Note: Thanks to my betas MadRog and t_geyer for their unending patience, perseverance and support.


SECTION 3 - FAMILY TREE

...This is the time and place
To bring out our memories
It’s written on every face
I can see it in you
You can see it in me

In all the years we had
As part of a family tree
We knew the good and bad
I can see it in you
You can see it in me...

...It’s time to leave all that behind
It’s time to lay that ghost to rest
We can’t deny the ties that bind
Tonight we’re going to sing out
Tonight our light will shine

(Gerry Rafferty, Album - Night Owl)



Chapter 3.01
Tuesday, May 14th, 2002

Spike knew he was making a tit of himself, the way he couldn't stop staring at the vision that confronted him from the opposite side of the helicopter, but he couldn't bring himself to care. So what if he was staring at Buffy? She wasn't complaining, and he didn't see it was anybody else's business.

Given his preoccupation, the noise of the helicopter as they shifted from vertical to horizontal movement and the general bustle of twelve bodies trying to get comfortable in limited space, he was surprised that he actually caught it, but he did. Maybe, something about his shift of concentration caught Angel's attention, or maybe he too had managed to filter out the background noise. Whatever it was, Angel's slight nod was enough to confirm they'd both heard it.

"Hey! Englebert! Why 's your leg beeping?"

"Why 's my.? Ay carrumba!" Lorne pulled up his pant leg slightly to reveal the forgotten lowjack, which now had a little red LED flashing on and off.

"Jesus Christ! Land! Land! Put this thing back down!" Spike yelled at the pilots in a voice that reminded Buffy not a little of a certain Thanksgiving. The blond scrambled to beat Angel in the race to unfasten their seatbelts. Of course, none of the humans were able to differentiate which of the vampires was the winner. All they knew was one minute they were both in their seats, and the next there seemed to be some sort of supernatural tug of war going on over Lorne's leg. Finally, the anklet gave way. Ominously, the on-off beeping it had been emitting changed to a constant tone. Clutching the offending object Angel sped to the helicopter door only to find Spike there, pulling it open for him.

Angel hauled his arm back and launched the electronic tag back in the direction of the burning building. It was still sailing through the air when it exploded in a five-foot diameter ball of flame. Spike spent a couple of seconds contemplating just how lucky they had been before he pushed the door closed, once more.

"Okay, anybody else with any little surprises they want to tell us about, raise their hand now," the blond said in his best teacher voice.

He couldn't believe it when one of the kids, (no surprise to Lorne that it was Donna) actually raised her hand. "Em, I kinda need to go. bad."

The blond raised his eyes heavenward before settling back in his seat. He wiped both hands across his face in a gesture that made him look so tired that Buffy ached to hold him close. Then, he raised his head again and in more typical form told the girl, "well, the door's there, pet. Help yourself."

Buffy couldn't help but smile, even as she unstrapped herself to go ask the pilots how long it would be before they reached that hospital. As she passed, she stretched out an arm to gently ruffle Spike's blond curls.

Spike looked up, returning her smile, but it didn't reach his eyes and Buffy knew that as the adrenaline turned sour in his system and the need for action was gone, his thoughts had returned to Drusilla.

She deliberately bent over, rather than crouching to speak to the pilots, in an effort to distract him. When she came back, instead of returning to her seat she knelt on the floor to Spike's left, resting her arm on his thigh.

"It'll only be ten, fifteen minutes tops before we reach the hospital. Think you can make it?" she asked the girl.

"Think so," Donna responded.

"Good. 'Cause Spike's already told you the alternative," Buffy responded in a tone that brooked no argument.

 

---

 

It was a somewhat subdued party that started to climb from the car, back at the hotel. As Buffy scrambled out the backseat, Spike took her hand. "Why don't you start pulling our gear together, whatever's left of it, and I'll get his lordship there to take me round to pick up the car?" Angel looked up from the driver's seat where he'd just turned off the engine.

"You sure?" Buffy asked. "We can leave it till tomorrow. There's no rush."

Spike gave her a lopsided smile. "If we don't go home tonight, there will be tomorrow unless you're plannin' on servin' pizza to Bit's bit."

"Is that tomorrow?" Buffy asked.

"Actually, it's tonight," the vampire confirmed.

"Shoot!" the slayer proclaimed her dissatisfaction. She stetched on tiptoe to give him a quick goodbye kiss, except when his arms wrapped around her it turned out not to be so quick after all. "Who's coming back with us and who's going back with Lori?"

Spike shrugged. "Plenty space for anyone as wants to tag along, not that I'd say no to getting you on your own for a couple of hours, but you'll probably sleep all the way back anyway."

"Well, it's not like I can exactly admire the view, or at least not the one outside the car anyway," she corrected herself. "I'll sort out the passengers. You go fetch the car."

Spike looked over to where Angel was waiting. "We might be a while, pet. I think maybe what I said last time we were here, maybe it was a bit hasty."

"Take as long as you need. I'll be here," Buffy assured him, glad that he'd decided not to stick by his words when he'd claimed that he and Angel had said everything that needed saying years before.

 

---

 

"So? Where to?" Angel asked his passenger, as Buffy made her way into the hotel.

"Well the car's a few blocks down and a few blocks over, sort of that way." Spike gestured in the approximate direction of the motel where he had left it, before looking Angel straight in the eye. "But I think if you know any bars that're still goin' t' be open at this hour, it wouldn't hurt to raise a couple of glasses to absent friends. God knows, if we don't, no one will."

Angel looked over at the blond. "I think I know a couple of places where the clientele will be glad to drink to a lady's memory, and if they're not, we can always make them."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Spike switched on the car's radio and flicked through the stations till he found something that appealed to his mood. Angel vaguely recognised the melancholy track about a lover separated from the object of his affection. If he remembered correctly, it was the lead singer from the Moody Blues, his one solo hit.

"I think I used to have this album," he told the blond.

Spike snorted. "Everybody used to have this album. And ninety nine percent of them only ever played this track and 'Farewell, Thunderchild' because no offence to Phil Lynott but the rest was a bag of shit."

He glanced across to the brunette. "'S not a bad song though." He pulled out his cigarettes and his lighter and lit one up before continuing. "Definite improvement on Barry Manilow." The pair lapsed into silence for a while until Angel realised that Spike was singing along with the radio under his breath. "My life will be forever autumn, now you're not here."

 

---

 

"A round for the house, bartender, to drink to the memory of my favourite childe," Angel announced, putting down a sheath of neat bills on the counter.

"And another round to the memory of my sire," Spike added another wad of crumpled notes to the piles.

"And if I don't want to drink to some vamp ho?" asked one of the demons at the bar.

Spike smiled a cold smile. "Set them up, barkeep." He looked at the spot in front of the surly demon. "Two of your cheapest gins for the nice gentleman." He raised an eyebrow. "That is what you're drinking, isn't it?"

"I said I didn't want no half-breed, no account vamps buying me drinks. I say you ain't born a demon, then you ain't a demon an' you've got no right drinkin' in a bar like this."

"'S that right?" Spike asked as the bartender set the drinks down in front of the demon. For just a fraction of a second the demon thought that Spike was turning his back on him to talk to Angel. Instead, the blond turned just enough to use his right hand to push the demon's head down onto the counter with more than sufficient force to smash the two shot glasses that had been placed in front of him. Blood, broken glass, broken teeth and alcohol sprayed in all directions, including a few drops that landed on Spike's chin. The vampire's tongue snaked out and licked them off. "I think he swallowed some of that," he looked over to where the older vampire was taking a sip of his large single malt. "What do you think?"

Angel took another sip of his drink and picked up another of the four identical glasses that the barman had set in front of him. "I think," he handed one of the glasses to Spike leaving him a free hand to press the demon's face back into the mess that was decorating the bar, "that I'll be happy when he's licked that bar clean." Spike smiled as his grandsire kept the demon's face pressed to the bar until he began to do just that.

"Anybody else got a problem drinking to a lady's memory?" Spike looked round the bar locking gazes with anyone who had looked as if they might protest. "What about you?" he asked the demon sitting on the other side of the carnage.

"Me? I'll drink to anyone as long as someone else is buying."

"Now, see that's a healthy attitude. Why don't you tell the barman your order? An' why don't you take that order pad of yours, and see what those nice people along the back wall are having? Then you can get yourselves something and we can have a toast." Spike leant over the counter to smile at the waitress who had hidden behind the counter as soon as the bar-cleaning demon had opened his mouth. She had a longer memory than most. She remembered when demons used to talk about the Scourge, and in that piece of history the women had always been a sidebar. So, if Angelus and William the Bloody were back together, it stood to reason anyone stupid enough to get in their way was asking for trouble.

"Okay," she uncoiled from her crouching position and wiggled her way past the two vamps.

"And that's two drinks each. and be sure to tell us if anyone wants to refuse our hospitality," Angel told her.

"Let us know if anyone needs convincing. With any luck, maybe the next one will actually taste better than six month old roadkill." Spike called out after her.

Angel raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so I've never been that desperate," the blond pitched his voice so that only Angel could hear it. "Not even when I was in that bastard chair."

"Yeah, well, about that-."

"Less said, the better," Spike cut in before the apology he knew was coming. "Takes two and since we ain't goin' to start talkin' ill of the dusted."

Spike nodded at the now only slightly tacky bar. "I think you can spare a hand to pick up your other drink now." Angel wiped his hand on his jacket a couple of times before he followed the blond's example, picking up his second drink and making for a booth.

"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" Spike opened.

"She was."

"So unpredictable. Every day was like a roller-coaster and a chamber of horrors all in one. You never knew what to expect," the blond continued in a wistful tone.

"You still miss her?"

"Miss the whole life sometimes. But I'd trade every last kill, every last memory of bein' with Dru, God rest her, for an extra day with Buffy."

"So how come we're pissin' away one of those precious days, while Buffy's back at the hotel."

"Because even with the bond Buffy can share my feelings, but there's feelings of her own there as well, and she's glad she's dead. She's glad she won't be pulling any more stunts like this." Spike gestured to his head and to the right side of his chest. "She's downright happy Dru won't make any more like me or Lindsey and she's pleased as punch that that Jamaican bint can rest happy in her grave knowin' Dru's gone. She doesn't like that I'm hurtin' over it, and you could take it both ways and you'd be right. So, I figure, who better than her sire to talk to."

"Did Willow tell you that her and Fred managed to keep her ashes separate?"

"Damn considerate of them considerin'" Spike answered in a harsh tone.

"Considering?"

"Considerin' they're the ones that killed her." Spike ran a hand through his hair before he tipped back the expensive liquor as if it were cheap tequila. "Hell, who am I kidding? I killed her. I turned my back on her and left her to fend for herself. I should just have stuck the stake in myself. At least she wouldn't have seen it comin'."

"Spike, it wasn't your fault."

"You tellin' me that if I'd taken the time to put Dru in the car before I. before Buffy, then she wouldn't still be alive? Wasn't even the slayer. I mean at least there's a bit of dignity in bein' beat by a slayer, but no she gets dusted by some low rent sidekick."

"Hey, we don't do low rent sidekicks," Angel protested.

"So it was one of yours, then?"

Angel shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"I guess. If it was one of yours it wouldn't be so bad. If I had to look at Harris or even Red day in day out knowin' they'd done it, I think I'd just about snap. If it wasn't for Buffy an' Niblet an' Demon bint."

"That's quite the harem you've got there. You know that Quarnoth demon of yours threatened to curse me if you died."

"Good for her. I'm sure you deserve it."

"How d'you do it, William? Every woman in the place was ready to do whatever it took. You know Buffy said if she had to be dead to talk to Dinza then she'd take the old woman round every demon bar till she found someone who would turn her."

"She wha'?"

"She told me I had no concept of what she would do for her mate."

"Yeah, well, I mean I always knew she'd stick up for her Scoobies, just never thought they'd count me as one of them."

"Well, I can't comment on how they got Xander to show up."

"I can take a fair guess. Anya leads that guy round by his dick. I think she could well be part succubus."

The waitress picked this moment to arrive with a tray bearing another four whiskies and some change.

Angel took one of the glasses and raised it in a salute, both he and Spike checking to make sure that all the bar's patrons and staff did likewise.

"To Dru. May she find herself in heaven half an hour before the Devil knows she's dead."

Both vampires polished off their drinks turning their glasses over when they were done and then picking up the second of the drinks the waitress had just brought. This time the younger vampire made the toast.

"To Dru. A true visionary, a lady and an inspiration," the blonde offered.

Only when they were content that the entirety of the bar had raised a couple of glasses to her memory did the vampires return to their seats.

"Well, this lot didn't put up much of a fight." Spike took a sip from his last remaining glass. "D'you think we might get more of a reaction at the one in Santa Monica?"

"We can try."
.