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Email: good_girls_gone_bad@hotmail.com

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Author's note: This story is a sequel to A Will, a Way, and a Woman, the clean version of which can be found on this site. If you haven't read that story it's a safe bet you won't understand this one, so I suggest you try that one on for size first. If you want the NC-17 version of that story, try either spuffy online (B/S Central) or copy and paste this link: http://ca.geocities.com/bloodluvingirl/AWillAWayAndAWoman1.htm

Summary: After much trial and error, Spike and Buffy are living and loving together in the Summers' home. But cohabitated bliss is interrupted by an old enemy seeking revenge.... *Work in progress.*

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine! NOT MINE! There. Happy now???

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Chapter Three
 

"Hello?"

Buffy stepped into the dark kitchen, kicking the door closed behind her. The house was very still and dark, and it was only after she saw Dawn's note that Buffy remembered why. She flipped a light switch and leaned against the refrigerator to read the note.

Buffy:

Gone patrolling. Spike said I should leave a note so I am. It's Friday so I get to stay out late. Spike said order yourself dinner and not to worry about finding us. You've been studying for exams all week and Spike said to rest tonight, that he would handle everything. Spike said I get to kill some tonight, which I think is fair because you were letting me kill them all the time before Nikolai. Spike said to tell you he'll look after me so don't worry but I know you will anyway.

Buffy smiled at the note. It was amusing and sweet how attached to Spike Dawn was becoming—and how attached to Dawn Spike already was. The two of them had always had a brother-sister vibe going, but lately Buffy had sensed it growing into something else. Spike really seemed paternal towards Dawn, taking an interest in her far beyond what he had before. He was even complaining about her clothes (what kind of young girl wears trousers that tight?). Dawn, meanwhile, actually seemed to respect Spike's opinion, which was something she had never given Buffy. Though she might argue with Spike (c'mon—it's not that low cut) she would ultimately comply with his rules, even when she didn't like them. It took a lot of strain off Buffy.

Spike took a lot of strain off Buffy in other ways, too. Slaying was one. Now that she had enrolled full time in classes at U.C. Sunnydale again, Buffy didn't have a lot of free time on her hands. Between attending classes during the day and studying for exams in the evening, she was beat, and Spike helped her out by taking over patrolling on most nights. She went with him for a couple of hours before bed, usually, but battling vamps was a piece of cake if there were two of you.  In addition, Spike stayed out much later than Buffy did, combing the cemeteries and the Bronze until dawn. Since he had started patrolling vampire attacks were down by almost a third.

Not that their lives were perfect. Happy as she was to be settled down with Spike, it was certainly not always easy living with him. Living the great majority of his existence without a soul had left him strange and a little bit morbid. He had very fixed ideas on the way things should be and unwavering opinions on how things were. Though he never said it outright, Buffy knew he believed that all slayers had to die before they reached twenty-five. The fact that she had died twice already only reinforced his belief that her time was running short, and combined with this was the fear that she was happy and happiness would lead to her undoing. On more than one occasion, he had pointed out that her anger at life and, most particularly, at men was what gave her her strength. Now that she was contented, Buffy knew Spike was afraid she would not be able to fight so well. This was one of the deciding factors in his taking over part of her patrolling. He trusted his own abilities, if he didn't trust hers, and he felt that so long as he went patrolling with her she would be safe. Nothing she said could convince him otherwise. Sometimes she could hear him pacing the hallway outside her door, long after she and Dawn had retired for the night. More than once, she had found him keeping a lone sentry beside the front door, fixated on the singular belief that the current Big Bad was on its way to do her in as she slept.

Another problem lay in the fact that he had not yet come to terms with his own past actions. The soul had not bothered him so much when he was unhappy—any guilt he had felt had been drowned by pain and self-pity. Now he was happy, and his past deeds began to weigh heavily on his conscious. He had nightmares about them, dreams where he awoke screaming or cursing or crying. Though he refused to talk of them to her, Buffy knew from the way he sometimes talked in his sleep that his dreams were of his vampire days. Sometimes he said Drusilla's name and, once, he had yelled for Angelus. When questioned about these dreams he either shrugged them off as a joke or refused to speak of them at all. But after such a dream he always refused to go back to sleep, sometimes staying up for several nights in a row.

Despite his overwhelming effort to be good, Buffy knew Spike had a long way to go before he could consider himself trustworthy. Years of violence and cruelty given and received had left him more than a little warped in the morals department, and even the new soul could not prevent the occasional outburst of demonic behavior. The laq demon was only one in a string of misdeeds, and though she did not doubt for a second he regretted his behavior afterward, it was a little disconcerting to watch him grow so completely unhinged for a short while. When he lost his temper—and he often did when the demons hurt her or Dawn—he seemed to lose control of himself completely. The laq had received one of the worst of his outbursts, but there were vampires he had pinned down and blinded with holy water, others he had burned with crucifixes. A fungus demon had been knocked down and beaten with a rake until the unfortunate creature's head disintegrated under the blows. After each incident, he had broken down in her arms, begging her to forgive him for being bad.

Buffy did forgive him. She understood even better than he did why he felt compelled to do these things and she did not hold them against him. She knew that she and Dawn could trust Spike with their lives and he would never hurt them. It was the demons who had to watch out for him and, though she felt a little uneasy about his methods, demon killing was what they did. She was not going to condemn him just because he gained a little pleasure from the slaughter. He had been taught by over a century of carnage that killing was fun. The fact he could restrain himself as well as he did was remarkable to her. One couldn't expect him to change overnight, and she was willing to help him on the gradual climb to human normalcy.

In fact, the only behavior Buffy had no patience with was Spike's treatment of her friends.

Spike loved Willow. The two of them shared some strange connection that had not been broken when she went to England, and Buffy knew Spike was counting the days until "Red" came home again. She was his confident since their first chat at Tara's grave and the two of them refused to let an ocean get in the way of their telepathic communiqué. Had it not been so obvious that Spike was the complete slave of her own heart, Buffy might have been jealous by his relationship with her best friend. Instead, she merely felt a weary sense of relief that he got along with one of her friends, at least.

Not so with Xander. Spike hated Xander with a passion that would not die. Nothing, not threats, or pleas, or cajoling would convince him to treat the other man with a smidgeon of respect. Xander had gotten in the way of Spike's happiness one too many times, had derided him once too often, for Spike to allow himself to forget it. Xander tried. With praiseworthy fortitude, he tried his best to make up for past actions. Shortly after Spike moved into the Summers' home, Xander apologized for his offenses, assured Spike of his own willingness to be friends, and offered to bury past hatchets on the spot. Spike had merely smirked at the apology, cocked a suspicious eyebrow at the proffered hand, and answered the request for friendship with a crushing "Eat my cock, Harris."

Giles was in England and, though Spike made no effort to hide his disdain for the former watcher, it did not present so much of a problem as did his hatred for Xander. Not only would Spike refuse the friendship of the man, but he resented Buffy's friendship with him also. He never openly objected to the alliance, but each visit by or to Xander resulted in Spike sulking morosely for days. Whenever Buffy tried to talk to him about it, Spike would shrug her off. "Did I say I didn't want you to see him?" he would ask innocently. "The man might be as thick as two short planks but if you gain pleasure in his company then go right ahead. I've no objection." But he did, and he let her know it in a variety of unpleasant ways.

Still, even this thorn in her side was not sufficient to ruin Buffy's good mood at passing her finals. Happily anticipating a night free of studying and slaying, she decided to celebrate her freedom with a pizza. She lifted the lid on the cookie jar that sat on the counter and stuck her hand inside. The cookie jar was where she, Dawn, and Spike kept their household money—any money left over after bills. Usually, this was nothing more than a handful of fives and maybe a ten or so, but increasingly the horde of cash kept there had been growing larger. When Buffy withdrew her hand now, she found it filled not with the ones and fives she expected, but with four crisp one hundred dollar bills. She hastily put them back and dug out a couple of tens.

It worried her, sometimes, the money Spike was bringing in. Buffy had quit her job at the Doublemeat Palace after management expressed their concern over her "conflicting interests" (i.e. they did not like the idea of her leaving early or coming in late in order to get to her classes on time) and since then she had been more worried about money than ever. Giles helped some; his half of the proceeds from the Magic Box paid for the utilities and upkeep of the Summers' house. Still, it was not enough to pay for the bills and the groceries, and Buffy's tuition and Dawn's school supplies, and for a while, it had looked as though Buffy would have to leave school again to get a full time job. Then Spike had moved in.

He didn't work. His nights were spent patrolling and he slept until early afternoon, rarely rising before one o'clock. Yet ever since he had moved in, the cookie jar had been stuffed with bills—small ones at first, but steadily increasing in size as the days went by. Lately there had been an alarming number of fifties and one hundreds, sometimes as much as ten or fifteen a week. It was starting to make Buffy nervous. She knew Spike stole from the vampires he killed and the fact had never bothered her overly much. The vampires certainly weren't going to use the money and Spike was right, thievery was nothing to them compared to the stake through the heart they received. However, Buffy seriously doubted the vampires in Sunnydale were as wealthy as Spike would have her believe. Even with an average of three vampires a night, Buffy couldn't see how Spike was bringing home fifteen-hundred dollars a week. Something else was going on.

So far, Buffy had not asked Spike what the something was. Truth be told, she didn't really care if he was doing something illegal or immoral. Since she had admitted her love for him, she had learned to accept certain things, one of the biggest being that Spike had a very fuzzy sense of right and wrong. It wasn't his fault, really. He was like Anya used to be, struggling to adjust to human rules after a century of doing anything he liked. His soul and his heart were good, but sometimes he just had a hard time discerning things that were technically okay (like stealing from vampires) from things that were clearly unethical (like torturing the laq demon for fun). Buffy was quite tolerant—so tolerant that she was quite willing to let him go on his merry way so long as bodies didn't begin turning up. No, what worried her was that he might be doing something dangerous to acquire the money. She could deal with the idea of him robbing a bank or breaking into houses, but she could not bear the thought he might be hurt while doing it.

Buffy knew she needed to talk to Spike about the money, but she was reluctant to do so. Things were going so well between them that she didn't want to ruin it by accusing him of doing something immoral or illegal to bring home the much-needed bacon. And he was only doing it to help her. Without her, he could have lived off the stolen-vamp money easily. Buffy and Dawn were what was costing a fortune, and Spike seemed determined to help them as much as he possibly could. She dreaded the thought of taking his kindness and throwing it back in his face, all because a well-meant scheme was a bit on the shady side.

She pushed the thought of confrontation from her mind, resolving to go back to it when she was not quite so tired and hungry. Whatever Spike was doing to get money he wouldn't be doing it while Dawn was with him, so she didn't have to worry about him tonight, at least. As for now, she planned to follow his suggestion and relax.

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"DUCK!"

Dawn's upper body twisted then dipped, narrowly avoiding the large piece of wood aimed at her skull.

The vampire who wielded the club was a husky she-vamp they had found near Xander's construction site at the high school. She had been prowling the sidewalks for fresh meat and had found Dawn and Spike. When she realized she was both out numbered and (in Spike's case, at least) outclassed, she had made tracks to the construction site to hide.

Instead, she had found herself a weapon.

The two-by-four was straight and strong, studded with crooked nails on one end. The vampire who brandished the club was experienced and cunning. She was much quicker than the fledgling Dawn had just killed, and fear made her even faster. She darted in and out, taking great swings at Dawn's face with the piece of wood.

Dawn had managed to avoid every blow except one, and that one caught her only on the shoulder. She was a little scratched and bruised from the strike, but she wasn't hurt badly enough to affect her fighting. If anything, she fought harder, determined to beat the demon without Spike's help.

She attempted the lightening-fast roundhouse kick Buffy was so fond of but found it too difficult and almost lost her footing. For a moment she stumbled blindly, struggling not to fall over as a sharp pain stabbed each leg, reminding her just how not in Buffy's shape she was. The vampire took this opportunity to rush her, the plank of wood raised high, ready to bash in her head.

Dawn rolled out of the way and the wood struck the hard-packed earth instead. The vampire fell forward, losing her balance from the forced of her blow. She stumbled for a moment, throwing out her hand to catch herself before she hit the dirt.

Dawn didn't even think. Without even realizing what she was doing, she grabbed the two-by-four and jerked it as hard as she could, which sent the vampire reeling to the dirt. Dawn scrambled to get on top of the she vamp. The two of them struggled for a moment as Dawn grappled to pull her stake from her pocket, and once the vampire hit Dawn's nose and made it bleed, but she never faltered. She drew her stake and raised it high, plunging it into the demon with all the strength in her arm.

The vampire burst into ashes beneath her and Dawn laughed as she fell to the ground with a thump. She looked over at Spike joyfully.

"I did it!"

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Anya fingered the chain of her necklace uneasily. "Halfrek are you sure this is what you want?" she asked again. "There are so many other ways of getting even with him—"

"It's what I want," Halfrek insisted. "I want him back, William. I want him without the confidence and the strength she gives him. I want the little bastard weak...I want to crush him. I'm going to ruin his life the way he has ruined mine—and then some."

Anya listened to this impassioned speech and just managed not to roll her eyes. "Okay...if it's what you want," she sighed. "But it seems like an awfully complicated way of going about things, if you ask me."

"Well, I don't," snapped Halfrek. "So grant the wish already."

"Um, yeah...well, you have to make the wish first, Hallie. I can't do anything until you say the magic words."

The irritation cleared from Halfrek's brow, leaving her face smooth and blandly serene. "You're right, of course," she told Anya, "how silly of me to forget."

She shook her hair back and cleared her throat. Her dark eyes met Anya's with a glimmer of a smile, her red lips parting to enunciate clearly every syllable of her desire:

"I wish for you to bring William back."

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Dawn grinned happily at Spike, fully expecting praise for beating the vampire so easily.

Spike, however, was looking anything but proud; he was standing some distance away, staring at her with wide eyes and a slack jaw. His face was very pale—it hadn't been that white since his days as a vampire. He looked as though he were about to be sick.

Dawn climbed to her feet. She brushed herself off quickly then glanced at Spike, who was staring at her as though he had never seen her before. "Um...are you okay?" she asked him.

He didn't answer her. His eyes moved from Dawn's face to the pile of dust at her feet and then back again. He shuddered slightly, his legs buckling so that he crumpled onto the damp earth with a thump. He fell to his knees and did not rise.

"Spike!"

Dawn ran over to him, reached out to help him. "Are you all right?" she asked. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"

Without standing, he scrambled backwards in the dirt, avoiding her outstretched hand. His face was ashen; a line of blood dripping from his temple looked unnaturally dark against his pale flesh. His eyes were wide beneath his knitted brows—he looked like a man who had seen a ghost.

Confused, Dawn asked him, "What? Did I do it wrong or something? I tried to follow your directions...and I did kill her. What's wrong?"

She started forward but Spike leapt to his feet, backing away from her so quickly he stumbled and almost fell over a piece of debris that lay in his path.

"D—don't come any closer," he commanded her. He held out his hands, as if to ward her off, and continued his slow retreat backwards. "Get away, I tell you!"

"Spike—"

Dawn dropped her stake and stopped where she was, staring at him with complete bafflement. "Spike...what's gotten into you? Did I do something?"

"I don't know what you did!" he retorted. "I—I don't know you."

"W—what?" Dawn sputtered. "Spike..."

It happened so quickly she hardly had time to comprehend it: one moment she was reaching out to touch his arm and the next she was sprawled on the ground at his feet, her cheekbone throbbing. He had hit her.

Spike stared down at her with a strange mixture of terror and resolve. "I don't know what you are," he said. He spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully, as though he thought she wouldn't understand otherwise. "I don't know you."

Dawn pressed a hand to her rapidly swelling cheekbone. "Spike, what are you talking about?"

But he was backing away from her, retreating quickly as one who expected to be attacked at any moment. When he was a dozen or so feet from her, he turned and began to run.

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Anya and Hallie watched the scene from some distance away, having teleported there by virtue of Anya's demonic powers. At first, Hallie was quite pleased with the result of her wish; she smiled brightly when Spike backhanded Dawn. Then her face fell as he began his retreat.

"Hey! What is he doing?" she demanded. "Where's he going?"

"I don't know," Anya replied. "But it sure looks like he's in a hurry to get there."

Hallie stomped her foot, her two-inch platform heel sinking into the soft earth. She wrenched it out then turned on Anya, her face livid.

"This isn't right!" she snapped. "This isn't what I wanted!"

"You wanted William back," Anya said placidly. "That was William."

"Yes, I wanted William back! But I wanted him in my general vicinity!"

"Well, I can't very well control where he goes, can I?" Anya asked, clearly stung by the criticism. "He still has a mind of his own. Besides, he suffering, you could see in his face that he was terrified. That's what you wanted, right? You wanted him to suffer and he is...so what's your problem?"

Halfrek threw a sulky glance to her friend. "I wanted to be there to see it," she said.

Some distance away from them, Dawn was slowly climbing to her feet.

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William lunged forward through the darkness. He had no idea where he was going but he knew he had to get there quickly. Safety, he was seeking safety.

Oh, God what had happened to him? Was he crazy? The last thing he remembered doing was speaking to the raven-haired beauty in the alley behind Pearson's Livery Stable, letting her press her ruby lips against his neck. He remembered a blinding white pain that was followed by something grand—then nothing at all. Nothing until just a few moments ago when he found himself sitting in the dirt, watching a young girl—

What had she been doing?

The woman—the strange woman with the gold eyes—that girl had killed her. Why? That woman had born the same mark on her brow that the lovely dark-haired girl had, just before she kissed him. Her kiss had hurt him, though he had liked it, and for the first time William had time to consider it. What had she been? Was she human? Was the other woman human? And what of the girl who had killed the woman? Had she killed the dark-haired lady also? Perhaps she had attacked them from behind and William was knocked unconscious.

One glance around him told William this was not so. This was not the alley behind Pearson's Livery—this was not even an area close by. He did not know what this place was, but it was not London, he was certain of that. It was an odd place, and frightening, and William felt very deeply that he did not like it at all. In a place where little girl kill deformed women with such obvious pleasure was no place William wanted to be. He had to find his way home.

Aside from the place itself, another bothersome difference was his clothing. William remembered very clearly wearing his tweed suit and wide cravat to the Addams' party. He remembered it because the suit was new and he had been quite eager to show it off to his friends. Now, however, he was wearing faded trousers of some coarse, black material. Instead of a suit jacket, he wore a long-sleeved shirt of very dark red and, under it, a black cotton shirt so faded it was positively gray. His feet were shod in heavy, steel-toed boots of much scuffed black leather. They were garments such as he had never seen on anyone, even the lower class, and William had no idea where they had come from, or who had given them him. He felt a sudden jolt of fear that perhaps he had been struck in the head by that beautiful girl, then dragged out of the city and robbed. A quick search of all his pockets revealed nothing.

The earth dropped suddenly before him, and William barely managed to slide to a stop before he tumbled over the embankment. Beneath him, stretching like a black snake in the night was a road.

Tensing his muscles to brace himself, William began climbing down the steep bank, his feet sliding unsteadily on the crumbling earth. He wasn't entirely certain where he was going, but he knew that all roads lead to somewhere, and, though this one did look a bit odd, it would be no exception to the rule. If it didn't lead to home, it would lead to a road that did lead to home. It had to. He was sure of it.

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"BUFFY!"

Water splashed out of the bathtub and onto the tiles in a wave as Buffy sat up quickly. She had been on the verge of dosing in her bath when Dawn's terrified scream suddenly shattered the silence of the house. From the floor below, Buffy heard the front door slam, followed quickly by Dawn's feet pounding on the stairs.

Buffy climbed out of the tub, throwing a robe around her shoulders just as Dawn came bursting through the door without knocking. "Dawn, what on earth is wrong?" she asked, bewildered and frightened by her sister's behavior.

Dawn paused a quick moment to catch her breath, then countered Buffy's question with one of her own. "Is Spike here?"

"What? No...I thought he was with you." All the blood seemed to drain from Buffy's body as she saw her sister's expression go from one of fear to absolute terror. "Dawn? What is it?"

"He's gone, Buffy!" Dawn began to sob, quietly at first, then growing quickly hysterical. "Spike's gone!"

"What are you talking about?" Buffy took her sister by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Tell me what happened!"

"We—we were just patrolling!" Dawn sputtered. "He was standing back and letting me fight it—the vampire. He said I was ready and I was. I killed it, Buffy. But when I turned to Spike, he was staring at me with the strangest expression, as if he was going to throw up or something. Then he just fell to the ground, sort of leaning over and holding his head. I thought he was sick and I asked him what was wrong."

She paused and Buffy gave her an impatient shake. "And?"

"And he back away from me—really quick, on his hands and knees, like he was scared of me. He said he didn't know me, and he asked me what I had done. I didn't understand what he meant—I still don't. He kept telling me to get away and when I didn't he—he hit me."

"Spike hit you?" Buffy's eyes narrowed. "Where?"

"Here." Dawn touched her bruised cheek lightly. "He hit me hard and I fell down. Before I could get up, he had run away. I thought that maybe it was a joke—except that I knew it wasn't. He would never hit me. But I hoped it was. I was hoping that maybe he had come here."

"I haven't seen him," Buffy told her. She felt numb, suddenly, in shock.

"We have to find him, Buffy. He doesn't know who I am—he didn't even seem to know where he was. He was bleeding from a cut on the head; I think that maybe the vampire had hit him. Maybe he has amnesia or brain damage or something, and he's just running around out there in the dark. We have to find him and help him."

She waited for an answer, for Buffy to give her direction, a plan. Instead, her older sister merely stared at her with an expression not unlike the one on Spike's face before he ran off. She looked dazed, frightened. Her chin started to quiver slightly, and Dawn was horrified to realize Buffy was about to cry.

"Buffy, pull yourself together! We have to figure out how to find him!"

"Willow."

The word escaped her throat so low that Dawn couldn't hear it at first. Cocking her head slightly, she asked, "What did you say?"

"Willow," Buffy repeated herself, a little of the dazed look leaving her face. "Willow can find Spike. Willow will know what's wrong."

"But Willow's in England, remember? With Giles?"

"It doesn't matter," Buffy replied. "She'll know. We will go call Willow—she'll be able to tell us where to look."

But for some reason Buffy's words did not fill Dawn with a great deal or confidence. It was all very well to say Willow could fix everything because she could get into Spike's head and talk to him. But what if Spike didn't remember Willow? What if he didn't let her into his head this time? What then?

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End of Chapter Three

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