CHAPTER THREE
 
While Joyce was at school, Buffy spent the day alternately smiling and sniffling as she went through a box of memorabilia from under her bed. Mixed in with photos from Sunnydale were several sepia-toned pictures of Spike in period clothing, most taken shortly after he was turned. There were a couple of him taken at intervals of decades, ending with one of the punkish Spike she’d met when she was sixteen. She left the ones with Drusilla, Darla, and Angelus in the box, but took out a few of the ones of Spike by himself and added them to the small stack of photos from their years together. There was one of Spike in the shadow of the Magic Box door, just the glowing tip of his cigarette visible behind her and her friends. And a few, all taken indoors with a flash, were of them at various Scooby events. The last one, of just Spike, had been taken the afternoon of the night he dusted. He was looking up from the newspaper and smiling at her with that soft look she was pretty sure no one else ever got to see.
 
She blew out a deep breath and wiped her damp eyes. “I really need to scan these in and store them someplace safer than under my bed.” She put the box back, stood up and said, “All right, Joyce. It’s time you learned who your father was, and that he was a hero. More than once.”
 
XXXXXX
 
When Joyce got home, having obviously run most of the way, she found Buffy sitting quietly in the living room, a small group of photos in front of her. Panting slightly from her run, she sank into a chair.
 
“Are those pictures of my father?” Joyce eyed them hungrily, but refrained from reaching for them.
 
Buffy nodded, putting her hand over the pictures.  “Yes. But before I show them to you, I have to tell you the story of Buffy and Spike.”
 
“Spike?” Joyce frowned. “Isn’t he some old vampire that used to hang out with some old famous ones? Was he somebody you used to know?”
 
Buffy snorted a laugh. “Well, that’s one description, I guess. Maybe I’ve tried too hard to protect you from things you should know. One of which is that William the Bloody – aka Spike – was an important part of that gang of famous vamps. ‘The Fanged Four’ or ‘The Scourge of Europe’ are some of the things they’ve been called. Angelus, his sire Darla, his childe Drusilla, and her childe… Spike.”
 
“Wow.” Joyce looked more dubious than impressed. “Why would you have anything to do with him? They were pretty bad-ass, weren’t they?”
 
Buffy sighed, remembering she was going to have to bring Angel into the discussion. “It’s complicated. Let me start at the beginning, and just save your questions, okay?”
 
Joyce’s lower lip came out, but she nodded.
 
“So, when I was called and we moved to Sunnydale….” It was almost an hour later when Buffy got to the part where Spike was dusted by a random apocalypse-type demon after years of their being together – whenever one of them wasn’t temporarily dead.
 
“So, how does a pile of dust—” At Buffy’s expression, she hastily added, “Dust that was the love of your life and that you’d been with forever. I get that. But, if he was dust, how did he… and even if he wasn’t… I thought vampires couldn’t… didn’t have…” She stopped, blushing at how close she was coming to discussing sex with her mother. Ignoring Joyce’s obvious lack of interest in hearing details, Buffy responded by explaining the gift of a full day and night with adult William before he was turned that the Powers had granted her.
 
“It was magic. In the sense that it took a magically opened portal to take me to him, but you were conceived in the usual way. And I had no idea. I didn’t go there to make a baby, I just wanted to… to be able to hold him one more time and say good-bye. Even if he didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. Which I think he did. Your father was always pretty perceptive, even when he was a young human man. He knew me.  He always knew me.” Buffy’s expression managed to be proud and sad at the same time.
 
Joyce was quiet for several minutes, slumped in her chair and chewing her lip. She finally raised her eyes to Buffy’s and said, “So you did love my father. You didn’t just make that up to make me feel better about not having one?”
 
“Oh my God, yes. I’ve told you that over and over.”
 
“I know, but you never could tell me enough about him to make me think it was real. No pictures, no letters, no… no nothing.”
 
Buffy silently slid the photos across the table to her, watching silently while Joyce went through them one at a time. She could tell by her wide eyes when Joyce got to the one of Spike in his punk days, and then as a young vampire, with his light brown curly hair and less hard-edged look. Joyce’s gaze flew up to Buffy.
 
“He looks just like—Ohmygod, ohmygod. Mr. Patterson is my father!”
 
“Mr. Patterson is a man who wasn’t even a gleam in his grandfather’s eye when that picture was taken. He is not your father! “ Buffy lowered her voice. “But he does look a lot like him.  They say everybody has a twin somewhere. I guess your English teacher is Spike’s.”
 
“Oh. My. God.” Joyce sat there, staring at the spread-out photos and looking stunned.  She picked up one of Buffy and Spike that had been taken at a party of some sort. Buffy was on Spike’s lap and they were laughing together.  “Can I… could we make a copy of this one?”
 
“Oh absolutely. We need to scan and make copies of all of them. I can’t believe all these years it never occurred to me to do that. Go ahead, do it now and save them to your tablet and mine. And send them to Willow too. She’ll make sure they’re archived somewhere.”
 
As Joyce stood up, Buffy’s phone rang. She took it from her pocket and frowned. “I don’t recognize this number….” She blinked when Bill’s face showed up, then vanished.
 
“I gave him your phone number and email address today,” Joyce said. “He asked for contact info, and the school would have it anyway, so I just gave it to him.” She peered at Buffy’s shocked expression. “Are you gonna answer it?”
 
The ringing had stopped by the time Buffy got around to nodding, but she immediately pressed the call back option and he was back on her screen smiling at her.
 
“Buffy?”
 
“H… hi, Bill. Sorry about that. It took me a while to answer.”
 
“No worries. I just wanted to talk to you.” He paused. “And I have something I want to show you…”
 
“What?” Buffy stared at the photos in Joyce’s hand and bit her lip. “I might have something to show you too. Just so you don’t think I’m crazy…”
 
“Ditto,” he said with a laugh. “I’m going to send a few old scanned pictures to you. Okay?”
 
Buffy waved Joyce toward the scanner and made hurry-up motions. “Sure, that’s fine. I might have some to send you too.”
 
“Here goes. This is my…. I don’t even know. It’s an old photo from the Pratt side of the—what’s wrong?”
 
Buffy hadn’t been able to muffle her “Oh God” at hearing Spike’s last name.  “No-nothing,” she said. “Please go on.”
 
Sounding dubious, he continued. “So, this is some old relative of mine. Like a great, great uncle or something. These are the only pictures my cousins in the UK have. It seems he died young, as so many people did back then.”
 
Buffy stared at her phone, where an almost exact duplicate of the photo Joyce was currently scanning was staring back at her. Except that the William Pratt in this photo was clearly human and uncomfortable about being photographed.
 
“He looks a lot like me, doesn’t he?”
 
“He does. He also looks a lot like… hold on, I’m sending you a photo.” Buffy brought up the picture Joyce had just sent her of vamp-Spike, and sent it to Bill. There was a long silence during which she could hear him breathing. Unable to contain herself, she said, “Bill? Do you think it’s the same man?”
 
“Sorry, Buffy. I’m just… I don’t even know. It’s just so weird.  And yes, I do think it’s the same… person. Just taken a few years apart, I’d guess.” He took an audible deep breath. “So, is he a vampire in that picture?”
 
“Oh yeah. Drusilla’s childe, part of the Scourge of Europe with his sire and Angelus and Darla. Pretty scary bunch for a long time.”
 
“What happened to them?”
 
“Oh, well, that gets… you probably don’t want to hear that it’s complicated, do you?”
 
“Not even a little bit.”
 
“’K, well, long story short, Angelus got cursed with a soul and ended up leaving them – or getting kicked out, depends of if you believe Angel or Spike – anyway, he left, then Darla left, and Spike and Dru went all over the place by themselves until she got almost killed by a mob in Prague and he came to Sunnydale to find a way to heal her.”
 
“Sunnydale?”
 
“Uh, yeah. Town to the south of here. Over a Hellmouth. It’s where I was living at the time.”
 
“I’m guessing there’s more to it than that.”
 
“Well, yes. But I just finished telling Joyce all about the history so she would understand about her father, and I’m really not up for more explaining right now. Especially to someone who would need to have everything explained. At least with Joyce, I can just say ‘magic’ and ‘portal’ and ‘demon’, and she knows what I’m talking about.”
 
“I can see that. I’m still working on ‘Hellmouth’ and Sunnydale, which – I googled it – seems to have… vanished? In an earthquake?”
 
“That was Spike,” Buffy said proudly. “Saving the world with me… again.”
 
Joyce had come back into the room with the photos, and set them down on the table.
 
“So, Mr. Patterson and I are related somehow?” She grinned when Buffy tried to shush her, but it was too late.
 
“Oh Jesus. She’s right. Her father is my…. great, great something or other. Uncle, I guess?”
 
“Hey, Cuz!” Joyce shouted into the phone, giggling when his groan was more than audible.
 
“You will explain to her that she can’t call me that at school, won’t you?” he pleaded with Buffy.  She smiled at his anguished face, which had replaced the photos on her screen.
 
“I think she knows better, but I’ll make sure she understands there will be consequences if she does anything stupid around you.” Buffy gave a still-giggling Joyce a glare to emphasize her words.
 
“Are there more pictures?” she asked suddenly. Buffy nodded and pointed upstairs. “Box under my bed. Help yourself, but scan them in before you take them anywhere. Some of them belonged to Spike, and I don’t want them lost.”
 
Joyce left the room, taking the stairs three at a time, and leaving Buffy to lean back and sigh. Bill’s expression was sympathetic.
 
“How did it go?”
 
“Better than it could have, I guess. I mean, thank God she’s a slayer and understands this world, so she didn’t get upset or angry that he was dead. It happens and she knows that. She’s not too happy that I waited this long to tell her about him. Turns out she thought I was lying all this time, and that it was just some one-night stand. When she gets over being mad about that, I think she’ll be happy to know her parents loved each other.”
 
“Must have been rough,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to do that because of me.”
 
Buffy shook her head. “I should have done it years ago. As soon as she was old enough to know the facts of life… and death. She probably would have been able to understand it a long time ago.” She smiled at him again. “This parenting thing is hard sometimes.”
 
“I’m sure it is. But everyone seems to get it right most of the time.”
 
“Well, cat’s out of the bag now… and hey, she’s got a cousin in her life.”
 
He groaned again. “I guess she does.  Anyway, at least now we have some sort of explanation for why I look so much like him. Just the genes arranging themselves in similar ways several generations apart.”
 
“Yep. That explains it.”  They stared at each other through the phones.
 
“So now what? Are you still available for dating, or am I off the list because of the man I’m related to?”
 
“Well, first I’d have to have a list… which as you well know, I don’t. And second of all… I don’t know. I guess it should feel weird, but it’s not like you’re related to me, just to my daughter.” She waited, but he didn’t say anything. “What do you want to do?”
 
“I want to get to know you better. All the ways I can. But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. And I can understand why it might seem… odd… to be dating the great nephew of your former lover…husband…boyfriend?”
 
“Let’s just call him my partner. That’s what he was for years. We never got around to the wedding because – Uh… I don’t think you don’t need to know about vampire claiming rituals, so never mind that.  We felt married, and we were always busy and just expected we’d have time to do it later. I never thought much about it until I had Joyce. And by then it was too late.”
 
“All right. So my great, great was your partner. Is that going to be too weird for you to have dinner with me again tomorrow night?”
 
Buffy hesitated long enough that she could see his expression change from hopeful to disappointed, then quickly answered.  “I’d love to.” She smiled to emphasize her sincerity.
 
“Oh good!” He grinned in relief. “I was afraid I’d be reduced to having to stalk you or something.”
 
Buffy was quite proud of the way she controlled her expression as she replied, “Probably not a good idea to stalk someone who can kill you with one punch.”
 
“And with that reminder of how very much you are not like anyone I’ve ever met before, I’ll just let you get back to whatever you were doing.”
 
“I suspect I’m going to be explaining people and places to my daughter most of the night,” she said with a sigh. “But I promise to try to get enough sleep not to be baggy-eyed and cranky tomorrow.”
 
He laughed. “Don’t care if you are,” he said. “I’ll pick you up around 6:30? We’ll go someplace casual where we can talk.”
 
“Okay. See you then.”
 
“Goodnight, Buffy.”
 
“Goodnight, Bill.”