“You won’t like it.” His eyes dropped to the floor.

Buffy watched Spike for another moment before, certain that he was himself, she scooted closer. She was startled for a second by the unusual expression on his face. He looked scared, genuinely unabashedly scared. Though she was sure that he’d been frightened in her presence many times before, Buffy couldn’t really think of more than a couple of times he’d shown it. Spike almost always hid his fear behind a display of bravado and attitude. But he didn’t this time. She sighed. It was heartbreaking to know that he feared her more than anything else and that it had nothing to do with her being The Slayer.

She reached her hand forward awkwardly to pat his arm. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is-we just need to figure out how to get The First out of your head.”

He nodded, but still couldn’t meet her eyes. The shame was simply a part of him; it had been with him for so long that he could barely remember a time when he hadn’t felt it. His mind reeled through memories and questions. He wondered if he would even be able to explain his feelings to her. Was there any chance that she could accept that a soulless vampire had felt all that he had? Could she possibly understand that anyone could be as stupid and naïve as he’d been? Even if she did accept all of his truths, even if she believed that he’d had only good intentions, Spike had to wonder if it would matter.

“My mother sang that song to me-when I was young.” He inhaled quickly and sighed. “She sang it.”

Buffy frowned. She didn’t know what exactly she’d been expecting him to say but she knew that she hadn’t been expecting that. She tried to remember if he had ever even mentioned his mom before that day. It was strange for her to even think of Spike as someone who had a mother. A horrible thought occurred to her.

“Spike, did your mom...” She tried to keep her voice soft. “Did she…Were you abused?”

He looked at her with shock-widened eyes. “What? No! She was a good mum. She’d never--”

Her hands came up in surrender. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand why the song works. I thought maybe it made you angry.”

“It doesn’t.” He shook his head. Anger wasn’t really the issue. Pain, maybe. Self disgust, certainly. The song reminded him that he was nothing but a worthless monster. No one had ever loved him. Not even his own mother.

Buffy slid her arm around his shoulders. “Spike, whatever it is--”

“I killed her.”

She swallowed hard. “Oh, I…” She felt sick to her stomach. She knew that a lot of vampires killed their families, but she hadn’t really expected to learn that Spike had.

“I was trying to save her, Buffy.” He looked at her intently, almost desperately. “You have to believe me. I know it doesn’t change things, but I was trying to save her.” He could feel her hand on his back trembling and knew that she wanted to pull away. “Please.” His whispered plea was directed as much towards himself as it was towards her. He was trying so hard to be a good man. He had to tell her the truth, but he needed the strength to do it.

Her eyes narrowed and she nodded once. “Ok, Spike. I believe you.” And she did, with Spike she knew that nothing was ever quite how it appeared on the surface. She pushed back her natural reflexes and tried to keep an open mind.

A touch of surprise showed on his face before he went on. “She was sick. She’d been sick for so long and the doctors—the bloody doctors and their tonics and leeches—she was dying and I just wanted…I wanted to save her.”

Buffy tightened the arm she had on his shoulders and waited for him to continue.

He started to get lost in the story. She watched as a far-away look came to his eyes and tried not to get lost in thoughts of her own mother.

“I didn’t even want to go to the party. I went for her. It was expected. Had to keep up appearances.” He exhaled and closed his eyes. “It made her happy to think that I was accepted there, so I played my part. The next day I’d have entertained her with clever anecdotes and gossip. She liked that. So I dressed. I went to the party, let them mock me.”

Spike hated admitting to his weak past. He knew that it was ridiculous, that Buffy would certainly not agree, but a part of him wished that he’d been telling her the truth that day at the Bronze. A part of him thought that being a bad man was still better than being no man.

Buffy fought the urge to interrupt with questions. The Slayer was a busy girl. She rarely allowed others the luxury of taking their time when a curt “get to the point” would do the trick. She knew that today would have to be one of the rare exceptions. She was going to let Spike tell the whole story, in his own way and in his own time. She forced herself to relax against him and rubbed his back encouragingly.

“It wasn’t really anything new. But there was a girl. A man’s pride can only take so much. I took the long way home, didn’t send for the coach.” He shrugged. “I figured my mum would be asleep by the time I got in. Wouldn’t ever need know that I’d left the party so early. She didn’t get out much. So sick. Doctors wouldn’t tell me the truth, but I knew. She knew. Bloody hell. She kept up such a brave face, but she knew.”

It was his story. It was a part of him, but it had been a long time. Soul or no, he wasn’t the same man. He could still remember every hurt. The sting of each rejection, the loneliness, the impotence and uselessness in the face of his mother’s pain and inevitable death still burned. Yet beside them all were screams of frustration from the stronger man he’d become. He could never forgive himself for sitting idly by when he should have been fighting. That in the end, it was his actions and not his inaction that caused the most harm was only an ironic final twist of his self-inflicted sword to the heart.

He brought his eyes up to hers for a moment. “That’s when it happened, you know?” At her frown of confusion, he explained. “Drusilla. She found me. Turned me. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t fight anything back then, but I wouldn’t have.”

Buffy nodded and whispered. “You wanted to die.”

He shook his head firmly. “Didn’t see it as death. I didn’t know…I saw it as power. She had power. I could feel it, even then, I could feel it coming off of her in waves and I knew it was dark. I didn’t know the details. Blood. Death. Didn’t ask. She offered to make me more than I was and I…I was nothing.”

Buffy shook her head but kept her denials to herself. She wasn’t really sure her presence was even on Spike’s radar at that moment.

“She buried me, you know? Looney bird. There’s no need really, but Dru was never really a practical sort. So I woke up, stripped naked, sharing a casket with someone who’d been dead more than a bit longer than me and buried in dirt. I choked on it. Once I broke through the casket and all the earth dropped in on me, I gagged on it. Didn’t need to breath, of course, but I didn’t know it. So I had to dig myself out. I felt the power immediately.”

He looked up at her then and turned suddenly so that he could meet her eyes with an intense gaze. “I was a new man. In that moment, when I pushed out of the ground I felt stronger, more…more like a man, than I had ever felt when I was one.” He saw the frown form between Buffy’s eyebrows but continued. “Nothing was going to hold me back. All the people whose opinions had seemed so bloody important a day earlier were nothing to me.”

“Dru took me hunting, right away that first night, and it was…” He trailed off as though he couldn’t find the words he needed.

“Food?”

“No. I mean yes, but it was more. I loved it. It was forbidden and no one could stop me. The thrill was…it was life.” He paused as a new pain filled his eyes. “All those people—I didn’t even see them, Buffy—just the crunch. I killed them. I didn’t hate them. They were just—nothing. It was only about me. I couldn’t see past my own bloody feelings. The power, the control-I felt like I was finally alive. Becoming a vampire didn’t feel like death, it felt like living. And I wanted to share that. I loved my mum, Buffy. I loved her. I wanted her to live forever.”

She nodded. There were tears in her eyes. “I can understand that.”

Wrapping his arms around her, Spike pulled her into a tight hug. They comforted each other silently for a moment, before Buffy pulled away and swiped at the tears on her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“What happened?” She knew that there was more to the story. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.

Spike nodded. “She hated me. My own mother…hated me.” He couldn’t pull his gaze up from the floorboards.

“For turning her.”

He shook his head but didn’t look up. “No. That—she didn’t seem to mind that—said it gave her new eyes or some such. No, it was me, she hated me. Said she always had.”

“No, she—”

Horror filled his eyes as he relived the few moments he spent with his mother after she had risen. “Said she should’ve killed me, bashed my head in to spare her a lifetime of my wretched presence. She said that I wanted—that I turned her because I wanted to—” He barely held back a gag reflex. “She hated me.”

“Oh Spike. She didn’t mean it, she couldn’t have--”

“Why not?” He glanced over at her with a tortured expression.

“You loved her, you wouldn’t have--”

Spike gave a short and bitter-edged laugh. “You gonna tell me that I wouldn’t love someone who thought I was shit, beneath her, nothing?”

Buffy’s eyes widened and she turned away. She couldn’t take back the horrid words. She had said so many ugly things to him, called him so many names that he didn’t deserve. It didn’t even matter that she hadn’t ever really believed most of it. She couldn’t take back the hurt she’d caused and that only made it harder to ease the pain that had come before she’d entered his life. His mother had loved him. Buffy simply didn’t doubt it, but she was at a loss when it came to convincing him. And she knew, as soon as he’s said it, she knew that this fear was his biggest one. Buffy was sure that this was the pain that The First was tapping into. It made sense; Spike sought love with a desperation she had never seen in another person. He needed to know that his mother had loved him.

What could she say? She wanted to tell him that he was lovable, that he’d been far too appealing even when he shouldn’t have been, that if he could tug her heart strings as a monster that he must certainly have held love as a man. She couldn’t. It was too much. She just wasn’t ready for the truth that lay in those words and thoughts. She’d been all too close to in love with him before, saying that now…

She turned back slowly. “She raised you?”

Spike looked confused by the question. He paused a moment before nodding.

“She raised you to be a loving man, to love her and to treat…to treat others with…” She stopped and sighed. “You love so much, so—hard—that had to come from somewhere.” She smiled suddenly. “Spike, she sang to you. You said it. She sang to her son.”

It gave him a pause. He could see where she was headed. It was hard to imagine someone taking the time to sing lullabies to a child the despised. “But the things she said, Buffy—”

“It wasn’t her.”

Spike frowned. “The demon.”

Buffy nodded. “Before—before you turned her—did you ever think that she might…did you—”

“I was her world. I always knew that I was her world.”

Buffy smiled encouragingly. “It was just the demon. She lost herself.”

Spike shook his head. “I lost her. I did it.”

She sighed. “You meant well.”

“Doesn’t change things.”

“No.” She nodded in agreement. “But I bet she would have forgiven you.”

He snorted. “Yeah. She always thought that I was better than I was.” He smiled sadly.

She reached up and gently cupped his cheek. She waited for his eyes to meet hers before she spoke the words that she knew he needed to hear. “She’d be proud, now. She’d see the man you are now and she would be proud.”

He blinked back his tears and nodded his gratitude if not his agreement. “You’d have like her, my mum.”

“Will you tell me about her?”

Nodding, Spike stood up and reached his hand down to offer her help standing up. He chuckled softly as she stood up and he tucked her hand around his elbow. “Now mind you, she was all proper by the time I came along, but I always caught whispers from the servants.”

“Ooh.” Buffy giggled softly. “And?”

“Seems my mum was an adventurous girl—rode about without her sidesaddle—called my father by his Christian name before the wedding—she may even have been seen licking frosting from her finger while she thought no one was looking.” He winked.

“That is shocking.” She laughed.

“Yeah, she used to send my nurse away all the time. Wanted to take care of me herself. That caused a bit of fuss I guess.”

“Yeah, I think I would have really liked your mom.”

“Thank you.”

Confused, Buffy frowned slightly.

“It’s been weighing on me—that bit—it’s been on me for a long while, but you’re right. I was her world.”

Buffy nodded. She could see that. His mother would have loved the way he did, fully and without fail. She wondered if she could love like that. She was feeling more than tempted to try.