Buffy, Willow, and Oz were in the UC Sunnydale cafeteria, talking about magic, werewolves, and the assassination of Roman Emperors as they collected their food. Buffy's good mood suddenly died as she saw Parker sitting laughing with a group of his friends.
“You know, I forgot to, uh, be hungry,” she said, put down her food and turned to leave. She came to an abrupt halt as she found herself face to face with Spike. “Spike!“ she exclaimed.
“Buffy,” he replied. “See, we know each other's names.” He was carrying a tray of food, and wearing well-cut pants, a linen jacket, and a silk shirt. His long leather coat was conspicuous by its absence, as were his Doc Marten boots, and his black nail varnish.
“Spike!” Buffy repeated. “What on Earth are you doing here?”
“Been for a job interview, pet. They gave me a meal voucher, thought I might as well make use of it.”
“But you don't eat food,” Buffy protested.
“Don't have to. Doesn't mean I don't like to do it occasionally. Can I impose myself on you and your pals for lunch, Slayer? I don't see any tables for one, so it's that or inflict myself on strangers.”
Buffy hesitated, thinking of a way to tactfully tell the vampire to go away, but Oz took matters out of her hands.
“Yeah, come join, Spike. What's the job you're after?” He led the way to a table, followed by Spike, and Willow shepherded Buffy after them.
“Teaching Assistant,” Spike revealed. “Department of Linguistics.”
“Cool. Think you'll get it?” Oz asked.
“I was promised it on the spot,” Spike answered. “Subject to satisfactory background checks, which could be the bugger, but I think it'll work out okay.”
“That's great, man,” Oz congratulated.
“So, you're Language Guy?” asked Willow.
“Speak fourteen human, pet, plus a few demon.” Spike raised an eyebrow at Willow. “Why were you stabbing Oz with a banana at the counter?”
“I was being Brutus,” Willow explained. “All betrayal, back stabby.”
“Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral,” Spike quoted. “He was my friend, faithful and just to me: but Brutus says he was ambitious; and Brutus is an honourable man.”
“Hey, you know your Shakespeare,” Willow smiled at Spike. “Maybe you should have gone for Drama or Literature or whatever.”
“Literature and Classical Languages is what my degree is in,” Spike revealed, “but the vacancy is in Modern Languages.”
“Degree?” Buffy gazed at Spike unbelievingly.
“From Balliol College, Oxford. A First in ‘Greats’, that's the language, literature, and philosophy of the Ancient Greeks,” Spike expanded. “You look a bit surprised, love.”
“Surprised? If I was any more wigged out you could stick me on Elton John's head.” Buffy gesticulated with a celery stick. “Weird enough last week when you were all friendly and trusting and turned Willow into a puppet.”
“Turned Willow into a puppet?” Spike repeated, not understanding.
Willow raised her arms and let her hands hang loosely. “Yus, me lady,” she quoted, and giggled. “Your description of Parker ...” She laughed, and Spike joined her in laughter.
Buffy waited for them to finish, then continued. “Then you go to LA, and Cordy phones me after to tell me that you and Angel have sworn eternal brotherhood, he invited you to join his firm, and she wishes you'd accepted because she thinks you are, and I quote, ‘a total hottie and a really nice guy’. Now I find that William the Bloody has a degree from Oxford, which is about the most famous Uni there is, and is probably going to be a TA at my college. And you're wearing really nice clothes, and - hey, you've had your hair cut! And it looks way cool. Sorta spiky, which is neat ‘cause of you being Spike.”
“Thanks, pet,” Spike acknowledged the compliment.
“Hey, Spike, we're going to a Fraternity party for Halloween tonight,” Oz let him know. “Like to come along?”
Willow looked uncertain for a moment, and then decided to trust the judgement of her boyfriend, who had travelled to LA with Spike and even fought alongside him there. “Yeah, come with, Spike,” she invited. “Costume party. Love to see what you dress up as.”
“Could just go in game face, say that it's make-up,” Spike suggested, a twinkle in his eyes. “Bit cliché, though. Got something in mind. What about you, pet? Gonna be the ghost of a hooker again? Dead sexy, that was.” He turned to Buffy as Willow blushed. “And you, love? That red gown you wore two years ago was smashing.”
“Oh, shut up, Spike,” Buffy scolded him, unable to think of anything witty to say. She didn't know whether to feel flattered or worried that he'd remembered her dress from the Halloween when Ethan Rayne's spell had brought chaos to Sunnydale. “I don't know if I'll even go. I think I'm going to have to patrol anyway.”
“Tonight?” Willow protested. She wanted Buffy to come to the party, where hopefully she would find someone to take her mind off Parker. “But it's Halloween!”
“I'll double check with Giles, but I'm sure he's going to think I should be on active Slayer duty. He doesn't care about Halloween.”
Giles was, however, in full Halloween spirit, and the evening found Buffy walking towards the Frat party dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, a basket in her hands. Xander came up to her, wearing a tuxedo. “Hey, Red, what have you got in the basket, little girl?”
“Weapons. Just in case. Like the tux, Xander.”
“Bond, James Bond,” Xander corrected her. “Insurance, you know, in case we get turned into our costumes again. I'm going for cool, secret agent guy.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you'll probably end up cool head waiter guy,” Buffy commented cynically.
“As long as I'm cool and wield some kind of power,” Xander said blithely. “Hey, lookie here, evil dead guy joins the party.” He looked at Spike's costume. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, he has to walk in to mine.”
The vampire was dressed entirely in greys and blacks, down to light grey kid gloves, and had even made up his face in a very pale grey. He wore his long black coat with its collar turned up, over a dark grey crumpled suit and a light grey shirt, and a black snap-brim hat rested on his head. He could have stepped straight out of a black and white movie. “Table for four, please, waiter,” he addressed Xander. He tipped his hat to Buffy. “Sam Spike, Private Eye, ma'am,” he told her. “No fee too big, no case too small.”
“Nice costume, Spike,” Buffy praised, reluctantly admitting to herself that Spike had indeed come up with something original and well done. “Think we'll find the Maltese Falcon at the Frat party?”
“Bound to find a bird of some kind,” Spike replied with an exaggerated leer. “And you'll probably bump into a wolf. In fact, here he is now.”
Oz and Willow joined them. Willow was dressed as Joan of Arc, wanting to be combat-capable in the event of a repeat of the events when they had been turned into their costumes, and Oz was dressed in his ordinary clothes. He displayed a nametag inside his jacket reading ‘God’.
“God created man in his own image,” Spike remarked. “Clever. Lad, if you were any more laid back, you'd fall over.” Oz gave one of his almost imperceptible smiles. “Thought you might have been Lady Penelope, Willow,” Spike added, which brought on another bout of giggles from Willow and also laughter from Xander, who had watched ‘Thunderbirds’ with her sometimes.
From the bushes ahead of them emerged two men in combat fatigues and ski masks, carrying rifles. They looked around, crossed the path, and disappeared into other bushes.
“Nice costumes. Very stealthy,” observed Buffy.
“What are they supposed to be?” Willow asked.
“NATO?” Oz suggested. They continued on, paying no more attention to the commandos.
“Oh, yeah,” Xander remarked. “I invited Anya to join us, but she's having some trouble finding a scary costume, so she's just going to meet us there.”
Buffy harrumphed. “Perfect, everybody's got a date but third-wheel Buffy.”
“You're not a third wheel,” Willow began.
“Technically speaking you're a fifth wheel,” Xander interrupted.
“As I was saying,” Willow went on, giving Xander a gentle shove. “There will be six of us, three of each, and to anyone outside we'll look like three couples. You won't look like a spare wheel.”
Buffy looked at Willow in horror. “Are you suggesting that Spike be my date?” she gasped, outraged.
“She just means I can play the part, love,” Spike put in. “I can stick around if you don't want to look as if you're by yourself, but I'll sod off any time you give the word, pet. Certainly not going to try for a snog, it'd wreck my greasepaint.” In truth he was hurt by her reaction, but didn't want to show it.
“Better not,” Buffy warned, then felt guilty about having been insulting towards Spike when he had been behaving himself. She kept that to herself, but moved to walk beside Spike without making any comment.
The Fraternity house was oddly deserted when they entered. They walked through the Maze of Horror without meeting anyone, or hearing any party music. “Sure we've got the right day?” Spike asked. “Not that you can really get Halloween wrong.”
“Must all be upstairs,” Oz guessed. “Follow the signs.” They continued through the Maze, past cobwebs and plastic skeletons; then Willow shrieked as a real tarantula crawled over her shoulder.
That was only the first of a succession of unnerving encounters. There was blood on a carpet, which Buffy and Spike both identified as real human blood. They were swarmed by a flock of real bats, which flew off leaving one behind on the floor. On examination it proved to be a plastic toy bat. They retraced their steps to the entrance room, and found a blank wall where the door had been. Noises in a closet proved to be one of the frat boys hiding there, gibbering with terror, and, while they were trying to get some kind of coherent story out of him, Buffy was attacked by a skeleton. She smashed it into pieces, which were obviously those of a plastic party decoration; but its dagger had slashed a real wound across her shoulder. Not only did the student disappear as they examined the wound, but so did the closet in which he had been hiding.
“Y'know, I'm really not liking this,” Spike commented. “Someone's working some sort of mojo. That wanker who did the stuff two years ago isn't in town, is he?”
“I don't know,” Buffy said, “but I'm going to find out. I'm gonna make my way upstairs and see if there are any people up there. You guys find a way out of the house and use it.”
“Not just going to run away and leave you to face things alone, Slayer,” Spike protested. Willow made a similar protest, and an argument broke out between Buffy and an alliance of Willow and Spike. Eventually Willow stormed off, followed by Oz, and Spike gave way. He agreed to escort Xander out, if an exit could be found, and then to seek out Willow and Oz and guard them. They turned to Xander; except that he had disappeared.
“Oh, this is so typical of him!” Buffy complained. “Spike, find Xander. Take him with you and find Willow and Oz. Then get all of them out, any way you can, and go to Giles. Right?”
“As you wish,” Spike saluted her. He set off to obey her orders and wandered through corridors which seemed to be longer than could possibly be accommodated in the Fraternity building. There was no sign of Xander, or of Willow, or of Oz. Eventually he spotted someone lying on a couch and approached. Even if it wasn't one of those he sought, at least he could ask questions. Or so he thought; until he drew close to the couch and saw the body lying there. Mouth open, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Dead.
It was Joyce Summers.
“Joyce! Mum!” he cried out in horror, then forced himself forward. “It's not real, it's not real, it's not real,” he repeated to himself like a mantra. He reached out gently and touched her cheek. It was cold. He withdrew his hand, and a dimple remained where his fingers had rested. It didn't break apart into the pieces of a plastic skeleton but remained obstinately in the form of the body of Buffy's mother. He felt for a pulse, and found none. “Buffy!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Buffy!”
He turned and fled from the room, running without paying attention to where he was going, tripped, and fell to the floor. He raised himself to his hands and knees, looked up, and saw Buffy standing in front of him. “Buffy!” he gasped out. “Help me! There's something very wrong. I saw ...”
“Why should I help you, you monster?” Buffy interrupted him. “You're beneath me. You don't have a soul. There is nothing good or clean inside. You can't feel anything real. I could never be your girl.”
Spike recoiled from her in horror. “Buffy! No! Why are you saying those things? I haven't done anything.” Backing away blindly he crashed into something, struck his head, and fell to the floor once more. He blacked out for a short time. When he came to, he was lying in a room he didn't recognise. He stumbled out and found himself in a bathroom.
Buffy was there, sprawled on the floor tangled in a torn-down shower curtain. She stood at his approach, revealing that her clothes had been ripped all the way down the front, and she clutched them to her. Her face was streaked with tears. “Ask me again why I could never love you,” she sobbed.
“But I didn't do anything,” Spike pleaded, not understanding what was happening but feeling almost unendurable pain and fear.
“Because I stopped you!” Buffy spat out. “Something I should have done a long time ago.” She released her torn clothes with one hand, and they slipped to reveal her naked shoulder. She pulled a stake from inside her cloak and stepped towards Spike.
“Buffy! I don't understand,” Spike sobbed. He stood still, closed his eyes, and waited for the stake, forgetting all about the Gem of Amara on his finger. He expected death, and welcomed it. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes to find that Buffy had gone. “What is happening?” he asked the empty room. “This can't be real, this can't be real.” He staggered out of the bathroom, head swimming, and blundered into yet another room.
It was the room in which he had discovered the body of Joyce Summers. It was still there, and now it was not alone. A girl in her early teens lay on the floor beside the couch. He had never seen her before, but somehow he knew that she was family, and that he loved her. Blood was oozing from cuts on her arms, and dribbling from her mouth and trickling on to her long chestnut hair. “Spike,” she spoke weakly as he approached. “You broke your promise. You promised to - to ...” Her voice trailed away, her head lolled over sideways, and the flow of blood stopped.
Something inside Spike snapped. He screamed wordlessly and threw himself at the wall, then began bashing his head against it over and over again. The world shrank down to nothing but fear, pain, and grief. He lost himself in blackness, and continued to smash his head into the wall without even being aware that he was doing so. Again, and again, and again.
Gradually Spike became aware that his head was no longer hitting anything as it thrashed to and fro. A formless noise in his ears began to resolve itself into words. “Spike! Spike! Wake up! It's all right. Spike!” A face swam into view. A girl. Red hair. Willow. He managed to stop the convulsive movements of his head.
“Witch,” he croaked. “Help me. Joyce ...” he broke off, and burst into tears.
“Mom? What's wrong with my mom?” came Buffy's alarmed voice from somewhere behind Willow.
Spike recoiled from her, raising his arm to ward off a blow. “I'm sorry, Buffy,” he moaned. “Whatever I did I'm sorry. I don't know what it was I did, but I'm sorry.”
“Jeez,” exclaimed Xander, “It really put him through the wringer. And I thought what it did to me was bad.”
“Spike, it's all right,” Willow soothed him. She reached out her hand and stroked his cheek. “It's a demon, the Gachnar demon. It's manifesting our fears. Nothing it shows you is real.”
Oz was with her. He took hold of Spike's shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. The vampire realised that the normally imperturbable werewolf was himself looking somewhat shaken.
“Pull yourself together, Spike,” Buffy urged him. Her voice was gentle and encouraging, no trace of the hatred and loathing that he had heard in the disturbing and inexplicable encounters he had just lived through. “You're strong. You overcame your bloodlust. You can beat this thing. Whatever you saw was a lie.”
“Yeah, but unfortunately it can really hurt us,” Xander pointed out. “If we close our eyes and say it's a dream, it'll stab us to death.” He gestured at Buffy's shoulder, sliced by the skeleton's dagger soon after they had entered the house. Spike followed his gesture and saw that Buffy's clothes were perfectly intact, save for the dagger cut. A cut that was on the same shoulder that he had seen in the ‘bathroom’ - and which had been unmarked during that disturbing confrontation.
“It wasn't real,” Spike breathed. He realised he was sitting on the floor and rose to his feet, with some assistance from Oz. “So Joyce isn't dead. Thank you, God.” He looked around and saw that he was in a large unfamiliar room. An intricate pentagram was drawn on the centre of the wooden floor.
“The Mark of Gachnar,” Willow explained, following his gaze. “It's a summoning spell for the demon. Really think it might be a good idea to get out of here.” An ominous roaring sound could be heard from somewhere nearby, and it was drawing closer.
At that moment the room door burst open and Giles stepped through. A running chainsaw was in his hands. He switched off the chainsaw and came towards them, and Spike stared at him in disbelief. The stuffy librarian Watcher was wearing a colourful poncho and a huge fringed sombrero. “Can't be one of my fears,” the vampire muttered. “He switched off the chainsaw. Although, that outfit is pretty scary.”
A girl unknown to Spike entered the room from behind Giles, saw Xander, and rushed over and hugged him. She was dressed as a rabbit. ‘Must be that Anya bint that the lad mentioned,’ Spike thought. The master vampire stood on unsteady legs and listened while Giles, Buffy, and Willow discussed the Gachnar demon and what to do about it. He took no part in the discussion, being fully occupied with trying to deal with the distressing visions he had experienced, and was taken aback when Buffy smashed the floor bearing the Mark and thus caused the demon to materialise.
Alas for the demon, its physical presence was not as awe-inspiring as its other powers. It was only six inches tall, and Buffy brought its reign of fear to an abrupt halt by simply stamping on it.
The gang made their way out of the Fraternity house once the demon was slain. Spike insisted on searching for whatever it was that he had been made to believe was the dead body of Joyce Summers; he was disturbed by the fact that it had not disintegrated on contact, unlike most of the other phenomena they had encountered. It proved to be an inflatable sex doll, lying on a couch in a partially deflated state. Spike was relieved to have a logical explanation, but was still perturbed. He insisted on Buffy checking on her mother. She popped into 1630 Revello Drive, somewhat touched by his concern, and found her mother preparing for bed, perfectly all right.
The group headed for Giles' apartment next. Buffy walked side by side with Spike, completely at ease, her earlier distrust of him forgotten. It was hard to dislike someone whose worst fear appeared to be that your mother would die. “I heard you screaming my name,” she told him, “but I couldn't find you. You sounded in a bad way. You really that fond of Mom?”
“She's my best friend, Slayer,” he reminded her. “The first person ever to treat me like a man, at least since I was turned. She's a fantastic lady. Forgive me for saying so, Slayer, but your father must be the stupidest tosser on this Earth for walking out on her. And on you.” He was still extremely shaken by his experience, and chose to call her ‘Slayer’ rather than Buffy to try and distance himself from her, making things a little more impersonal.
“Mom's not perfect,” Buffy admitted. “There were faults on her side too, I think. Me getting thrown out of Hemory High for burning down the gym didn't exactly help things. But, yeah, I think dad was pretty stupid.”
‘Any man who walks out on you is stupid,’ Spike thought. ‘Your dad, that Parker tosser, even Angel.’ But he kept those thoughts to himself.
Spike was only peripherally involved in the next two supernatural events to afflict the Scooby Gang. He was fully occupied in preparing for his new life as a Teaching Assistant, and doing an orientation course, having been offered the position almost immediately upon application. His full Contract of Employment was to take effect in the New Year, but they asked him to start on a provisional basis only two weeks after his interview. No time for background checks, but that didn't seem important to them. It was hard to fill vacancies in the town with the highest rates of murder and ‘accidental’ death in the western United States. He could walk, talk, make photocopies, and mark papers; that seemed to be all they were bothered about. So he missed Buffy being turned into a cave girl by enchanted beer; his only connection was that he patrolled for her while she was neglecting her duties.
He spent some time with Joyce, with Giles, and with Willow and Oz. He was becoming good friends with Oz, and also with Willow. To his dismay he found that the relationship between the two young people was starting to come apart. Oz had been affected by the fear demon almost as badly as had Spike, although the taciturn guitarist didn't talk about it to anyone. He became less easy in Willow's presence, and seemed to be becoming overly interested in Veruca, the singer with the band called Shy that had been given the residency at the Bronze, and was neglecting Willow for her.
Spike's efforts to influence Oz on Willow's behalf proved fruitless. Instead Spike and Willow drew closer together. His comment that Oz must be mad to be interested in a girl who was named after either an unpleasant foot disorder, or the most unpleasant character from ‘Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’, earned him a big smacking kiss, which he found very agreeable. However Spike restrained himself from trying to take advantage of the situation to make a move on the red-haired witch. He fancied her, he admitted to himself. He had done ever since he had kidnapped her and held her hostage in the abandoned factory. However Oz was a friend, and also there were Spike's own feelings for Buffy to consider.
He was in love with the Slayer. Drusilla had accused him of it a year ago, and claimed it was why she had cheated on him. He had denied it, and denied it to her again during their more recent and final break-up, but following the experiences he had suffered under the influence of the fear demon he could no longer deny it to himself. He knew it was a doomed love. He couldn't imagine Buffy ever loving a vampire other than Angel. Spike didn't even have a soul, and he accepted that he would never be worthy of the Slayer's love. To even try to win it would mean nothing but heartbreak, and he was going to aim only for friendship.
Even so, he couldn't bring himself to take his relationship with Willow beyond friendship and flirting. Not even when Oz took his interest in Veruca too far, when Veruca's werewolf status was revealed, and when Oz fled Sunnydale leaving Willow devastated and distraught. Spike would be there to comfort and support the young witch, but that was all. He valued her friendship too highly to have a sexual relationship with her without love.
He walked Willow home to her dorm room one night, arm around her shoulder, while she babbled to him about how much Oz had hurt her. It never occurred to him that a watcher might completely misinterpret what they were seeing, and even had it done so the only people whose opinions he would have cared about were Buffy, Joyce, Giles, and Xander. They were not watching that night, but someone else was.
Harmony Kendall looked down at the two from a vantage point on top of a building. “Enjoy my Blondie Bear while you can, Willow, you bitch witch,” she snarled. “See how much he likes you without a throat. I should have killed you outside the Bronze that night. First time I catch you alone - aaahh! Ow!” She yelled in agony as a tazer struck her in the back and sent a paralysing surge of electricity through her nervous system. She fell headlong, writhed in pain briefly, and then a masked commando appeared and fired another tazer into her chest. She spasmed and went rigid; the commando leaped upon her, securing her hands behind her back with a plastic tie, and two other commandos appeared. The three men in ski masks dragged the helpless blonde vampire away.