Spike was standing in the sunlight, untouched and unafraid in the way of dreams. He was in the slayer’s backyard, but there were weapons everywhere: swords and axes, arrows and strange, multi-edged things he had never seen before, all sticking out of the ground. He picked his way around them, careful to not snag his coat on the blood-smeared blades, and made his way to the back porch.

It was then that he saw someone he had not seen in a long time and would never have expected: Joyce. The woman was sitting on a wooden bench, sipping from a tall glass of lemonade. Spike stopped for a moment at the top of the steps and just looked at her. She was younger than he remembered, healthy and beautiful in a simple yellow sundress, her hair thick and shiny around her shoulders. She was smiling at him with the same welcoming warmth that had drawn him to her kitchen counter instead of her neck once upon a time.

“I’ve missed you, mum,” he said, voice rough with emotion.

“But you come by and see me all the time,” she replied, and patted the spot on the bench next to her. “The neighbors can be noisy, but when the Chosen speaks, they tend to quiet down so I can hear.”

In the dream, her strange words only rated a nod and a soft smile. It was the same smile he had once reserved for his own mother. “I never doubted.” He sat down at her side and looked back out into the yard. The field of weapons was gone, replaced by lapping waves. The sun glittered on the clear water.

“I made you a drink,” she said. A mug of hot chocolate appeared in the woman’s other hand, and Spike accepted it with a murmured thanks. He looked into the steaming mug, tiny marshmallows just like he loved, before taking a hesitant sip. It tasted like home.

Joyce reached out and brushed a hand over his hair. “Don’t worry William,” she said, gentle fingers soothing the sudden trepidation he felt. Loose tendrils fell in front of his eyes, honey brown. Suddenly there were glasses perched on his nose and he was wearing the brown suit he had worn the night Drusilla had turned him. “They never saw you coming. No one did, but you were never one for plans, were you?”

Her hand dropped to her lap again, and she sipped from her lemonade, ice tinkling musically against the glass. “Tell her to stop skimping on the cream. She cries at night sometimes because it’s too thin. They both do.”

“I will, Joyce, if she’ll listen.” There was no doubt in his mind who Joyce meant.

The woman patted his knee through the stiff brown fabric. “I think she might. This isn’t the task you were chosen for, Chosen, but it might be the most important one in the end. I know I can trust you.”

The two sat in silence, enjoying their drinks and the sound of the waves where they crashed against the wooden supports. With his keen eyes, Spike noticed a dark smudge on the horizon. “A storm’s coming.”

“I know,” replied Joyce, unworried. “Call it another test or chess, but you’re getting a lot of attention from high places, for better or worse.”

“Who?”

“Them. The ones who chose you and the ones they represent. They’ve watched her for a while, but you’re the new player on the field. Speaking of which, could you take this inside?” she held up her empty glass. “I’d like to enjoy the view for a little longer, and it’s sure to bring ants.”

Spike stood and carried the two cups to the door. As he opened it to step inside, he called back jokingly, “I live to serve.”

“Man,” Joyce continued. “But I don’t think it’s a cookbook anymore.”

He found himself in the door of his crypt, but it was full of billowing strips of gauze. The dirty, white fabric varied in size from wispy threads held together by the barest of weaves to sheet-like swaths of cloth. Shadows of figures played along the fabric, illuminated by some unknown light source further into the crypt. Spike thought he could see glimpses of a woman slipping through the hanging gauze as he made his way to the battered cabinet that served as his kitchen counter. She had dark skin, hair, and eyes, at least what little he could see under the caked layers of clay, and moved like a stalking cat, crouched, low, and silent. She was dressed in the same white cloth that filled the room and was carrying a long, twisted stake.

That certainly didn’t go very far to set the vampire at ease. The glasses in his hand disappeared, replaced by a similar weapon. He looked at the stake and saw that his arm was covered in his familiar black leather again. Suitably armed and armored, he looked up again and found the strange woman facing him, not four feet away. Leonine hair framing her hollow-cheeked face, which was painted to resemble a death’s head. The sudden sharpening of his eyesight and fangs accompanied the change in Spike’s features.

Neither one moved or spoke, but in their appraisal of one another, a decision was made. The strange woman jerked her head in a brief nod and faded into the hanging gauze again, disappearing before his very eyes.

A delicate hand touched his shoulder, and Spike whirled, spinning strips of cloth around him in his wake. A young woman stood in front of him, creamy skin offset by long red hair. And by red, he meant red, like blood or his favorite silk shirt. Solid red eyes, wide and slightly tilted, gave her an even more exotic appearance. An embroidered dress, worked to resemble rows of crimson scales, hugged her slender form, and conspicuously bare feet completed her appearance. She was beautiful, there was no denying that, but the vampire felt more kinship to her than attraction.

All is new.

The voice in his head was familiar, but the source confused him for a moment.

“Meret?” he finally asked, shocked. The girl tilted her head to one side and looked at him, but she did not blink. Never her. Now that he looked closer, black tipped, red feathers were scattered through her hair, and her strange eyes, lidless but rimmed in thick lashes, were certainly the coatl’s. It was more than a little disconcerting.

This is how you see me, so this is how you see me. Come.

She reached out a hand again, and Spike took it. “Where are we going?” he asked as she led him back out of the crypt.

To her.

And sure enough, as soon as they stepped out of the crypt, they found themselves standing in front of Buffy and another woman. The two were seated at a folding table with an ornate tea set arranged between them. The rest of the room was lined with strange plants and bones, bundled together and attached to every available surface. Spike looked at the girl who was also Meret in confusion.

You touch the Dream now.

With a flash, Meret assumed her normal serpentine form and disappeared. He turned back to the scene in front of him and found the two women watching him. Buffy was dressed in a pair black slacks, a wispy, tie-back top, and her favorite black boots, the kind that were equally good at turning heads and kicking demons. However, when she turned her head and looked at the other woman, her attire changed. For a moment she was dressed in torn, white rags and mud covered her body like the woman Spike had seen in his crypt just moments before.

“Never pegged you for the Boris Karloff look, love,” he said.

She looked at him and she was suddenly back in her regular clothes, hair hanging in silken waves instead of tangles lanks. “It’s all the rage in England. I thought you’d like it.” Her eyes were bright and unworried.

“I do, but the clay must play hell on the upholstery,” he looked at the woman sitting across from Buffy and noticed for the first time that she seemed to be decaying right in front of his eyes. “But maybe that’s overrated,” he commented, noticing the dust and other, less savory things that were collecting around the hem of the woman’s old fashioned, black dress. Her skin was grey and mottled, and patches had fallen away to reveal the muscle below. Only her strangely familiar eyes seemed untouched by time, and Spike found the greenish orbs more than a little disconcerting.

The woman scowled, angular, dried features made even more severe by her tight bun and high-necked outfit. “I take my tea without milk,” she hissed, and the force of her exclamation knocked a dried piece of dead skin loose from her forehead. It fell onto her wire rimmed glasses, apparently obscuring her sight. With a jerky movement, she whipped the wire-rimmed bifocals from her face and retrieved a handkerchief from somewhere in the folds of her skirt. She cleaned the lenses violently, her jerky motions sending other flecks of decayed flesh floating to the floor. “I take my flesh the same.” With that, the woman’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed into dust, skeleton skittering across the floor in an exact replication of the scene in the Crawford Street mansion.

Spike kicked the skull away where it had come to rest by his foot. “I see the neighborhood hasn’t improved.” he commented.

Buffy rose from her seat and shrugged. “She wanted to share a cup of tea, but Giles told me to never trust a woman who serves tea without biscuits.”

The vampire’s lips twitched with suppressed mirth. He pointed to the cookies on the silver platter. “Those are biscuits, love.”

“No, they’re cookies. I should know. I’ll be one soon.” Buffy was again dressed in rags and mud for a moment and she looked at the vampire curiously. “Something’s different. Why are you here?”

“Looking for the other side of his coin,” a voice replied behind the vampire. Spike whirled to find an old man, ancient but hale, leaning casually against the wall. He was dressed in a faded, green robe with strange designs on the hem and had green feathers woven into his iron-grey hair. Spike blinked in surprise when he noticed that the old man had solid green eyes, as lidless as Meret’s had been. “Elaine was just a figment, but it was good that you did not drink from her cup, child of my brother, Child of Life. Her family has toyed with my charges for too long. I don’t like meddlers.”

The room flickered and their surroundings ran like wet paint. The grey swirled into bright colors, which in turn solidified into the Bronze. People were dancing to a complex, primal drumbeat. Spike could see Willow and Xander, Tara and Anya among the gyrating bodies. They seemed to glow in the smoky room. “Dance with them, Child of Life; the Dream is changing and your steps will guide its path.” Grinning like a schoolgirl, Buffy went to her friends and joined in their patternless movements. Soon, her steps slipped into the rhythm and Spike was transfixed.

The old man laid a hand on the vampire’s shoulder. “You should go to her, child of mine, Child of Death. The Dream is dancing to accommodate you, after all. It’s been a long time since her line of Chosen was selected. Old habits and the cosmic hierarchies die hard. I would think you would like dancing the death of the old order.”

“Never a better time,” Spike replied, eyes following the slayer’s every move. Without another word, he glided forward, smooth and silent like the predator he was. Buffy saw his approach when she glanced over one shoulder, but did not move away when his hands slipped around her waist and he joined her dance, move for move.

The vampire looked back at the old man and found him smiling next to a copy of himself, dressed in red robes. The man in red looked curious, but cautious. Over the drums, Spike heard the man in green say “Sineya let him in, which is unprecedented. She knows better than most that the Dead need a defender as much as the living.”

“They won’t always see eye to eye on this,” the man in red replied.

“Do Life and Death ever? Leave them be, brother. Greater powers than us decreed this. It is done.” With twin looks of understanding, or perhaps it was antipathy, the two men faded into the darkness, leaving the room to the dancers.

The warrior in Spike’s arms and the driving music slowly overwhelmed all of the vampire’s senses until there was nothing left but Buffy and the driving beat of drums. He pulled her closer and they danced, because that was all they had ever done. And the Dream danced with them.

*****

Wakefulness came slowly to the vampire. Sounds intruded on his consciousness first: the shallow breaths of the sleeping coatl on the pillow next to him, the raucous call of a crow somewhere outside, the drip of water further down one of the adjoining tunnels. Then smells: Meret’s earthy tang, cigarettes, the vanilla candle that had managed to find its way in amongst all of his unscented ones. He basked in the microcosm of his crypt for many minutes, savoring the stimuli that came to him in the wake of one of the strangest, but most rejuvenating, dreams of his unlife.

When he finally opened his eyes, he found one green feather in his left hand.