Disclaimer: The characters are Joss Whedon's, and any remaining mistakes are mine. Thanks so much to SanityFair for being my beta. Thanks to my readers for sticking with me. Just a couple more chapters!

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Chapter 24 – Out of Dreams

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“You’re beneath me.”
 
Cecily’s cold, haughty voice replayed over and over in William’s mind as he walked blindly through the streets of London. He tried his best to keep up his reserved exterior, but his distress was evident nonetheless, and when someone bumped into him his “Watch where you’re going!” came out strangled. He finally found a quiet alley to duck into and sat down on a bale of hay at the back of a stable to attempt to compose himself.
 
What did you expect, William? he admonished himself. You have been chasing a chimera for your entire life. He reflected bitterly that this was literally true. Ever since he was a boy he had dreamed of a girl, the same girl night after night. As a child she had appeared like the heroine of a fairy tale, a magical princess who wielded swords like a knight but looked like an angel. The dreams were sometimes terrifying; with blood sucking monsters and demons, but always the blonde haired girl saved the day.
 
As he got older, the dreams changed. Sometimes there was still fighting and monsters but not always. There were dreams in which he was kissing the golden girl, looking into her green eyes. “I love you, William,” she would say. The first time he had woken up with sticky sheets he had nearly died of embarrassment. However as he got older, and life became more difficult, he looked forward to the dreams of making love to this woman, holding her, kneeling before her. In some dreams he was wounded and she tended him, or he joined her in her battles. But always there was the deep feeling of love and connection, as if she knew his inmost secrets and loved him all the more for them. Every poem he wrote was for her, and every woman he met was measured next to his dream and found wanting.
 
Then his mother got sick, and everything changed. The little winter cough didn’t go away, but grew worse and worse until it was clear that she had the consumption. He realized that she would not live forever, and he knew she longed to see him settled down with a good wife before she died. So he tried to put aside his vision of the ideal woman and come down to earth to interact with the girls of his social set. He had thought that Cecily Underwood would come close to the woman of his dreams. She was witty, and beautiful, strong willed and vivacious. He had tried his best, but the poems he wrote for her were trite and laughable and did nothing to win her in the end. Her cold dismissal still made his cheeks burn as he sat, getting straw stuck to his good trousers, tearing up the poem that her cretin of a cousin had held up as an object of ridicule. Forget it, William, he told himself. You’re destined to live alone.
 
After wallowing in despair and self-pity for a long time he rubbed his face with a sigh. He had better be getting home to Mother. He stood up and brushed off his suit, took a deep breath and started for the end of the alley. Halfway to the street he heard a faint noise, coming from the other end of the alley. He turned and noticed that down at the other end, sitting on a packing crate of some sort was a young girl weeping her heart out with her hands over her face. He was moved with both concern and curiosity. What would a girl be doing here alone at this hour of the night? Had she been hurt? He walked slowly down the alley toward her, not wanting to startle the poor lass. He stopped about ten feet away and said, “Miss, are you all right? May I be of some assistance?”
 
The girl shook her head. “Thank you, you’re very kind but…” She had looked up, wiping her eyes on the backs of her hands, but when she saw William’s face her words petered out as her eyes widened in astonishment.
 
William stepped forward unthinkingly, his mouth dropping open. “My God. It’s you,” he whispered in disbelief. For there, in front of him, in the flesh, was the girl of his dreams.
 
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Buffy had come to the alley after another long day of searching. She had popped into existence in a large storehouse near the Thames. There had been crates and barrels to hide behind while she changed into her period dress and stashed her modern clothes in her bag. She had wandered around until she found a policeman and had told her story. She had spun a tale of how she and her mother had been traveling here from America, to allow her mother to see some relations. Her mother had been sick for a while, but it was thought that she would survive the trip. Sadly, she had died en route, and she, Elizabeth Summers, was now alone and adrift in London. Buffy had figured that calling herself Elizabeth would require fewer explanations than the diminutive she had been saddled with at birth. The policeman had kindly directed her to a simple but respectable boarding house run by a matron named Mrs. Oliver. Mrs. Oliver in turn had helped her to find the local pawnbroker, where she had been able to sell some of her jewelry for a tidy sum. She had used the proceeds to pay for a month’s rent on a small attic room, and had added a second dress to her wardrobe.
 
With a base of operations established, she hit the streets daily, ostensibly to seek the relations she had never met, whose contact information had been lost during the voyage. The other girls at the boarding house were either daily cleaning help or factory workers and were curious about the strange American. Buffy tried her best to be polite, but she lived in fear of being caught in her deception. She had thought that getting to London traveling through time would be the hard part, but she was unprepared for the morass that was London. Accurate maps seemed difficult to come by, and there were countless small byways and alleys with confusing names. There seemed to be no Victorian equivalent of the phone book either, so trying to find someone was no easy task. She also was aware of the fact that as a single woman with a foreign accent she was treated as a dreadful foreigner at best, and a probable prostitute at worst. The class of people who were most likely to have heard of the Pratts were the least likely to deign to speak to her.
 
On this particular day she had found a hansom cab driver who said he had heard of Marsten Terrace and she had decided to spend some of her limited funds on the fare. When she had gotten out and he had driven away, however, she found herself in Marsten Road, which was a street of shops clear across London from where she had started. Since then she had been trying to make her way back to the boarding house, but she was now hopelessly lost, tired, and depressed. She had sat down to rest her aching feet in their tight boots in this dark alley, wondering what she was doing here. The Oracles did warn you, she admonished herself bitterly. They told you it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk.
 
Now in the depths of her despair she had heard a gentle male voice saying, “Miss, are you all right?” and her heart ached with the sound. So much like Spike. Everyone around here sounds just like him but they’re not him. But when she looked up everything else fell away. It was him. He was wearing little wire rimmed spectacles, and his hair was curling every which way and brown, not bleached. It didn’t matter – she would know those eyes anywhere. Her brain could scarcely compute what her eyes were seeing, but she felt her heart begin to pound in her chest. It’s him. Oh my God, I found him. She was struck dumb with astonishment.
 
She might have sat there staring at him indefinitely but he stepped forward with a similar look of astonishment and said, “My God, it’s you,” in voice full of wonder.
 
“Do… do you know me?” she asked when she found her tongue.
 
“I feel as though I do, as though I always have,” he said as if in a dream. Then he shook himself and seemed embarrassed, pushing up his glasses nervously. “Forgive me, I have forgotten my manners. I heard your… your distress and wondered if I could render some aid?”
 
“I’m lost,” Buffy began explaining. “I was trying to find my way back to my boarding house.” Words were very difficult to come by as her speech centers were overwhelmed by the utter joy of seeing him again.
 
“Perhaps I could help set you on the right path then,” William answered. “My name is William Pratt, by the way.”
 
“I’m B… Elizabeth. Elizabeth Summers.”
 
“Then Miss Summers, perhaps you will permit me to guide you?” His proper exterior masked a frantically rushing heartbeat.
 
“Of course,” Buffy replied. Play it cool. Don’t frighten him off. But even as she followed him to the end of the alley she changed her mind and decided that cool wasn’t going to happen. “Wait,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Can you tell me what you meant? You said ‘It’s you’ like you know me. How do you know me?”
 
William blushed to the roots of his hair. “I must have been mistaken,” he mumbled.
 
“No, really, you can tell me,” Buffy insisted.
 
William waged an internal battle then said, “You will think me mad as a hatter.”
 
“Trust me, I’ve heard and seen a lot,” she reassured him. When he hesitated again she put a hand on his arm gently. “Please,” she whispered.
 
There was something about the earnest look in the girl’s green eyes that gave William the courage to speak. “Ever since I was a young lad I’ve dreamed, nearly every night, of a girl exactly like you.”
 
He expected the girl to recoil, or cut him with some remark, or question his sanity. He was therefore amazed when she said, “I’ve dreamed of you too. Do you believe in fate?”
 
“I don’t know. I’d like to, but it doesn’t seem to have had much in mind for me as yet,” William admitted.
 
Still speaking carefully so as not to scare him off, Buffy said, “I believe we were meant to meet. I have traveled a very long way, and I never thought I would find what I was looking for. But I think I’ve found what I was meant to find somehow.”
 
Wondering when he was going to wake up from this particular dream, William pushed up his glasses once more and looked deep into Buffy’s face, marveling at the joy and relief he found there. He had no idea why meeting him was a source of such pleasure for Miss Summers, but he suddenly didn’t care. “Miss Summers, I don’t mean to be forward, but I find I would like to spend more time making your acquaintance.”
 
“I’d like that too, Mr. Pratt,” Buffy replied with a smile. “Perhaps you could accompany me back to my lodging?”
 
A smile broke over William’s face as well. “I would be most honored to do so.” He offered his arm, and she took it, following him out into the London night, which suddenly seemed a much more inviting place.
 
TBC