”

Buffy considered for a moment. “It’s strange. I wondered that when I first got here, but it hasn’t been on my mind all that much for a while. Too many other things going on, I guess.”

Drusilla nodded understandingly, “Of course. Well, as William explained, Limbo is inhabited by souls who aren’t entirely complete. A bit of them is still on earth. There are more of us here than you’ve met. A great many people who become vampires stay here until their entire soul is returned to them, allowing them to move on to the next level up.”

“But I’m not a vampire,” Buffy said in confusion, “so what am I doing here?”

“There’s a part of you missing,” Drusilla explained. “A very small part, to be sure, but it isn’t here.”

Buffy blinked in shock. “I’m not all of me?”

Darla shook her head. “Nope. Like Dru said, though, it’s sort of like us and our souls. We aren’t complete, either, but we’re still us. There’s just a little piece of us missing, not enough to change who we are on this level, but still enough to keep us from being able to move on.”

“Wait a minute. If I’m not a vampire, and part of me isn’t here, then you’re saying some of my soul is still stuck in my body?” Buffy asked in alarm. “Part of me is still in that casket I saw buried?”

“No, no,” Drusilla reassured her quickly. “No, you haven’t been buried alive or anything of that sort. The bit of you isn’t in your own body.”

“Then where?” she asked.

“It’s in Dawn,” Drusilla answered her. “When the monks made her, they wanted her to be completely human, not merely an animated doll, and she is an entirely human, mortal girl. You were quite right when you said that the monks made her out of you, but it was more than that. One of their emissaries was sent to obtain a sample of your cells so that they could magically replicate them and build a complete human body out of them.”

“Dare I ask?” Buffy questioned nervously.

“It was a bandage,” William said. “You’d scraped a knee on one of your patrols about two years ago. Their agent simply went through your trash that one night, took the discarded bandage, and sent it to the monks. The few traces of blood on it were enough.”

Huh, Buffy thought silently. So, technically, Dawn’s mother was a Band-Aid.

“Okay, so I take it they kind of cloned me or something?” she said aloud.

“Pretty much,” Darla agreed. “I’m not big on the science thing, but that’s not what this is about anyway. They didn’t create Dawn in a lab. They used magic.”

“I’m with you so far, but what’s with the soul thing?”

“Remember how I said that the soul wants to stay near its body, and that’s why vampires wind up with taffy left in the wrapper?” William asked.

“Yeah,” Buffy said slowly.

“The monks cast a spell once they’d created the body for Dawn,” Drusilla said. “Since they wanted her to be truly human, they knew they’d need a soul for her, but you can’t just create a soul out of nothing or even from cells. So, they tricked a very small part of your soul into believing Dawn was you, which wasn’t hard to do since the two of you, though the monks made sure you don’t look alike, have identical cell structures. Once they had a bit of your soul, they were able to make it increase, just like the cells from the bandage, until they had an entire, separate human soul for her. Even so, though, that small spark of yours clung to the body that it still thinks is you. It’s like Dawn has one, tiny, extra bit of soul.”

“And that bit just happens to be yours,” Darla added.

Buffy’s mind was whirling. This was starting to be deep into Giles-territory, but she thought she understood most of it.

“Okay, so, if I’ve got this right, Dawn has part of my soul, but she’s not really using it? It’s just sort of stuck there?”

“Pretty much,” Drusilla said with a nod.

“And I’m here because I can’t go on to heaven unless all of me is in one piece, right?”

“Yup,” Darla confirmed.

“That means I’m going to be here until,” Buffy frowned, “until Dawn dies, doesn’t it?”

Drusilla shook her head slightly. “Not quite. It could mean that, but it doesn’t have to.”

“You see, Buffy, you have a choice,” William said softly. “There are three things you can do, if I understand correctly.”

Drusilla took Buffy’s hand and patted it gently, “You can be correct. You can stay here until the time of natural Dawn’s death. When her soul goes to her final home, yours will come along for the ride, so to speak, and you can leave.”

“Just like when a vampire is staked,” Darla said.

“But you have two other options,” Drusilla continued. “Now that you know what the situation is, if you choose to, you can go to Dawn and call that part of yourself back to you. If you consciously call that piece of your soul to return, it will come. Dawn will experience no side effects because she has her own soul now, but you will be complete and can move on from here.

“Okay,” she said, not sure how to respond to this yet. “What’s the third option?”

“You can choose to return to earth as a human, as well,” Drusilla said slowly. “Because your spirit hasn’t crossed over completely, you have the chance to go back and return to them. It’s an extremely rare case. I’ve never seen anything like it, but it is possible.”

“But, my body is dead,” Buffy reasoned. “I don’t get it.”

“Your body is only dead because there is no soul in it,” Drusilla explained. “You didn’t die from a normal situation. There was no illness or physical injury. When you jumped into the portal, it killed you simply by removing your soul from your body, nothing more. That’s part of why this is so unique. Even the damage from the fall, which would have killed any normal mortal, wasn’t severe enough to end a Slayer’s life. If you want to return to human existence, all you would need to do is allow your soul to reinhabit your body. Since the soul is drawn to the body anway, that wouldn’t be too difficult. You’d just have to will it to happen.”

“And, I’d wake up,” Buffy finished for her.

“In a coffin, yes, but the physical effects of your death would reverse. Since you died through soul-removal, the return of your soul would heal anything that caused,” Drusilla said.

“There’s a catch, though, and it’s one we only know about because of Liam,” William added. “You won’t remember this place.”

Buffy’s head shot towards him quickly. “What?”

“For some reason, the memory of this place stays here,” Darla said. “When you sent Angel to hell? You didn’t. He was here.”

“But… when Angel came back, he remembered hell perfectly,” Buffy insisted. “He was completely traumatised.”

“I assure you, Buffy, he was here with us during that time. The man you loved was not sent to hell. The demon was, though. You see, you didn’t kill either Angelus or Angel. A sword through the heart wouldn’t do that, only wood, which is why the Powers were able to bring him back. Angelus, the demon, along with Angel’s body, did go to hell. Liam, Angel’s soul, after a few moments back in your reality, was returned here. Neither time with the gypsy curse was Angel able to remember this place, and when his body was sent to hell, his soul, which of course had done nothing to warrant that horrible place, came here. It isn’t the way of the universe to send an innocent soul to hell. It just doesn’t happen that way,” Drusilla soothed her. “You need never have blamed yourself for that.”

“But, the memories?” Buffy asked, her mind reeling.

“Take a wild, guess, sweetie,” Darla said with a smile. “Go ahead. I think you’ll get it.”

Buffy thought hard for a moment, and then it finally occurred to her. “When Angel’s soul went back into his body the first time, he didn’t remember this place, but he did remember everything Angelus had done. So, when he was returned again, his soul forgot this place, but it still had all the demon’s memories?” she ventured.

“Exactly. But since Angel had no memories to replace them with, he assumed that was where he had been,” Drusilla told her. “When those memories hit him, it was as though he’d actually lived them.”

“So, if I return, I won’t remember this place,” she said to half to herself.

“You may remember a vague feeling of being safe and happy, not unlike the people who come here very briefly when they have near-death experiences, but that will be all,” William explained.

“Those are your options, Buff. Stay here until Dawn dies, move on now, or go back to Sunnyhell,” Darla summed up. “You don’t have to decide right away, though. Eventually, in a few months, it’ll be too late to go to earth again. Upset the natural order too much. But you have some time.”

Buffy nodded numbly. This was a whole lot to take in, she thought. Just as she was about to open her mouth to ask another question, a loud snore interrupted her.

Four sets of eyes turned to the soul of Harmony Kendall, sprawled across her beanbag, sound asleep.

“Ahem, yes, well, that’s one opinion on the matter,” William said as his mouth fought hard against letting out the huge laugh that was on the tip of his tongue.

The tension slightly lessened, Buffy smiled at the others.

“Thanks. I’ve got a lot to think about, but I’m going to make a decision sooner rather than later. Is a month okay?” she asked Dru.

“That should be more than fine, Buffy. Until then, sift things over in your mind until you’re completely comfortable with your choice. Once you’ve left here, there’s no coming back, so be certain,” Drusilla cautioned her.

Buffy nodded slowly, the enormity of the situation a bit overwhelming. Thankfully, Harmony took that moment to fall off her beanbag, landing with a loud thud and coming completely awake, her face a mask of guilty.

“I was awake! Really! Dru liked the sixties because of the flower children!” she said quickly.

That was it. In spite of themselves, the four other souls began to laugh, and the one who was currently lying on the grass joined in as well.

Eighteen

The days passed by slowly in Limbo, but they were far from boring. Buffy was slowly introduced to the other inhabitants of the plain, most of whom seemed to already know Drusilla and the others quite well. The Slayer quickly became adept at helping those souls whose other selves were feeding, her patience with their problem surprising even herself. A few times, on days when several newly-sired souls arrived at once, Drusilla even asked Buffy’s help in aquainting them with their new home.

Harmony continued to flutter in and out of their existences, but Darla, Drusilla, and William had become Buffy’s almost constant companions. Drusilla was extremely easy to like, Buffy found. Inside of a week, she felt as though they had known each other for years. Darla, while certainly more prickles and thorns than the sweet Cockney girl, had become a surprisingly good friend, as well. They fought quite loudly sometimes, but it was fun. Buffy became aware very soon that the other woman was quite a bit like her in many ways that extended far beyond hair color.

It was William, though, who she most often spent time with. When she chose to visit earth again and keep an eye on her friends and sister, which she did on a daily basis, he would usually accompany her. When the mourning of those she loved became too much for her, it was his shoulder she would bury her head in and his arms that held her close in comfort.

One warm California morning, Buffy decided to look in on Dawn by herself. In a moment, she had sent herself to the Summers’ living room, and there sat Dawn on the couch, a large pillow drawn up to her chest, crying softly. This was one of the things that Buffy found hardest to deal with. With tears in her own eyes, she joined her sister on the couch, unseen, and sent her as much mental comfort as she could. No sooner had she settled herself than Willow and Tara came down the staircase behind her, ready to begin the day.

“Dawny?” Tara asked in concern. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Dawn answered bluntly. “No, I’m not”

Willow and Tara exchanged concerned looks as the redhead quickly moved to sit next to Dawn, wrapping an arm around her, while the blonde perched on the coffee table in front of her and took one of the hands clutching the pillow in her own.

“This has been hard for you, I know,” Willow said sadly. “Your mom, Buffy, everything, but you need to know you’re okay. You’re safe. No will hurt you, and Tara and I will always take care of you.”

“And Mr. Giles and Xander and Spike, they’re all looking out for you, too,” Tara assured her before adding, “and, well, Anya, she tries, and she likes you a lot.”

Dawn nodded her head, but a tear still escaped from the corner of her eye. Willow’s face crinkled in sympathy. In truth, she missed her best friend almost as badly. Buffy, invisible to all three of them, felt her heart breaking all over again. It was Tara who broke the silence, and the usually silent girl spoke with a kindness that reminded Buffy poignantly of Drusilla’s soul.

“Dawn, you’ve been really, really brave through all of this, a lot braver than anyone could ever have expected you to be,” she said simply. “I’m not going to tell you that the pain is going to just go away in a few days or week or months, because it’s not, but I can tell you’re growing stronger again. I can feel it humming around you in your aura, and I can see it when there are moments your eyes don’t look so haunted. And Dawn, whether you know it or not, those moments are starting to happen more often.”

“It still hurts, though,” she answered as her face melted into a new set of tears. “Tara, it just hurts so much!”

Buffy wrapped an arm around her sister’s neck protectively, caressing the girl’s soul, as Willow did the same on the opposite side of her body. She realized that all four of them were crying now.

“I know, Dawn,” Willow said. “It’s not fair, and it’s not natural.”

Tara shook her head and the others looked at her in surprise. “No, Willow. It is natural, and it is fair. Dawn, Buffy loved you so much that she was willing to give her life for yours, and that gift was truly beautiful. All her life she’s given to others in one way or another: her time, her innocence, her spirit, she gave them to whoever needed them. In just a few years on this earth, she did more for others than most people do in a whole lifetime. And now, after all of that, she finally gets to rest. She’s earned that right.”

Dawn looked up at Tara with an uncertain expression on her face as she asked, “Are you sure? You’re sure she’s happy? How can you know?”

Tara sighed softly and touched Dawn’s cheek, “Some things you don’t know, Dawn. Some things you just have to believe, and I really believe that wherever Buffy is, she’s fine, just like I really believe that we’re going to be fine, too. It’s okay to mourn, Dawn. It’s okay to feel that. But eventually, when the time is right, you’ll know that part of your life you had with her, as wonderful as it is and as much as you’ll always love her, has come to a close, and now it’s time for you to find out what life holds for you next.”

Buffy stared at Tara in shock. Only moments ago, she had been nearly certain that the only way to deal with things was to resume her life on earth in spite of the fact that in her heart she felt that wasn’t the best choice for her. But she felt as though Tara’s words had lifted a tremendous weight from her back. She was where she needed to be, and her friends were where they needed to be. She could look in on them, guide them, protect them as best she could from her new vantage point, but it didn’t feel right to return to them in human form, not anymore. Her home was somewhere else now.

Dawn looked up at Tara and smiled at her as Willow drew her into a hug. Her sister’s face held a look of resolve, a certainty that things, no matter how difficult they might still be, were going to be okay. Buffy brushed her hand over her sister’s cheek as though to wipe away the tears, and then, giving her a kiss on the forehead and a smile to the two witches she knew would protect Dawn to their last breath, Buffy returned to Limbo with a much lighter heart. Her decision was made.

She never saw the determined, almost cruel look that crossed Willow’s face.

Buffy didn’t need to ask Drusilla where to find William now. Instinctively, she brought herself to his study, and sure enough, there was the soul with his nose buried deeply in a book, his glasses so far down his nose they were in danger of sliding off completely.

“A Tale of Two Cities again?” she asked conversationally as she sat beside him on the leather-upholstered sofa.

He grinned at her sheepishly as he closed the book. “Yes. How were things down there?”

She stood and reached out a hand towards him, drawing him to his feet, and he had the strangest feeling when he saw her expression.

“I want you to take a walk with me,” she said softly as she laced his fingers through her own.

William nodded and became absolutely certain in that moment that she had made her decision, but what it was he didn’t know. She took control of the atmosphere around them and slowly brought into being a beautiful, long, gravel pathway lined with stately plum trees in full bloom. The sunlight dappled the ground they walked on, and white petals drifted gracefully about them like enormous snowflakes. She took his arm and they walked together for a long time, the sweet smell of the blossoms filling their noses, until at last William felt he couldn’t bare it another moment.

“I’ve decided,” she said suddenly, her voice almost loud in the perfect stillness.

“Buffy,” he asked quietly, “is this to be my last walk with you?”

She stopped walking and brought her hands to his face, tenderly caressing his cheek. “I choose you.”

“But,” he said, “but Buffy, you can have heaven! Absolute bliss! All you need to do is will it, and it’s yours.”

“I know, and someday, we’ll both have that. If Spike dies before Dawn, I’ll call my soul to me and join you there. If Dawn is first, then I’ll wait for you on the other side, just like you waited for me here. For however long we have together, William, I want to be with you,” she confessed almost shyly.

William’s eyes pricked with tears at her words, and he drew even closer to her. “You’re sure? You’re completely sure this is what you want?”

She smiled up at him warmly, her eyes full of emotion as she finally said the words he’d never dared to hope he’d hear, “I love you.”

“And I love you,” he said as he moved his mouth over hers, their lips meeting and opening and accepting and touching and tasting in ways neither of them had ever dreamed were possible.

When at last the kiss ended, as all kisses must, Buffy and William looked into one another’s eyes once more. She took his hand in hers again, leading him off the path and into a small, closely planted grove of trees. There, spread beneath the flowering boughs, was a massive, petal-strewn canopy bed covered in golden linens. William’s eyes widened for a moment as the obvious occurred to him, and he barely believed what he was seeing.

“Buffy,” he whispered softly, “this isn’t some sweet dream? I’m not going to wake and find I’m alone again and you don’t even know I exist?”

“When you wake up,” she promised as she sank with him into the softness of the satin pillows, her fingers slowly opening the buttons of his shirt, “I’m going to be beside you. Forever.”

Though they weren’t in heaven, neither could imagine an ecstacy greater than they felt with one another at that moment. It was perfection.

But it was fated to last far less than forever.

Nineteen

A few months later, Darla, Drusilla, and Harmony were spending a fairly relaxed evening in a small, white gazebo with vines of trailing violet clematis growing up the sides. All three of their other selves had already fed, so the prospect of a night free of pain was pleasantly possible. Still, as had happened from time to time lately, there were two figures missing from their group.

“Dru? You seen Buffy or William around today?” Harmony asked off-handedly as she made her shoes turn various shades of blue until she found exactly the right hue to match her dress.

“No, Harmony, dear,” Drusilla answered with a smile. “I heard Buffy was down to check on Sunnydale earlier and William was getting Matthew and Cynthia adjusted to Limbo, but they haven’t been around for the last few hours. I’m absolutely certain they’re just fine.”

“Huh. If you say so,” she said with good nature as she experimented with different heights for her heels. “Wonder what they’ve been up to by themselves so much lately.”

Darla gripped the sides of her lounge chair very hard to avoid asking the pretty girl precisely how dumb she was. She finally managed to grind out, “They’ve taken up table tennis, Harm. World championship level table tennis.”

“Really? Weird, but whatever makes them happy,” she said, smiling down at her baby blue stilettos.

Darla mouthed something to Dru over Harmony’s head that looked suspiciously like “are you sure we can’t kill her?” Drusilla bit her lip to hide a giggle but eventually took pity on the girl.

“Darla is only joking with you. William and Buffy want to spend some time together now that they’ve found one another,” Drusilla explained in as a vague a way as she could.

Even so, the light bulb went off over Harmony’s head, and she nodded conspiratorially at the others, whispering, “Oh, I got ya.”

It happened that William and Buffy chose that particular moment to wander up to the gazebo together, and Darla couldn’t help but admire their timing.

“Hello, Buffy, William. How was Sunnydale today?” asked Dru quickly, and Darla caught the smallest note of strain in her friend’s voice.

“Pretty much okay, but I still can’t seem to find Willow. Wonder where she keeps going,” Buffy replied with a slight frown as she and William joined the others.

Though Drusilla said nothing more, her face darkened for a moment. Something about Sunnydale had been bothering her, and while there was surely no cause for alarm, the fact remained that Buffy had been having difficulty locating Willow on her frequent visits. She’d even asked Drusilla with her a few times, hoping that the soul’s psychic abilities might be able to locate the redhead, but instead, all she had been able to sense was absence. She didn’t want to risk causing the former Slayer any distress over nothing, but she had kept a close eye out for the Wiccan and finally had come to a conclusion.

It wasn’t that Willow was lost. Willow was hiding. The girl had cast some sort of blocking spell around herself that was keeping her movements from being known by anyone. Normally, this would have only affected the living, but the mere fact that the glamour was so strong that it was able to completely cover Willow from Drusilla’s considerable Sight was a bit worrying. The girl was becoming entirely too powerful.

William, the gentleman as ever, noticed her distress and cast a concerned look at his old friend. “Drusilla, is something troubling you? Has your other self been causing you problems?”

“No more than usual,” she said with a shudder. “But, Buffy, I’m afraid I must broach a rather disturbing topic. It’s about Willow. I think that…”

Drusilla abruptly stopped speaking, her mouth slightly slack, her eyes unfocused. For a moment, she was perfectly still. And then, without warning, her eyes rolled back in their sockets as an ear-splitting shriek tore from her throat. The sound seemed to rend the air itself, filling their ears like fiery arrows. Her skin was instantly covered with a sheen of cold sweat.

“This is no feed,” Darla said in a voice full of horror.

Falling from her chair, Drusilla’s slight body shook uncontrollably, and her mouth began to froth, spilling ugly white foam down her chin in a torrent. William was on her in a moment, desperately trying to still her flailing arms so she wouldn’t harm herself. Harmony, Buffy, and Darla stared in shock at the scene before them. The delicate form of their friend was contorted into an agony that made her usual tremors seem like child’s play. William was flung from her suddenly, his body smashing through the thin wooden slats of the gazebo and reducing them to matchwood.

As quickly as they had begun, the spasms running through Drusilla stopped, but the stillness was somehow worse. Her form was sprawled across the ground, her chest heaved as though she had just run a marathon, and Buffy cautiously approached her head, reaching out a hand to touch her clammy face.

“Dru? Hon, you okay?” Darla asked in concern.

Drusilla opened her eyes and looked at Buffy with absolute knowledge, and when she spoke, her tone chilled them.

“Something evil is coming, and it’s coming for you,” she said in a voice tinged with both fear and anger.

A sound began to become fill the air. The rumbling was slight, at first, but it rapidly grew in intensity until the roar was almost deafening. It was like one of the earthquakes Buffy remembered from her life, but that shouldn’t be able to happen here. Whatever was going on was utterly against the natural order. The entire dimension seemed to be coming apart at the seams.

Without warning, erupting from below them like a spume of lava, a tower of red and black flame burst through the ground before them, spraying them all with bits of debris and soil. The peaceful garden disappeared in a heartbeat, replaced instantly by a landscape of unyielding rock and skies in angry shades of rust and orange. Other denizens of Limbo turned towards the pillar of swirling ebony and scarlet and fled from it in panic.

“Run!” Drusilla called to her friends over the maelstrom of chaos and the sound of an evil tempest of wind. “Get away from it! I’ll do what I can!”

They did not need to be told twice. Swifter than thought, the four of them took off at a run, each one trying desperately to bring another reality into being, and each time finding that reality broken into pieces by the storm that raged around them. In quick succession, Buffy saw the walls of William’s study collapsing around them as though they had been hit with a wrecking ball, the beach’s water parching before her eyes and the sand blowing away in the wind, a cloudy sky of pink and peach clouds that must have been a creation of Harmony’s dissolved as soon as it formed, and the living room of Revello Drive fell apart like a house of cards as she herself tried to intervene. Everything led back to the barren wasteland of gray rock, the tower of black and red flames pursuing them at a mind numbing speed no matter where they tried to hide.

As all this went on, Drusilla was far from idle. With a tremendous show of will, in spite of the echoes of pain that wound through her, she trained all of her gift on finding the origin of the invasion. It wasn’t from this plain. Of that she was completely certain. She followed the path of the power that was ripping apart the fabric of universes and came to the place she had most hoped to avoid but had more than half expected to see.

There, standing beside Buffy’s grave, were Anya, Xander, and Tara, but Drusilla barely noticed them. Kneeling at the foot of the plot was Willow, and Drusilla gasped at what she saw.

“Willow,” she whispered to herself in disbelief, “what have you done?”

To the mortals present, Willow’s tortured form was bathed in a faint red glow, and judging by their expressions the scene was horribly eerie and obviously frightening. But to Drusilla, who looked at it from the next level, it was far worse, for she saw what was really happening. The column of red and black fire was passing through Willow, engulfing her in waves of agony, but she was merely focusing it and controlling it. She was not the source of it. Had she known where it was coming from, Drusilla hoped that the witch would never have considered the spell at all.

The redhead’s soul was very, very dim, nearly as shadowy as the form of a vampire, as it was being drained from the spell. Her eyes had gone completely black. A myriad of demons, invisible to the others, swarmed around her, feasting on the flickering light of her soul, threatening to extinguish it completely. It was only the relative purity of her previous state, the goodness that she had harbored throughout her life, that was preventing them from killing her instantly. But as nightmarish as the cloud of demons with razor teeth and cruel claws was, it was nothing compared to what lay at the witch’s feet.

The fire was not splitting through only two plains. It was piercing three, for there, at the base of the column, open to the eyes of Drusilla, were the horrors of Hell itself. No words of any language could describe the place, and she reeled from the sight.

If things continued, not only would Buffy’s soul be dragged back into her body, but also Willow’s would be stripped away in payment. For both their sakes, something had to be done.

In a flash, Drusilla was once more in Limbo, standing on the cold, vacant, crumbling rock as the tower of flame pursued the others in the distance. It was after Buffy and paid no attention to anything else. That meant the brunette was unnoticed.

Every fiber of her being concentrated with complete attention, and she shut her eyes to block out the distractions around her. When she lifted her eyelids once more, a startling change had come over her. Drusilla’s eyes burned pure white, and her voice rang forth in tones of power towards the beleaguered sky above.

“I call! By the gift that was given me, by all that is good and clean and pure, I call upon the Powers That Be! Intercede! By those the Slayer has saved and those who have loved her, I beg intercession! Send us help!”

The words sounded through all the corners of Limbo, and then there was silence.

Meanwhile, Harmony, Darla, and William, each bolstering Buffy’s spirit, combining their strengths with hers in order to help her flee the thing pursuing her, continued in their frantic journey.

“Whatever that thing is,” Darla complained bitterly, “you’ve really ticked it off, kid.”

Harmony glanced over her shoulder for the thousandth time to see that the pillar was gaining on them and was now only a stone’s throw away. “Oh man, oh man, oh man, we are so cooked!”

William’s grip around Buffy’s waist tightened even more in response, and their eyes met. “We’re together, my love. No matter what happens, we’ll face it as one.”

“No! We don’t know what that thing’s capable of. Dru said it was after me. The three of you should leave. I don’t want you to risk…”

“Shut up, Buff. We’re in this for the long haul,” Darla said gruffly but not unkindly.

“Um, yeah, right,” Harmony said with a great deal less certainty as she looked behind them and saw that the flames had closed in on them. There was no possible escape.

With a burst of unexpected speed, the fire was suddenly surrounding them. They had been caught. What went on within the column of power was beyond anything they could have imagined. The swirling inferno was like a giant whirlpool, desperately trying to rip Buffy from them and draw her down. With a mighty heave, all four souls held fast to her, but each one felt as though he or she was being pulled into a thousand directions at once, torn to pieces by ravaging teeth. Harmony and Darla were thrown from her as the raging winds increased, their futile cries echoing as they were plunged into the darkness alone. William still clung tightly to Buffy, his face a picture of strain as he battled to remain connected. They were going to lose, and they both knew it.

Then, it happened.

A light of cool, blue radiance pierced the flames like a welcome jet of water, and other forms appeared, forms who had come in answer to Drusilla’s call. A hand gripped Buffy’s ankle firmly, and she was stunned to see that the fingers belonged to Jenny Calendar. A firm hold was around the Slayer’s knees, and she looked down to see Kendra’s long black hair being whipped about in the wind. Grabbing her from behind was Joyce, pulling with a strength that was more than Buffy herself had possessed in life. Her arms were held fast by the tiny yet powerful spirit of her cousin Celia. And, unbelievably, Buffy’s hands had been taken by Dr. Gregory, her sophomore year biology teacher.

“Hang on, honey!” Joyce called through the gale.

From outside the whirlwind, Drusilla bent all of her concentration on keeping the bridge between Heaven and Limbo open. Those who had answered her summons were unused to this sort of combat, but they were holding their own. Harmony and Darla, cast from the battle and unable to enter it again, huddled next to her and looked on with awe at the spectacle before them. There was a chance.

And then, things began to go horribly wrong. Willow had sensed the change in the outcome, and she thrust forth a torrent of power so extreme, so total, that her soul all but disappeared. The flames turned entirely black, and it was as though a starless night had descended upon Limbo.

“It won’t take you,” William said in her ear. “We won’t let them.”

She turned towards the face of her lover, felt the tendrils of his hair brush her cheek softly, and their lips met.

“Whatever happens, William, it’s you I choose,” she vowed against his throat. “I love you.”

The wind gave one, last, mighty pull, and there was the sound of a scream, loud and terrified. The tower of flames receded into nothing, and the world of Limbo reformed. The spirits of the next realm grouped around the still forms of Buffy and William, but the look on their faces was not one of triumph. Something was wrong. They had neither won nor lost.

Drusilla’s eyes filled with tears as she realized what had happened, and she felt the arms of Joyce slip around her in comfort.

“You did the best you could, Drusilla. We all did. There’s a reason for this, but we don’t know what it is yet,” she soothed her gently. “Things aren’t as black as they seem. And Willow has been spared… well, mostly.”

By now, William was stirring, and the exhausted soul immediately tried to grip the hand of his beloved, but the chill of her flesh was like the grave.

“What’s going on here?” Darla demanded angrily. “Is she here or there?”

Drusilla began to cry weakly, spent. “Don’t you see? She’s both. She’s been ripped in two.”

William’s horrified gaze stared at the figure of the unconscious girl lying beside him. “What does that mean?”

“Buffy will wake, in her coffin, but she won’t be entirely her. Enough of her will be there that she’ll be able to function, but it will be like she’s half dead. And the Buffy here,” Drusilla touched William’s shoulder softly, “you know there shouldn’t be any such thing as pain in Limbo. Because of that, this part of her will remain in a deep sleep. Otherwise, she’d be like her other self is going to be: confused and hopeless. William, I’m so sorry.”

“For how long?” he asked almost violently. “How long will she be split?”

Drusilla knelt next to him and held his hand, “Until the other Buffy dies. Until that time, because she bound herself to you, this part of her will remain with you, but when her human life ends, all of her will be called to the next level.”

“She’ll never see me again,” he realized. “She won’t remember this place and what we’ve shared. All she’ll have is the memory of being buried alive. Oh, God, I’ve lost her.”

William’s eyes brimmed over with tears as he dragged the motionless form of his love into his arms, cradling her head to his heart. He ran a reverent hand over her pale cheek and placed a single gentle kiss against her still lips before he threw back his head and keened his grief to the vault of the sky.

Twenty

Darla looked at the world around her and saw that it had begun to heal. The sky had turned from a livid orange back to blue, and she experimentally drew them once more to the beach. No sooner had she thought it than it came into being. Limbo was whole again, but its inhabitants were far from well.

The spirits who had been summoned to help had vanished only moments after William had regained consciousness, and it was perfectly obviously why. They were residents of a realm of pure bliss, and it was impossible for them to stay somewhere so filled with sadness for very long. The waves lapped sadly against the crystal sand, and the melancholy calls of seagulls echoed above them. Drusilla had wrapped her arms around the nearly unconscious William, but he seemed not to notice. For almost two hours, his eyes had never left the unmoving features of Buffy. The stillness was complete.

“I think Willow’s a big meanie,” Harmony suddenly blurted out.

For once, Darla was grateful for the girl. The quiet had been getting to her.

Drusilla stood up and went to her. “She didn’t understand, dearie. I don’t think she would ever have done what she did if she knew what the consequences would be.”

Darla snorted in a completely unhumorous laugh. “If she didn’t understand it, she shouldn’t have done it.”

The seer looked at her wearily and tipped her head in recognition that the girl so known for research should have known enough to study the spell more throughly. She sincerely hoped Willow wouldn’t slip any further, but her Sight told her there was more darkness ahead.

Through all of this, William remained crouched on the sand beside Buffy, appearing to not even hear what they were saying. His mind was a thousand miles away, remembering the soft scent of plum blossoms and the gentle touch of her hand in his. Tears flowed down his cheeks unheeded, one landing softly on Buffy’s face and shimmering like a diamond in the sunlight.

It was then that the world went sideways. Darla had completely lost it after she’d called his name no less than ten times without a response and had given him a good sock to the jaw in an effort to get him to pay attention.

“Are you in there?” she yelled as she pulled him to his feet. “I can’t believe we’re such idiots!”

Drusilla frowned at her severely. “Do not deal with him in such a way again, Darla, or I will be extremely cross,” she warned.

“Oh, for crying out loud, think about it! We know the other half of her is waking up, actually, probably has woken up by now. We know she’s going to be completely out of it, and we’re all standing her like a pack of ninnies! William, get down there and do something with Spike to help her!” she half-screamed in frustration.

His eyes blinked in shock. She was absolutely right. He’d been sitting up here wallowing in sorrow when there was a possiblity the bond he shared with Spike was strong enough to let him effect her first few hours in what must seem like hell to her.

“Dru, look after her for me, will you?” he asked quickly as he bent his thoughts on finding his other self.

“Of course,” was the immediate reply, and the words were no sooner said than he was gone.

It took a moment for William to find Spike, and the reason was perfectly understandable: the vampire was ripping through the streets of Sunnydale, going over ninety miles per hour on a motorcycle. Fortunately, the emotions Spike was experiencing made it fairly easy for William to tentatively begin to re-establish a connection. The demon was in there too, very strong, no doubt of that, and it was enraged over the loss of something. It took William a few moments to figure out that the grisly images in Spike’s head of Buffy being torn into pieces were actually centered around the Buffybot, not the human, and he sighed in relief that he wasn’t too late. But the other part of Spike, that part of William’s soul that had begun to steadily grow stronger on a diet of positive actions and feelings, was very much at the forefront. Dawn was missing, and Spike was half wild with worry that the oath he’d made to the Slayer on the day she died might have been broken.

Together, whether the vampire knew it or not, they tore into the Summers home and called the girl’s name.

“Dawn! You in here!”

There was a pause before she answered, “I’m here.”

William felt the wave of genuine relief spread over Spike. His concern for her was very real, which meant William had a much better chance of influencing him.

He barely heard Dawn as she descended the stairs, but he felt Buffy’s presense before Spike saw her. But what he perceived chilled him.

She looked exactly the same to the others in the room, but to him, she was so frail. It was as though the bright light that had always poured forth from her was shining underneath many, many layers of smoked glass. But she was there, moving, unlike her other half in Limbo.

The surge of tenderness and wonder that shot through Spike was so strong that William was able to enter him almost completely, and when her bleeding hands were held, it was by both of them. The love that shone through the blue eyes she saw was almost overwhelming as both demon and soul relished being in her presense again. By the time the other Scoobies arrived, William began to have hopes that the chip had weakened the demon enough and the vampire’s increasing ability to love and feel guilt had strengthened his remnants of a soul enough that William might not be completely separated from Buffy forever.

As the two of them wept in unison by the tree outside her house, both of them knowing that something was wrong, Xander Harris approached, and William experienced a very strong feeling.

Rage. And it wasn’t just the demon’s. This boy had been there and allowed his beloved to be taken from him. This ignorant pup had played with far more than fire, and now whole worlds were out of alignment for it.

“Look me in the eyes, and tell me when you saw Buffy alive, that wasn't the happiest moment of your entire existence.”

William nearly screamed at the stupidity of the statement from his point of view, but he knew Spike was dangerously close to snapping. With a tremendous urge, he suggested that leaving would be a good idea.

“That’s the thing about magic. There’s always consequences. Always,” they both called over the leather-clad shoulder.

As Spike’s motorcycle rocketed back through the night, trying vainly to escape the confusion of emotions in a cloud of dust, William retreated. Just before he left, he took another long look at Spike. There was no question about it. The soul within him was growing larger. He had a chance.

William arrived back in Limbo to see Drusilla still standing over Buffy’s body protectively, a sad smile on her face.

“Looks as though she’s sleeping, doesn’t she?” she said softly. “This part of her, in spite of everything, is still untouched.”

“How’d it go?” Harmony asked in an uncharacteristically serious tone. “Is she okay?”

William sighed. “She’s physically well, that much I can say. Her spirit is badly damaged, though. Very badly.”

“And you? You okay?” she asked with a sympathetic smile.

He sat beside her on the sand and gave her hand a squeeze. “I have to be, for her. Spike’s letting me in a bit more than usual. As long as he still has hope, I think I’m going to be able to make some sort of difference.”

“Would you like an ice cream bar or something?” Harmony suggested in a squeaky voice. “They usually make me feel better.”

William smiled in spite of himself. “Not right now, Harmony, dear. Perhaps later.”

“’Kay. I think I’m gonna grab one, though, if you don’t mind. I’ll see you guys later.” Harmony vanished without a trace, the lack of happy green and pink bubbles testifying to her sadness.

Through all of this, Darla had been pitching stones into the ocean, hovering on the outside of the group. At this point, she took a deep breath and rejoined them, uncomfortably kicking the sand up in little puffs as she stood there.

“Um, William,” she began, “about that right cross I decked you with…”

“Thank you,” he interupted. “You were quite right. Perhaps the method was a little questionable, but your heart was, as it usually is, in the right place.”

She gave him a small smile of thanks, and then her gaze fell on Buffy again. “What should we do about her?”

“You know,” Drusilla said softly, “she’s quite safe here. You really don’t need to worry about her.”

“I just don’t like the idea of leaving her alone if I can help it,” he explained. “It doesn’t really make sense; you’re perfectly right, Dru. Nothing will harm her. But still, I don’t want her to be abandoned.”

Drusilla smiled in understanding.

William had a sudden thought and knealt beside Buffy, carefully sweeping her into his arms as he did so. Such a small thing to have so much importance to so many people, he thought. Instantly, he was alone with Buffy in the plum orchard where she had told him that she wanted to remain with him. He walked along the pathway under the shade of the trees, holding her lax form tenderly and letting the memories wash over him. At last he turned from the path and entered the grove where their bed lay. He held her for one more moment, then gently rested her on the coverlet, her golden hair carefully arranged on the pillow. She looked for all the world like Sleeping Beauty.

“If only a kiss would wake you up,” he whispered sadly as he ran a finger softly across her cheek. He placed his lips to her forehead, then left, intent on helping the half of her he could, but knowing that there would be many, many hours he would spend in this bower, silently watching over her.

Time passed, and there were moments when Spike and William were so closely bonded that they were nearly one entity. Buffy began to go to Spike more and more often to find solace for the sadness that was engulfing her, never realizing why she was so drawn to him, never knowing that her soul was naturally seeking out William and the bond they shared, never realizing he was there. The soul knew she had no choice in the matter of forgetting him, but it didn’t stop him from being reminded of how alone he was, how deeply he missed her. To her, he simply didn’t exist, but when Spike’s mouth formed the words of how much he wished he could have saved her, how he replayed that horrible scene a thousand times, though the scenes themselves were different, William expressed his own sadness and grief at his inability to save her.

Darla, on the other hand, had more than a few problems of her own to deal with. She hadn’t been back to check in with her vampire self in a while, the whole experience sometimes becoming too difficult for her since she so rarely had any input at all in what happened. Instead, she’d been trying to help Dru or Harmony with their own doubles, and occasionally that had worked. The other Drusilla, after some nudging from Miss Edith and company, was currently wandering through the rainforests of Venezuela, a part of the world where she happily ran into humans infrequently and was instead living off of a variety of wildlife. She seemed to particularly enjoy parrots, often mumbling about drinking flying rainbows. Harmony’s other self was living in Mexico at the moment, trying to sell vampires on some cracked pyramid-scheme that none of them completely understood. So, when Darla did decide to drop in on her demon after a few months, she was, to put it mildly, surprised.

“And just how exactly did I get pregnant?” the blonde asked in complete disbelief.

“Um, well, you see, a few months ago, you and Angel sort of…” Harmony began in an embarassed voice accompanied by frantic hand motions that could easily have suggested they had been making patty cake as much as anything else.

“Oh, for crying out loud, I know how that part works! I used to be a prostitute!” Darla interrupted her. “The other me is dead! And even if it weren’t, when I was human, I had a bad case of measles when I was a kid and it left me sterile, which worked out pretty well with my old line of work. And the other me is… well… dead!” she repeated firmly.

Drusilla cocked her head to one side and stared at the vampire who was obviously in the family way. “This really is disturbing.”

William, completely flummoxed at the news, had responded by ducking his head repeatedly as he’d tried to form a coherent sentence. “I mean,… that is to say… well, is there any chance that… um… yes, well, it’s all rather… ehm… yes. Perhaps I should call on Buffy,” he eventually got out as he abruptly vanished.

The three women exchanged looks.

“Okay, who here knew he could turn that red?” Darla asked in amusement. “It’s almost worth seeing my body get stretchmarks. Almost.”

Dru enjoyed the laughter for a moment before she lapsed back into the worried expression that had been clouding her eyes more and more lately. Her Sight had been telling her for some time that all was not going well, that bad times were coming, but exactly what was going to happen was shrouded from her. Her first concern had been Buffy, of course, and there was indeed reason for concern about the mortal part of her. As time had gone on, Buffy’s spirit seemed to be… well, decaying was perhaps the kindest word she could use. It was almost as though her soul, which somehow had held on to the idea that it had been warm and safe and loved wherever it might have been, although all the details and many of the facts were completely wrong, had grown sullen. It was simply too injured to deal with the pressures of the life it was facing.

“Thinking about Buffy again?” Darla said, not really needing an answer. “What’s up with her, anyway? She’s getting…”

“Worse, yes, I know,” Dru responded tiredly. “William is doing all he can, but her soul is so wounded, and her situation isn’t helping. Her mother is dead, her father has no thoughts of her at all, she’s drowning in bills, her friends don’t wish to address what has happened directly, her job as the Slayer is becoming meaningless to her since the monsters never do stop coming, her sister doesn’t seem to understand the position she’s in, and the only time she feels any comfort is when she’s with Spike and she can’t understand why. The girl has not had an easy time of it. I’m afraid the strain is about to break her, especially since I believe Giles is considering leaving once more.”

Darla gave her a significant look. “That’s not good. He’s the anchor in that group. Dru… worst case scenario?”

Drusilla plopped down next to Harmony and began drawing circles in the sand with her fingertip. “Absolute worst? Her soul could become completely dormant, almost like it’s gone into shock. She’d turn into a very close copy of our own other selves, except she might actually be worse. At least vampires do have a tiny bit of soul in them that is awake.”

“So, if her soul goes completely to sleep?” Harmony asked.

“No conscience at all. No ability to love. No appreciation for anything around her; beauty, friendship, and honor will become meaningless words. She could become a walking thing, and she may even become dangerous,” Dru said in a saddened tone. “In fact, she most probably would.”

“Damn,” Darla cursed. “So how do we get her to hang on?”

“We don’t. William does,” Dru said. “As long as he still has a pathway in through Spike, he may be able to keep her from falling apart. But even so, we are in uncharted waters. I’ve never heard of a soul ripped in two before. Neither has anyone else here. I don’t know if there’s really anything to be done about it.”

The three of them remained on the beach for a long time, staring at the unmoving sun that was perched just above the horizon. Drusilla could feel the darkness lying behind it, bleeding across the sand like an oil slick, almost reaching their feet. They were poised at the brink of something, of that she was sure, but would they topple in or be pulled back from the edge? Sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if her mother hadn’t been right, if she had been cursed.

William arrived again abruptly, a strange look on his face.

“Hey,” Harmony called perkily, completely off-setting her mood of a few moments earlier. “What’s going on down there?”

William frowned, then stammered, “S-s-she kissed me. Him. Us.”

“Well, it’s about time!” Darla said firmly and with a grin. “See, nothing to worry about! Good going, Will!”

“No, you don’t understand. There’s something wrong.” He shook his head as though trying to clear it. “It wasn’t right. I’ve kissed Buffy, and I know what it should feel like. This was… there was no love in it from her, only desperation, and what’s worse, I think Spike felt it. He’s gotten what he’s been wanting from her for months, what he’s been dreaming of for years, and he knows it was hollow.”

Darla’s mouth hung open slightly as she remembered a moment from her mortal life. A man whom she had taken a strong fancy to had hired her for her services, and from that moment on she had known he would never love her. It had been horrible: exactly what she’d asked for, only with nothing behind it.

“He’s going to lose heart, William, if things go too far, and you’re going to have a hell of a time breaking through if he does. You have to keep him from giving up.” She took his hand firmly in her own and held it tightly. “This is going to get rough.”

Only days passed before Darla’s words became all too clear. Giles did, indeed, leave, and it seemed as though no sooner did the man who had been her father figure for so many years step on the plane than Buffy’s light was barely a flicker. It was one blow too many.

A week after Buffy and Spike’s second kiss, one that predicted even worse luck than the first, Drusilla was walking in her rose garden. As she sat on her favorite bench and breathed in the scents of the flowers, willing herself to find peace, a vision hit her with complete clarity. There was no question about its interpretation. In a moment, she had rejoined the others, who were currently in William’s study. It happened to be daylight for all of their other selves, and they were gathered together in a rare moment of rest.

Drusilla immediately crouched beside Darla’s chair and took the other woman’s hand.

“Darla,” she said with tears in her eyes, “you’re going home soon.”

“What? You mean…” Darla asked in shock. “It’s the baby, isn’t it?”

Drusilla nodded. “It’s going to be tonight.”

Everyone’s eyes immediately went to the stunned woman.

“Are you alright, Darla,” William asked carefully as he moved immediately to her other side.

Her mouth worked noiselessly for a few moments. “Now? I mean, don’t get me wrong here, I’m completely happy to leave behind the full-body migraines from feeding, and I want to go. It’s going to be a lot better this time. But it’s not exactly the best time to be leaving you guys.”

Drusilla squeezed her hand more tightly for a moment. “When it comes, it’s the right time, dearheart. I am going to miss you terribly, though.”

No one else knew what to say. They spent the rest of the day together in Darla’s valley of wildflowers, simply being together. As night fell over the city of Los Angeles, a feeling of urgency became stronger in the group. Even without Drusilla’s vision, they all would have known something was going to happen.

“It’s going to be soon,” the fair-haired woman said with an unmistakable note of nervousness. “Um, Harmony? Look, in spite of everything, you’re actually a pretty decent kid. I’ve liked knowing you.”

“Aw, Dar,” Harmony said as she began to tear up and threw her arms around her, “that’s so nice! I’m gonna miss you too. And you have great taste in clothes, even though you are a little skanky sometimes.”

Darla’s eyebrow went up at the odd mixture of compliment and insult, but she just shook her head and patted the girl on the back, smiling in spite of herself. She turned next to Drusilla.

“You’ll get out of here sooner or later, Dru, and when you do, well, I’ll probably be a lot happier. You’re a decent sort. Wish I’d met a few more like you back when I still had a pulse. Either time.”

The two hugged hard for a long minute before Dru kissed her on the forehead and stepped back.

“Look at me. Crying like a silly cow,” Dru said self-mockingly. “You’ll give my sisters my love, won’t you?”

“Of course,” she promised as she faced William. “Now, you. I’m going to admit something to you. The first time I met you, I thought you were the biggest wimp I’d ever met.”

William brow creased at her words.

“I was wrong. You, William, are one of only five people I have ever particularly liked. Considering I’ve been around almost 400 years, that’s saying something. Whatever it is you’ve got in front of you, you’ll get through it.”

“Five?” Harmony asked.

“Yes, Harmony, five,” Drusilla said with a bittersweet smile. “And Darla, you know eventually he is going to catch up to you someday.”

In spite of herself, Darla gave an almost shy grin as she remembered a pair of kind brown eyes.

Then, without another word or warning, Darla was simply gone. It wasn’t to be long before the others realized how well-timed her departure was.

Twenty-One

Drusilla had smiled and wished Darla well, knowing the spirit was going on to perfect bliss and wanting to lessen her worry over her departure, but after her old friend was gone, she couldn’t help her sadness. For once, she allowed herself the indulgence of being every bit as unhappy as she actually felt, and she remained sequestered inside her garden for two full days in solitude. William had, of course, wanted to stay with her, but she had very politely but firmly stated that she wanted to be alone. He also missed the sometimes sharp-tongued woman whose candor had been so refreshing, so it was with a heavy heart of his own that he went to Sunnydale to see how things were faring with Spike.

Buffy had told the vampire that the kiss would never be repeated, but William had begun to doubt her words. Uneasiness festered around his heart as he watched Spike in his crypt, an expression on the demon’s face that suggested he knew things were not going to turn out well but that there was little hope for anything else. Spike was many things, but stupid was certainly not one of them.

It was the shove that did it, both physically and mentally. William was stunned beyond belief at exactly how little Buffy was behaving like her former self. Granted, she’d always beaten up Spike for information, but he did have a point in this instance. Something was happening between them, and they needed to talk about it before things went out of hand, an idea that was at least half William’s. But when the vampire had tried to return the push and succeeded without feeling any pain, William’s face went ashen.

The chip was dead.

A thousand thoughts came crashing around his head as he tried to understand what had happened. Had there been some strange side effect from Willow’s amnesia spell that had lulled the gizmo into silence, or perhaps the contraption had simply run down on its own? Spike seemed almost as puzzled as William was. Whatever the case, if the chip was gone completely, the soul’s chances of interfering with the vampire’s choices were much, much slimmer. Unmuzzled at last, the demon howled in delight at being free again, but William pulled with as much power as he possessed to reign in the destruction it wanted to cause. There were still thoughts in the back of Spike’s brain, feelings that suggested he didn’t want to be what he had once been, and William used them as much to his advantage as he could.

Spike’s first hunt in two years was a battle between the two of them. Instead of simply cornering the woman and immediately killing her, he was suffering his first true pangs of conscience in a century. William concentrated all of his effort on swaying Spike, the attempt draining his energy severely. At length, the soul felt he would have won a complete victory had it not been that the vampire was so entirely sure that there was no possibility for him to ever fit in anywhere again. As it was, William was reasonably certain in the moment before Spike’s fangs grazed the woman’s neck that he wouldn’t leave her dead. But then it happened -- mind-numbing pain that shocked both of them.

“I don’t understand,” William mumbled through his exhaustion. The fight had sapped his strength mightily, and he was fighting to remain conscious.

Then, a horrible thought grew in his mind. It wasn’t the chip; it was Buffy. Her soul had eroded so far that she wasn’t even being read by the chip as human anymore. Of all the people in the world that Spike could hurt, the one person the idiotic piece of metal had decided to ignore was William’s beloved. When Warren confirmed this for Spike, William shuddered and tried with all his strength to hold back the tide he knew was coming, but it was like trying to put out an inferno with a glass of water. There was no way he could stop it.

When the confrontation occurred, William was there. He saw the fight, heard the cruel words they hurled at one another, saw the house collapsing around them. His influence had dwindled away to almost nothing. It was the demon who lay with Buffy that night, and it was the soul who stood above them in the dust of the destruction, too stunned to move, too horrified to turn his eyes away from the scene, too much in pain to even cry out. He had been Buffy’s lover, and he knew perfectly well what was happening below him had nothing to do with love for her. There was no tenderness, only a strange, self-destructive violence.

With a heavy heart, William left. Strong as the spirit had been throughout the loss of her, he couldn’t bear the thought of watching her wake up in the arms of his demon. It would be a pale mockery of their own love, a love she couldn’t even remember now. He didn’t blame her for that, of course, but it didn’t make the agony any less for him.

It was well past noon on the next day when Drusilla found him in his study, the sunlight looking pale and sickly as it slanted through the large window. He had no reaction to seeing her standing there and remained staring out at the moors beyond, his figure preternaturally still.

A glance told Drusilla everything.

“So, it’s happened, then,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

A dim nod was William’s only reply as he continued staring at the tall, gray grass waving in a strong wind that had begun to pick up. The sky was growing darker, and the air took on the quality of a brewing thunderstorm.

“And Buffy?” she asked, afraid of the question.

“Almost no light left at all, the last time I saw her,” he answered in a deceptively even tone. “Dru, I’m tired. I miss her.”

“Yes,” she agreed softly. “Yes, I know.”

A few moments later, the two were sitting on the couch, his head resting on the curve of her shoulder as she gently stroked his back. There were no tears from either of them, just silence. Outside, the storm began to wail.

It was to be several days before William regained enough strength in any sense of the word to return to Sunnydale. What he saw did not encourage him. Buffy had simply given up, and Spike, though unwilling to admit it, was doing much the same. The vampire’s one and only dim hope was that she might grow so weary of life that she would willing join him in the darkness, an idea he put forward time and again, though in truth Spike knew that if she became part of the shadows she would no longer be the woman he loved. As little as William liked his other self, he couldn’t help commiserating a bit with him on that point: the woman they both loved certainly seemed to have disappeared without a trace, and the listless, often pointlessly cruel girl who had taken her place was sometimes nothing but a stinging reminder of their losses.

There were still occasional moments when William was able, through sheer determination, to break through Spike’s defenses, but they were problematic at best. The crowning blow that had put up the final barricades between the two and made William’s interferences almost entirely impossible had been the incident with Katrina. Being outside of the time loop and perfectly able to see that “Katrina” was no more than Jonathon in a skirt with a glamour floating around him, William obviously knew Buffy was in no way responsible for her death. Upon learning that Buffy had decided to turn herself in to the police, a decision that didn’t make any sense on a logical level and would almost certainly destroy what was left of Buffy’s spirit inside a cell, he had exercised as much influence as he could over Spike to tell him that he needed to stop her. Throwing the body in the river had shocked him, but if Spike had not shown up at that moment outside the police station, Buffy would have walked in too early to learn the identity of the girl and put two and two together.

As it was, she was otherwise occupied for a good while. As Spike was slowly pummeled, unresisting, into the ground, his face reduced to a pulp of blood and shattered bone, an unspeakably moment happened for William. His own soul was in such distress that Drusilla heard its call and was instantaneously by his side.

“It’s gone,” he realized as he looked at Buffy again. “Dru, it’s gone.”

In that darkened alleyway, Buffy’s dim soul was guttering like a candle flame in a draft. As she continued to beat the unmoving body beneath her, her soul flickered, then went out.

Drusilla’s eyes widened enormously. “No. No, this isn’t happening. We won’t allow this to happen.”

Instinctively, she grabbed William’s hand and gave every last ounce of her strength towards concentrating on reigniting that spark, guiding William to do the same. Time seemed to possess no meaning at all, and it felt as though hours passed before Buffy walked dazedly out of the alleyway. Still, they had managed to succeed. Fluttering weakly around the Slayer’s heart like the smallest, almost invisible spark was the fragment of soul they had managed to rekindle.

Spike was not the only being to lie broken on the filthy ground of the alleyway. Both William and Drusilla, utterly spent, had collapsed senseless to the pavement, completely insensible to the world around them. It was several hours later before William, the first one to stir, was able to send himself and Dru home again to fully recover, and as the soiled brick walls faded away, he saw the vampire slink painfully on his belly towards a manhole cover, just escaping the first deadly rays of the sun.

Days passed in Drusilla’s garden without a word from either of them. Harmony occasionally stopped by, having heard the gossip about what had happened, but nothing she could say or do would help them to mend any faster.

“This is so not good and depressing and stuff,” she complained loudly as she watched the limp bodies of the two in their hammocks, their eyes glazed. “It’s, like, scary.”

Deciding she’d done enough, the girl popped into a different reality and proceeded to have a pedicure and watch Pretty Woman six times on a loop until she felt better.

It was well over a month before Drusilla and William recovered. Checking Sunnydale after being away for so long was a sobering experience as they realized Xander and Anya’s wedding had flopped and the woman had decided to become a demon again. Worse yet, though, were Drusilla’s latest portents, most of which surrounded Willow. Although the redhead seemed under control, something was not right with her, and the seer felt in her heart that it was going to get worse.

To William’s surprise, Buffy had ended things with Spike, and this time it looked like she might mean it. While Buffy’s soul seemed to be strengthening a bit in the absence of the constant violence, the effect on Spike seemed to be a strange loss of stability. William was floored when he walked in on the vampire and Anya, and perhaps even more so when Spike outed his relationship with Buffy in front of the others. It smacked of desperation, and desperation and demons did not mix well.

Nothing, though, could have prepared him for what happened next.

Dawn’s suggestion that Spike speak with her sister had been well intentioned. The conversation had even begun well enough, with Buffy at least not denying what had happened between them. But the snap, the sudden, complete break when Spike realized that she would never tell him she loved him, that she had never loved him, that the only thing he had been to her was something, not someone, to have sex with, was uncontrollable. In that moment, that dawning of realization, the demon took total control.

William fought with it, of course. He pulled every mental string he could think of, tried every trick of control he had ever learned, but his own revulsion over the attack that was happening before him was so great that he could do nothing, no more than Darla could usually control her other self when she had been split. In the end, it was Buffy who saved herself.

But William did not back away.

Fury coursed through the soul’s veins as he saw the tiniest of windows open in Spike, a small part of him that was feeling guilt. That, the soul could use. Anger unlike anything he had ever felt spurred him on, lashing the vampire with a force like tidal waves.

“You piece of scum!” he yelled with every fiber of his being. “You worthless excuse for a being! You dared to even think of touching her that way? Her? You don’t have the right to have her see you, hear you, know you exist! Murderer! Demon!”

Spike was reeling from the onslaught: a demon experiencing guilt, an utter anomaly. He had no more idea what to do with it than he would have known how to live on Mars.

Meanwhile, William’s rage had grown no less, but it had grown deadly calm. He didn’t care if it was impossible. There was no way he would ever allow that thing to be near her again, and that meant one of two things.

“Dru,” he said in a perfectly controlled voice as he materialized at her side, “is there a way to kill him?”

“William,” she said as his memories of what had happened were opened before her like a book, “oh, William, I’m so sorry. But there’s…”

“Don’t tell me there’s nothing I can do!” he erupted loudly. “There must be a way!”

Drusilla shook her head firmly. “No. There’s no way to kill him.”

“Then I’ll bombard him with guilt until he does it himself,” he vowed quietly.

“It won’t work,” she said softly. “The guilt is there now, yes, but to move him to suicide? I think he’ll shut down again before it becomes that much. He’s done it in the past.”

“Wait? Spike’s, like, feeling guilty?” Harmony asked from behind him where she had gone unnoticed until now.

“Harmony, now is not the time,” William began impatiently, but she interrupted him.

“But, that means he’s feeling a negative emotion from his conscience,” she reasoned. “It’s in there, or it’s waking up, or whatever.”

“What?” William asked, startled.

“And it’s his emotion, right? I mean, you didn’t try to hurt Buffy. You don’t feel guilty, do you?”

“No. Angry, yes, but not guilty,” he said, wondering where this was going.

“Well, this new guy, Kwami, was just turned in Africa. We were talking, and he used to live in this village called Ramkana that worshiped some big demon mojo guy who could anchor souls, but only if the recipient and the soul were both okay with it,” Harmony said in a rush. “Doesn’t exactly happen too often. Like, once.”

William’s eyes shifted to Drusilla. “Have you ever heard of this?”

“No,” Dru said in surprise. “Harmony, are you quite sure that’s what he said?”

The blonde nodded her head vigorously. “Well, that and that the one soul who tried it actually wound up breaking apart into little pieces and ceasing to exist because he didn’t pass the final exam or something.”

“So it’s never been done successfully?” Drusilla asked. “William, you’d better think about this before you do anything…”

He was gone.

“Rash,” she finished to the empty air.

William was already in Spike’s crypt, and with the level of interdimensional assault the vampire received, he was very quickly on his motorcycle and on his way to a village in Africa that he’d never even heard of before. He would do anything, anything, if it meant he could simply get away from the terrible weight of grief that hung around his heart like lead.

As William stood by while Spike fought the necessary battles with the demon, continuing to batter him ceaselessly with rage, Drusilla suddenly appeared, begging the soul to reconsider and stop for a moment to think about what he was doing.

“William, she was able to stop the attack. If he ever tried to do anything like that again…”

“No. The idea that it’s even possible that he might, it’s too terrible. I love that woman more than anything in this universe, Dru, and I’m not going to let something that looks like me, sounds like me, and used to be me ever have the opportunity to hurt her again, not when there’s even the slightest chance I can stop him.”

“But what will happen to you?” she asked worriedly. “You know you won’t remember Limbo. You’ll wake up with nothing but Spike’s memories. The price of succeeding, if you even do, is going to be taking every crime he ever committed upon yourself. You’ll still be you, but this time, you’ll remember it as though you were the one trying to rape her!”

William paused for the briefest moment, then a determined glint set in his eye. “If it’s the difference between me having to go through hell or her being attacked again, I’ll take hell. Gladly.”

Suddenly, Drusilla’s form shimmered slightly, and as Spike slumped to the cave’s floor, having passed the final test, a second Drusilla faded into being before William. Everything else stopped as time came to a complete standstill.

“William,” the second Drusilla intoned softly, “that isn’t me.”

Confused, he turned his gaze back to the first Drusilla, peering at her closely. Her form rippled slightly, changing into something else entirely, becoming a twin to the strange demon who lived in the cave.

“Congratulations,” it said in a croaking voice. “You have passed the test. You still wish to re-enter this being? Once said, there can be no turning back.”

He looked at Drusilla, and a sad smile lit his eyes. “Tell Harmony thank you for me, will you? I’m going to miss you, old friend.”

“And I you,” she said in a trembling voice, “though I’ll never be far.”

She kissed his forehead gently, then he turned back to the demon.

“Yes, I am certain.”

It nodded, then walked over to its duplicate and merged into one with it.

“Very well,” it quietly purred as it laid a hand against Spike’s chest. “We return to you your soul.”

As the bright light that was William flooded back into Spike’s body, accompanied by screams of agony, Drusilla couldn’t hold back a sob as she saw her dearest friend leave her for good, not for a realm of happiness but for untold years of guilt and shame that he had done nothing to earn.

“Dru, we’ve got a problem,” said a terrified voice next to her ear. “I think I messed up. Bad.”

Harmony’s fear was so great that Drusilla was pulled with her to the Buffy’s bower in the plum orchard. The bed on which the unmoving form of the Slayer usually lay was completely empty.

“She disappeared,” Harmony said in quavering voice. “I was just here, checking up on her like I though William might want, and just, poof, she vanished.”

Drusilla stared at the vacant spot for a full minute before she realized what had happened.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, and Harmony was stunned to see that Drusilla was smiling broadly. “You did nothing wrong at all! Something finally went right!”

“Huh?”

“Buffy’s soul. It was bound to William. Don’t you see! When William left, Buffy’s soul went with it,” she called happily. “I’ll show you!”

The two souls were suddenly in a newly dug grave in one of Sunnydale’s highly populated cemeteries. With tremendous joy, Drusilla took in the sight of Buffy and Dawn scrambling up the side of wall of earth, both of them…

“Whole,” Drusilla breathed softly. “Once William left Limbo, her soul was released, so it went back where it belonged. Harmony, she’s healed!”

As the once again complete soul of the Slayer walked through the early morning light with her sister, as the lasting effects of Willow’s spell subsided now that the damage had been undone and the witch was able to be herself once more, as Spike, now inhabited by William, began to stir in the African cave, Drusilla caught Harmony’s hands and began to dance in a joyous ring with her as the world began its slow journey back to the way things should be. The way promised to be dark, and what little Drusilla’s Sight could foresee of all this said that the coming times would not be easy, but one thing was certain. Hope had been reborn.

“So,” Harmony asked conversationally, “celebration chocolate sundaes?”

Drusilla laughed whole-heartedly for the first time in a very long time. “Yes, dearie, I believe so. With marshmallow fluff and sprinkles.”

As Limbo closed around Drusilla and Harmony once again, the sun rose on a world full of endless possibilities.

~Fin~