The car was parked just outside the front doors of the school. Buffy was sitting in the passenger seat, staring out of the window, and tears were trickling down her cheeks. “I never thought it would be like this,” she said as Spike climbed in beside her. “Angel was supposed to come back to me, and Drusilla go back to you.”
“Don’t give up on it yet, luv,” Spike said. “You’ll see him tomorrow. Once he’s got Dru settled down he’ll see sense.”
Buffy shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s got a hold over him and she’ll use it. He’s got a thing about guilt, you know?”
“He’s a pillock if he chooses her over you,” Spike said. “He loves you. I mean, you made him…” Spike’s voice trailed away as he reconsidered what he had been going to say.
“Perfectly happy?” Buffy completed the sentence for him anyway. “Yeah, and we know how that turned out. Take me home, Spike.”
They hardly spoke during the drive. Spike lit up a cigarette without drawing any protest from the Slayer. When they arrived at 1630 Revello Drive Buffy got out of the car, said “Goodnight, Spike,” in a dead voice, and walked to the house with her head bowed.
Spike waited for her to go in before he departed; she was so out of it that some wandering fledgling vampire could come along and bag itself an undeserved Slayer before she could react. He sat and drew on his cigarette, blowing smoke out of the window, and watched her. Only when the door closed behind her did he start the engine.
Before he could get the car into gear again and pull away the door opened again and Joyce Summers emerged. “Spike!” she called, her voice stern. “William?”
Spike switched off the engine and climbed out of the car. “Yes, Mrs. Summers?”
“What have you done to my daughter?” Joyce demanded.
“Nothing. Honest. Look, I know she’s upset, but it’s not my fault,” Spike told her.
“Come here, Spike,” Joyce ordered. Spike tossed away his cigarette and obeyed.
“Mom!” Buffy came out of the door behind her mother. “What are you doing? Spike hasn’t done anything to me.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
A movement caught Spike’s eye. Something was approaching fast. He had left the sword in the car, but he had a stake in his coat pocket, and he slipped his hand there ready to draw it out.
“We got Angel to rehab,” Buffy said, trying to explain the situation in terms that would make sense to her mother. “I thought I could get him back, only, he still wants to be with Drusilla, and…”
A vampire hurtled across the lawn and charged at Joyce. Spike recognized it; one of Angelus’ minions. Angel hadn’t committed all his forces to the attack on the library after all. He had stuck to the precept of ‘always protect your perimeter’ and left one of the gang outside. Spike guessed that it had sensed that the Slayer was vulnerable but had not dared to attack her there when she had been obviously waiting for a companion. Instead it had headed for her home to ambush her, but the car had arrived first and spoiled its timing.
Whether Spike’s reconstruction of events was correct or not was not immediately important. The vampire leaped for Joyce, hands outstretched and fangs bared, and she opened her mouth to scream. Spike drew his stake and sprang forwards.
Buffy reacted with all her normal speed and efficiency. Perhaps only a threat to her mother could have spurred her into such prompt action. She performed a classic leg-sweep and shoulder-throw, spilling the vampire at Spike’s feet. He drove the stake home to complete the kill without even thinking about it.
Joyce closed her mouth with a snap and then opened it again. “What – Buffy, what is going on? Did that – man – just turn to dust?”
“Oh, crap!” Buffy exclaimed. “Looks like I’m gonna have to tell the whole story. Mom, well … I’m a Vampire Slayer.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Joyce said, as the three sat with mugs of hot chocolate. “Angel was a good vampire, and then he turned bad, and Spike was a bad vampire, and then he turned good, and Spike’s girlfriend was a bad vampire, and Angel and – Drusilla, was it? – got together, and then you two worked together and defeated them and gave them souls and turned them good again, only they’re still together?”
“Yeah, Mom, that’s pretty much the story, at least the Cliff Notes version,” Buffy said. “I know it must be hard for you to believe, but that’s the way it is.”
“I think ‘impossible to believe’ would be a better way of putting it,” Joyce said.
“’Could put my game face on,” Spike suggested. Joyce looked at him blankly. “Go all fanged and ‘grrr’,” he elaborated. “Just to show you, like. Wouldn’t want to scare a nice lady like you.”
Buffy raised her eyebrows at him and a trace of a smile showed at the corners of her mouth.
“Very well, then, show me,” Joyce challenged.
Spike hesitated. He screwed up his face and nothing happened for a moment. He thought about plunging his fangs into a helpless victim, and still nothing happened. Joyce’s expression was growing even more skeptical. Spike growled, remembered Drusilla dripping Holy Water onto his face, and his forehead rippled. He bared his fangs at Joyce, who recoiled in alarm. “Sorry, Mrs. Summers,” he said hastily, slipping back into his human guise.
“You couldn’t do it,” Buffy teased. “You are so not evil any more.”
“I am still evil,” Spike insisted. “Could go back any time I liked.” He caught Joyce’s eye again. “Won’t, though. Get more of a kick out of being a good guy.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Joyce said. “Is this some kind of trick? Clever make-up?”
“Yeah, and I rigged up special effects on the front lawn,” Buffy said. “Come on, Mom, you’ve seen it with your own eyes. I’m a Vampire Slayer. Spike’s a vampire. Deal with it.”
“It’s a lot to have to deal with,” Joyce said. She took a drink of her hot chocolate. Spike followed suit and ended up with a dollop of cream stuck to the end of his nose. Buffy snickered.
“What?” Spike asked, oblivious to the cause of her amusement.
“If you could only see yourself in a mirror…” Buffy began. “Oh! That’s it. Mom, Spike doesn’t have a reflection. See for yourself.” She led Spike to a mirror on the wall and showed her mother that Spike was not reflected in the glass. “See? Or, rather, not see? Vampire.”
“I see,” Joyce said. She returned to her seat and sat down rather abruptly. “If you don’t mind, I think that I could use a drink.”
“I’ll fix you one,” Buffy offered. She went off to the kitchen while Spike and Joyce sat in an awkward silence and returned with a glass of something alcoholic.
Joyce sipped at the drink, grimaced at the strength, and then looked again at Spike and downed half the glass. “So, you’re a Vampire Slayer. Have you tried not being a Vampire Slayer?”
“It doesn’t work like that, Mom. It’s not like a job. I got chosen. It’s this whole Chosen One thing. I get special powers. I’m strong, I’m fast, I heal real quick. In return, I kill vampires.”
“And date them, it seems,” Joyce said in a more normal voice than she had used since the vampire appeared on the lawn.
“Just the one, and that, well, it didn’t turn out too good,” Buffy corrected her.
Joyce looked from Buffy to Spike and back to Buffy again. “Just one? Are you sure?”
“Mom! You keep saying that. There isn’t anything like that between me and Spike.”
Joyce trained her gaze on Spike and raised an eyebrow. Spike met her eyes without flinching. “She’s telling it like it is, Mrs. Summers.”
“Oh, just call me Joyce, her other friends do,” Joyce told him.
“Right, uh, Joyce,” Spike said, wondering just how strong the drink that Buffy had made for her mother had been. “We’re not going out together, ‘cept in a vampire slaying capacity.”
“We keep telling you that, Mom, why do you keep not believing us?”
“Well, mainly because of the way you said ‘oops, busted’ when I saw Spike in the house,” Joyce explained.
“That was ‘cause I thought I was gonna have to do the whole Vampire Slayer reveal thing,” Buffy explained. “Only, then I thought of another way of putting it.” She paused for a slurp of hot chocolate. “Look, Mom, I think you’d better have a talk with Giles tomorrow after school.”
“Mister Giles the School Librarian? Where does he fit in?”
“He’s my Watcher. That’s, like, trainer, and Research Guy, and – what’s the word, Spike?”
“Mentor?”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s a thing. Look, he’ll explain it all. Although, probably not like Clarissa.”
“I just don’t get it,” Angel said. “You. William the Bloody. A Champion.”
“You worked the whole thing out for yourself, I’ve filled in the blanks, what’s not to get?” Spike said.
“It’s not that.” Angel shook his head. “I understand how it came about. What I don’t understand is how you were so damn good at it. You did the right thing, every time. Stuck it out under torture, even when I tried to persuade you that you wouldn’t have to suffer the wheelchair thing. Hell, you were as good as I ever was. It chokes me to say it, but maybe you were even better. How come? How did you know what to do without a soul?”
“Dunno how a soul works,” Spike said. “Not sure they’re as important as you think. A soul didn’t keep sodding Hitler on the straight and narrow, did it? S’ppose you’ve got a point about one thing, I don’t feel it inside. Right and wrong are just words to me. So, I thought about Champions, and I remembered El Cid.”
“El Cid?”
“Film, mate, classic with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.”
“Oh, yeah. He rides out to battle after he’s dead, right?”
“That’s the one. See, El Cid is the Champion for the King of Spain, and he keeps getting shafted by King Alfonso, but he stays loyal and true, even when the King sends him into exile, and he’s such an honorable bloke that even the Moors trust him and join him to fight this Ben Yussuf geezer from Africa who wants to conquer everybody, and he captures this city and everybody says ‘keep it and make yourself King’, and he says ‘no, I’m Alfonso’s Champion so this is Alfonso’s city’, and Alfonso hears about it and says ‘El Cid is the real deal after all, I am not worthy of such a Champion’, and Ben Yussuf’s army turns up, and Alfonso rides to help out, only El Cid gets shot…”
“And they tie him to his horse and he leads them out dead and they win. I know, Spike, no need to recite the movie to me.”
“Bloody brilliant, though, innit? ‘For God, the Cid, and Spain’. ‘Course, the real bloke probably wasn’t as perfect as all that, but I went by the film version. Whenever I didn’t know what to do, I thought ‘What would El Cid do?’ Or Zorro, maybe; the Tyrone Power version, dunno what the new one with the lass out of ‘The Darling Buds of May’ and that Banderas bloke’ll be like. Or John Wayne in ‘Eldorado’ or whatever. Or Audie Murphy, ‘cos he was a hero for real as well as in the films.”
“You kept on track as a Champion by thinking what guys in old movies would do?” Angel shook his head again and his eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline. “I can hardly believe it.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
“I guess it did. Drusilla said you were the bravest knight in all the land. I never realized that she meant in Twelfth Century Spain.” The corner of Angel’s mouth quirked up and a smile spread across his face. He almost seemed to be proud of Spike for a while, but it didn’t last. His eyebrows gradually descended and his smile faded away. “How long can you keep it up, Spike?”
“Don’t see any reason to stop,” Spike said. “Thing is, I’m enjoying it. Bloody brilliant, mate. Good brawls, fists and fangs and what have you, and it’s better than going after humans. More even, y’know. More fun.”
“It’s not meant to be fun.”
“Don’t care if it’s meant to be or not, it’s still fun. And, funny thing, I’ve got mates now. Rupert and Jenny, and the Slayer’s little pals, we get on okay. They respect me, y’know? ‘S a good feeling, getting some respect. Never really got it from you.”
Angel sighed. “Well, you’ve got it now. Happy?”
“Ecstatic, mate,” Spike smirked.
“What happens if things go wrong?” Angel probed. “If you end up fighting something that’s just too tough, numbers that just keep coming? Will you give up and go back to being evil?”
“No sodding way. Even leaving the wheelchair bit out of it, ‘cos I dunno if you’re right or wrong about that, it’d spoil the point of the whole thing, wouldn’t it? Anyway, there’s death, there’s glory, and sod all else. Always knew I’d go down fighting. Might as well be in a good cause, right? And maybe they’ll stick my ashes on a horse, or on the front of the DeSoto, and we’ll win after all.”
“For God, Spike, and California?”
“England, please, mate. But, well, yeah.”
“Well, I’ll wish you luck.”
“Ta, mate.” Spike grinned widely and stubbed out his cigarette. “Angel,” he said, turning serious, “what’s happening between you and Dru?”
“It’s complicated.” Angel shuffled in his chair. “She needs me right now.”
“You still shagging her?”
“She’s not going to give me perfect happiness, Spike. I’m not going to give her perfect happiness either. There’s too much pain, too much guilt.”
“So you are still shagging her, then.”
“Do you have to put it like that?”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
“Okay, Spike, have it your own way. Yes, I’m sleeping with Drusilla. She can’t bear to sleep alone. And, yes, we’re having sex. And she doesn’t want you back. She’s half scared of you, half full of guilt for turning you in the first place.”
“Fair enough,” Spike said. “Don’t want her back anyway. The thing with the Holy Water put me right off her.”
“She tortured me with Holy Water too,” Angel reminded him.
“That was just her having fun. Wouldn’t have minded that so much. No, what pissed me off was that she was doing it to me for your sake. ‘Cos I wouldn’t do what you wanted. She was always sodding well putting you first. I was just a substitute. I worshipped the bloody ground she walked on – and it was bloody ground a lot of the time, I can tell you – for a hundred years, and the minute you turn up she’s right off me and all over you. Bloody fed up of it. You can have her and welcome.”
Angel glared at Spike suspiciously. “You’re not thinking of going after Buffy, are you?”
“And what if I am? Seems to me you’ve given up all claim on her. Can’t have Dru and Buffy too, can you?” Spike held up a conciliatory hand as Angel’s expression turned angry. “Look, mate, I know Buffy’s too good for me. She’s still stuck on you, anyway, don’t know as I stand a chance with her, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t try. Don’t get all dog in the manger about it. Just want to go out with her, for the time being anyway, she’s too bloody young for anything more. Wouldn’t want to get serious ‘til she finishes school.”
“You’re right, you don’t stand a chance with her,” Angel scoffed. “If you want to make a fool of yourself, William, you’ve got my permission to try.”
“Ta, mate,” Spike grinned. He took out a cigarette, lit up, and puffed a cloud of smoke in Angel’s direction. “Her mum likes me.”
“What?”
“Her mum likes me. Told me to call her ‘Joyce’, says I’m welcome to drop in any time, she’s keeping some blood in the fridge for me. I’m having dinner with them tomorrow night.”
“Her mother knows that you’re a vampire and she still likes you?” Angel wrinkled his nose at the smoke. “Maybe you do have a chance with Buffy after all.”
“We’re moving to Los Angeles,” Angel said. “I’m not needed here.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t say that,” Buffy objected. “This is the Hellmouth. We can always use help.”
“Maybe, but I think I’m needed elsewhere. In LA I can be a Champion again. Here, I’m just –”
“A spare prick at a wedding?” Spike suggested, trying to look innocent, but failing to suppress his smirk. Buffy managed to hold back a giggle, jabbed him with an elbow and faked a reproving glare, but then she cracked and the giggle slipped out.
“I was going to say a fifth wheel, but Spike’s crude analogy is another way of putting it,” Angel said. “Anyway, Dru’s had a vision about it. Hollywood and Vine, Sunset Boulevard, the whole works. It seems the City of Angels needs me.”
“Well, it’s appropriate,” Spike conceded.
“And LA has plenty of demons,” Buffy agreed. “Not quite as many as it had before I went to visit Dad during summer vacation, but hey, probably plenty of them left.”
“The doggie, the sheep, and the deer, those are the things we must fear,” Drusilla chanted cryptically. “My Angel will bring hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless.”
“Ruth to the ruthless?”
“Bad Spike, always teasing,” Drusilla scolded. She bent forwards unexpectedly and kissed his cheek. “But still the bravest knight in all the land. Look after the Slayer, Spike. Beware the Mayor. Watch out for the nasty soldiers hiding under the ground like moles. Protect the shiny key.”
“I would, yeah, if I could understand a bloody word you were saying, luv. Any chance of making it a bit clearer?”
Drusilla smiled enigmatically. “Goodbye, Spike.”
Spike and Angel shook hands. Buffy and Drusilla exchanged a token hug; they had come to tolerate each other, but no more, and there was no warmth in their embrace. Then Buffy and Angel hugged, Buffy almost as stiff and withdrawn as she had been with Drusilla, and there was no kiss. They said their final goodbyes and the pair of souled vampires walked off into the darkness.
Buffy’s gaze stayed on them until they had disappeared from sight. She heaved a deep sigh once they were gone and turned to Spike. “I guess that’s it, then. You’ll never get back with Drusilla, and I’ll never get back with Angel.”
Spike reached out and slowly put his arm around her shoulder, ready to take it away if she showed any sign of objecting, and hugged her. “Know it must be hard for you, pet.”
Buffy relaxed into his embrace. “Funny, it doesn’t hurt as much as I’d expected. Are you okay about Drusilla going?”
“I gave up on Dru a fair while back, luv. Been through all the hurt and out the other side. Doesn’t bother me any more.”
“I’m glad for you.” Buffy leaned her head against Spike’s shoulder. “You know, when I was in that demon slave camp in LA, it wasn’t Angel I thought about, that I wanted to be there helping me out, it was you. I still love Angel, I guess, but I’ve kinda gotten used to having you around.”
“You know I’ve always got your back, Slayer,” Spike assured her, casting a last jealous glare in the direction in which Angel had disappeared. He was still second to Angel, still in his shadow. Sometimes it seemed as if nothing had changed.
“Yeah. It’s kinda nice.” She looked up into his face. “Willow and Oz and Xander and Cordelia will be hitting the Bronze tonight. I thought maybe I might head there too. Coming with?”
“Yeah, why not?” Spike shifted the position of his arm so that they could walk together. “This a date, Slayer?” It was a question he had asked before, always jokingly, and always receiving a ‘No’ in reply.
Buffy bit her lip. “Uh, yeah. If you want it to be.”
Spike stopped dead in his tracks and looked directly at her face. “’Course I want it to be, pet. You sure?”
“I’m sure.” A gleam of amusement sparkled in her eyes. “Mom is so going to say ‘I told you so’.”
“She’s not the only one, Champion. Looks like your swap went all the way. Good luck in the future.”
“What the?” Spike jerked around and saw a familiar figure across the street. A short man in a disheveled suit, an appallingly tasteless shirt, and a black hat jammed firmly down on his head. “Whistler!”
“The guy who offered you the deal?” Buffy whirled around and saw the figure. “He doesn’t look like much.”
“Hey, I resemble that,” Whistler grinned. A bus rumbled along the street towards them. “Look after the Hellmouth, you crazy kids.” The bus passed between them and hid Whistler from their view.
Buffy and Spike caught a brief glimpse of Angel and Drusilla at the windows of the bus, and saw Drusilla hold up her favorite doll and wave its arm to them, and then the bus was past.
Spike stepped out into the road. “Hey, Whistler, mate, was Angelus right…?” His voice trailed away with the question uncompleted.
Whistler had vanished.