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The Tin Bird by Spikez_tart
 
The Dark and The Light
 
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Tin bird

DISCLAIMER: Joss owns the characters and makes the money. I right the wrongs of the Evil Writers who refused to get Buffy and Spike together where they belonged.

SPECIAL THANKS: Extra special thanks to nmcil for her inspiring banner. You can see more of her fabulous work at href = “http://www.whedonworld.com”

NOTES: To the regular Tart Groupies, this is not my usual type of story (you know, snarking and ironic smart-assery), but I hope you’ll enjoy a walk to the angsty side of William’s life. The story takes place a few days before the events of William’s life shown in Fool for Love.

HISTORY of HARROD’S – For all us American types, Harrods is a fabulous department store, which was started in 1849 by Charles Digby Harrod. His store motto Omnia Omnibus Ubiqu' - all things for all people. In 1883, three years after William became a vampire, the store burned to the ground.

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Chapter 1 – The Dark and The Light


Sunnydale

Lavender-grey twilight was falling when Buffy slipped into Spike’s crypt after a grinding day at the DoubleMeat Palace. Spike wasn’t home, although the television was playing.

“Never around when I need him. Must have snuck out for some ciggies,” she said to herself. “Or, some refreshing violence before bed. No, before breakfast.” She pushed away the thought that there was something unpleasant about the idea of having sex with a person – no, a vampire – who’s first thought in the morning was killing and death.

She was disappointed. He’d be back before long, but she’d looked forward to him rubbing her shoulders for her and soothing away the day’s hassles. This day had been worse than usual. Her cash register came up short and she’d had to make up the balance of $19.80 out of her own money. Once, she would have been considered such a sum as mere change, but these days a twenty dollar bill was earned hard and missed hard when it vanished.

She poked her head down the hole to the lower level. “Spike, you down there?” No answer. She jumped down the hole, without bothering with the metal ladder, and landed hard on her feet. The lower level was empty, but a couple of candles flickered and cut into the blue shadows. He knew she was coming, which both annoyed and pleased her. She took off her boots and plopped into the middle of the bed and stretched out. Spike’s bed was always made up and the pillows always smoothed. He swung to extremes, wildly sloppy or fastidiously neat. She didn’t know what to make of that.

After a moment, she grew restless and got up again. She walked around the room, touching Spike’s few belongings. Other than the bed and the white candles that dabbed light onto the walls, there was nothing much in the room. Three shirts – one red and one royal blue and a black one with patterns, a couple of tee shirts folded and placed on a shelf cut into the stone walls and a can of lighter fluid. Nothing more.

Then, she spotted a stone in the wall that seemed out of place. She might not have noticed it, except the cement that should have held it in place was missing all the way around the squared off rock. She pulled it out and saw a small, wooden box. She took out the box and sat on the bed. The box was dark wood with some inlaid lighter pieces that made a pattern of flowers. The wood was polished to a soft glow and looked old. Old as Spike.

She shouldn’t open the box. It was Spike’s private stuff. She hated when she found out that he’d snooped into her things, looking into her underwear drawer, for example. “I’ll just put this back.” The box looked old enough to have belonged to Spike when he was still alive. She hardly knew anything about the human William. He never talked about his former life and got bad moody whenever she brought the subject up. She didn’t want to know about the vampire part of his life, though she suspected he would be more than willing to brag about that. She ran her hand over the top of the box. She should put this away.

She opened the box.

Inside were a few photographs and a small blob of something wrapped in white tissue and tied with a rusty, black satin ribbon.

“Spike wouldn’t mind if I looked at his pictures.”

She touched the white tissue. It looked like it had been tied up a century ago, and considering Spike, maybe it had been. She burned to know what had been so important that he’d carried it around for decades.

She picked up the first picture. “I’ll just look at the pictures and put this away and Spike won’t even know that I saw this.” He would know, of course. He’d sniff her scent on his things. Too late to worry about that. He’d be mad or he wouldn’t. She might as well look.

The first picture was tinted soft brown with age. An old lady with white hair wearing a black dress stared back at her. Her hands were folded over a bible and she looked serious, but kind. Spike’s mother. Buffy turned the photo face down. She didn’t care to dwell about what might have happened to Spike’s mother, what happened to the mothers of most vampires.

She recognized Drusilla in the next photo. Drusilla wore a white, lacy gown and white boots with buttons up the sides. There were photos of Angel and Darla, more photos of Drusilla and one of Spike with long hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She studied that one. Spike, or William, as he must have still been, looked awkward and girlish. It was hard to match this image with the tough, snarky Spike that she knew. Would she even have liked the human William, or would she have thought he was silly like one of the science nerds at high school, no hottie and not worthy of consideration?

She flipped over several more photographs of people she didn’t recognize, including a dark-haired girl named Cecily. When she turned over the last photograph, she found a thick piece of black-edged paper. She opened the paper and found a colored Christmas card with two angels – one blond and one brunette. “Like me and Drusilla.” Dark and light, like all the extremes in Spike’s life. The Slayer or The Vampire. No plain girls in between, no middling mousy browns or washed out red-heads. She put the photographs and the card back in the box.

The only item left was the white package. She touched it again and scooted the black ribbon off.


 
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