A/N: Thank you to all who are reviewing! You make my day! Luverly! Hope you'll enjoy!

A.M.L - Annie.



Seeking Reverence



The floor turned into the soft ground of a forest and through the dark she could see trees beginning to surround them. Farther up ahead something white was showing between the trunks. Cold hit them and Buffy put her arms around herself just as they stepped beyond the edge of the forest and lighted upon a stretching meadow, heaved in deep snow, which still fell from an equally white sky. Thick, soft flakes looking as though an invisible thread was dangling them playfully, gently helping them make their way to join their kin.

“William!” a voice rang through the stillness.

Spike looked up, and she noted the stricken appearance he wore. He narrowed his eyes, searching the view before them. Then they widened slightly.

His heart surged at the sight of the small girl running through the deep snow toward a large greenhouse, standing proudly in the south-east corner of the meadow and having collected a fair amount of snow and frost on its thick panes.

“William!” the girl repeated, giggling as she reached the door of the greenhouse, pushing it open and slipping inside.

“Sarah,” Spike mumbled.

The greenhouse surrounded them in the next instant. Its warmth encircling them. The heavy scent of fresh dirt and the sweetness of flowers intermingled in the air and Buffy drew a slight breath.

“Spike,” she said, making him look at her. “We don’t have time.”

He was only half-listening. The memories of his childhood were few and far between, but he did remember this as though it had happened yesterday, and with it came so many more that had been kept out of reach for a lifetime. He embraced them.

The laughter of children reached Buffy’s ears and she was brought out of the urge to leave, to make him see that they had to keep moving; her brow furrowing a little before she took a few steps to the side, peeking around a large plant and spotting the little girl, sitting on the floor. Next to her was a small boy. They didn’t look older than six.

Buffy stared at the boy. There was no way she could not. He was so small. There was no question about it being William. Suddenly he looked up and for a few seconds his gaze rested in hers. His eyes big, blue, innocent. Then he smiled a little, going back to what he was doing with his friend. Sarah.
Spike came up to stand behind Buffy.

“How old were you?” she asked.

“Five,” he replied.

“Who’s Sarah?”

But he didn’t answer. He took a step past her and slowly approached the playing children. She observed him as he rounded them, his face angling so she could see it. He had never worn that expression before; the silent, undiluted pain which was so perfectly stroked into every line of his features. He kneeled behind the image of himself, but his eyes were fixed on the companion.

“Why do you always come here?” she now asked the boy, who smiled again, pushing the wooden toy-truck towards a small pile of dirt. “You’ll get in trouble if mama finds you.”

“You think so?” he asked, his head tilting ever so slightly to the side.

Buffy drew a short, involuntary breath; clenching her jaws together as she grew aware of actually reacting to that small gesture.

Sarah giggled.

“I am not allowed to play in here. I do not think she would want you to be.”

“But she is with my mother.”

“Yes,” Sarah acknowledged hesitantly. “She is fitting her for an evening gown, I believe. When she is finished, it is my turn.”

“Are you to have a dress?”

“I am. Green of color.”

“You sound displeased.”

“I wished more than anything for a red.”

“Green is very pretty, too.”

“You mean that truly? Then I shall agree with you and be happy to have it.”

He smiled. She returned it.

The scenery changed ever so slightly, but the children grew older in the blink of an eye and Buffy knew that they were seven. Sarah was standing, looking down at what William was drawing.

“Is it a horse?” she asked. He shook his head. “A dog? A cat? It is certainly something with four legs. Oh, do tell me what it is, Will, it is quite lovely, whatever it is.”

“I don’t know what it is,” he shrugged. “I dreamed it last night and wished to show it to you.”

“It has wings!” she exclaimed, coming around to sit down beside him on the wooden floor. “It looks like a unicorn, except for the hooves.”

“What shall we name her?”

“Florentine,” Sarah replied instantly, a big smile on her mouth. “Florentine Nightingale.”

“Perfectly fitting,” he nodded.

Buffy smiled a little; her gaze suddenly meeting Spike’s where he was still kneeling. She swallowed; her smile fading. She didn’t like that she had to remind herself where she was. It seemed his thoughts too easily took hold of hers and that it was becoming increasingly easy for him the longer time she spent there. And then there was something else to deal with. Subtle curiosity.

Why would this hurt him? Why did he look as though every moment was building toward something disastrous?

Every moment’s building toward something disastrous, she thought to herself, only her thought echoed between the walls of the greenhouse and Spike’s gaze grew even more intense.

The children hadn’t heard; they simply kept on with their chatter.

“And beautiful,” Spike mumbled, eyes going back to his younger self.

The scenery changed softly again, a few flowers changing place, a few being replaced or suddenly blooming, but other than that, time seemed to stand still. The children aged once more. And again Buffy had a number in her head which seemed to coincide with how old they looked – ten.

“Why do you always come here?” Sarah smiled.

She was standing again, while he was seated cross legged on the floor. He put down the pen which had been hovering over an already scribbled on piece of paper.

“Because nobody’s watching me,” he answered her.

“The flowers are.”

“No,” he laughed. “They only listen,” he added and the girl giggled.

“Oh, Miss Rose,” she said, getting to her feet and twirling over to a rose-bush, curtseying delightfully before it and then burying her nose in the sweet-smelling petals of one of the buds. “You do have the prettiest frock. I wish I was as pink and fragrant as you.”

“But you are,” the boy stated, getting to his feet. “I thought you had awaited the party for weeks. Or so your brother told me.”

“I have,” she shrugged. “But now it is nothing but old ladies and older gentlemen talking of dreadfully dreary things. I was bored. But you had already disappeared.”

He smiled again, a little uncertain suddenly.

“I did not mean to remove you from your party,” he mumbled. “Your father will be upset with me.”

“Not at all, since you were not the culprit. I was, in removing myself.”

“For my benefit.”

“Aye? I should say it was entirely for my own.”

“If I had stayed...”

“I would have lured you out of there with tricks and remarks of this place and its splendor, and you would have followed me without a second thought. So, you see, the fault rests with me, for better or worse.”

Then they were suddenly gone and the room lay empty before Buffy’s eyes. The light had dimmed and she knew dusk was setting in. She furrowed her brow and then William came walking into view.
Sixteen.

He was sixteen, dressed very properly, and was holding a book and a pencil.

The vampire version of this young man slowly stood. Buffy noted the movement, but her eyes were transfixed on the other figure.

He had no idea what he was to become.

He was the complete opposite to what Spike was.

For a moment she wondered why the demon had gotten its clutches into this innocent human being. Why such evil had to even exist. What circumstance could possibly have made this bright man choose the bite? And then she recalled Spike’s words of there having been no choice. Her curiosity flared and she brought it down again, wishing she could vanquish it, but realizing it was far too late for that now.
William lighted a candle, opened the notebook and sat down on the floor, leaning back against a heavy flower pot and beginning to write.

“In dusk so fair, I stroke his hair, I wish for naught, but what I ought.”

At Sarah’s soft voice a smile spread on his mouth, but he didn’t look up, and the pen didn’t stop moving.

The girl came into view, her dress was longer this time; the girlishness of her figure had reposed in the light of budding womanhood. She was exceptionally beautiful, with big cornflower blue eyes and blonde locks tied with a ribbon. She peeked around the plant by which William sat; a small smile on her lips as well. Then she reached out a hand and gently slipped her fingers over his hair, making his eyebrows rise as he turned his head to her, but she dove out of sight.

“In friends we find, what cleanses mind, and leaves in mirth, what gives rebirth. For friends we are, aren’t we, William?”

She stepped forward and he observed her for a moment, puzzled.

“Yes,” he said, looking wondering.

“I am to be sent away,” she stated, and Buffy could tell how hard she was suddenly fighting her tears.

“Sent away? Where?”

“I am to go to a convent.”

“A convent?” he repeated, stupefied.

“Yes. For worship. In wait of my wedding day.”

“You... are to be married?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re still much too young...”

“I said ‘in wait’.”

“And to whom are you supposed to be betrothed?”

“I do not know, William. Did you think I would stay this way forever? That we would? My father will most certainly arrange what he thinks best for me.”

“You mean, for himself.”

“Will!”

He was growing angrier by the second, getting to his feet.

“You cannot stand there and tell me this is what you want.”

She straightened her posture, obviously about to do just that, when the tears ran over, her lower lip trembling with held back emotion. The words strayed from her lips and she merely gave a small whimper.

William looked completely lost at this turn of events.

“Sarah,” he murmured. “Please, don’t let him decide your fate this way.”

“What choice do I have? If you give me one, I shall make it my own.”

He stared at her. He had nothing to reply to that.

“Sarah!” a man’s voice rang through the greenhouse and then an older gentleman dressed in evening attire and a long black cape entered Buffy’s line of sight, his eyes landing on the teenagers and a flash of anger entering them. “I should have known,” he stated, coming up to them and grabbing Sarah by her wrist with a glare at William.

“Father,” Sarah said, smiling a strained smile. “You have no cause for...”

“Hush!” he exclaimed. “Young Kingsley here seems to always forget his place, doesn’t he? I feel it is time I told him exactly where he belongs.”

“Father!” Sarah breathed, clearly abhorred, her smile turning into a frown as she began to struggle against his hold.

Her father didn’t seem to hear her as he took a step closer to William.

“If your mother had not been who she is you would all be in the gutter! Being as things are she has saved you, God knows your father does nothing for his family. There is none to gain for you here, Kingsley. And my daughter is simply too far out of your reach.”

“You’re wrong, sir,” William murmured. “My father does a great deal more for his family than you ever have yours. And Sarah will never be too far out of my reach.” His eyes went to his friend’s and she calmed slightly. “You see, with all due respect, sir, I love her dearly, thus she cannot be far from my heart, can she?”

Sarah stared at him, a small smile growing into the corners of her mouth.

“Indeed!” her father huffed, tearing her with him as he headed for the exit.

Buffy felt herself almost move forward to stop him, but she couldn’t get her feet to take the steps needed, and had to simply watch as William stood still, looking the way Sarah had disappeared. Spike was standing facing the younger him, observing his own expression, a deep frown on.

“Why did you do that?” he murmured.

Then Sarah came running back, her image going straight through the vampire’s before she threw her arms around William in a tight hug. She pulled back and kissed him tenderly on the mouth, granting him a glorious smile before she turned around and ran out again.

Buffy felt her jaw drop slightly, her heart beat stilling considerably at the privacy of such a moment.
William stood with his back to her, and in front of him stood Spike in the same fashion, both of them now intent on the exit which had swallowed Sarah.

“I never saw her again,” Spike’s voice rang through the stillness. “Not like this, anyway. I saw her from afar, but... They kept me away. Kept her away from me. Did a good job of it.” He grew quiet. “I lost her,” he then said, complete defeat in his voice.

She furrowed her brow.

Oh, please, she wanted to say. Oh, please!

But she didn’t. Something steadied her, held her back. Perhaps the shoulders of William, which were rigid. Perhaps the tears she simply knew were falling down his cheeks.

“Why did I do that?” Spike murmured softly.

The scenery spun around them into the Bronze, and the difference between the past and the present tore the Slayer out of whatever introverted state she had slipped into. The music came blasting from the speakers, the people moving with the beat almost furiously. He was at the edge of the dance floor, back still to her. She was right under the stairs, leaning back against them slightly, watching the crowd.

He turned around, swinging a beer to his lips and sauntering her way, not having noticed her quite yet. Yes, she remembered this night, too. She was keeping an eye out for yet another demon, which had reportedly come to town, and she had been in no mood for a smash-and-bash with the bleach head. However...

He stopped at the sight of her, his stance ever watchful as his gaze turned annoyed.

“Bloody hell,” he grumbled, continuing where he had been headed, walking past her and muttering: “Could go a night without seeing you, Slayer.”

“Sorry,” she said, eyes still on the dance floor, “you’re on my turf.”

He paused by her at that, leaning against the stairs right next to her.

“That what you think?”

“Thought had entered my mind, yeah.”

“Sunnydale was never your turf, Slayer. The Hellmouth can never be your turf. Haven’t you gotten that through your thick skull yet?”

“You’re drunk.”

“Don’t bloody say that if you’re not gonna say it to my face!”

She turned her head to him, catching his gaze and holding it.

“You’re drunk,” she repeated.

“Oh, well! I am not drunk. I’m slightly intoxicated, but I’m not...”

“Alright, don’t fall over,” she said and he raised his eyebrows with a quizzical expression in his eyes right before she put one hand against his chest and gave him a shove.

It was pretty hard, she admitted that, but it wouldn’t have sent him tumbling into the wall behind him the way that he did if he had been sober enough to keep his balance.

“You fell over,” she said as he struggled to his feet with an enraged snarl.

She turned her eyes back on the dance floor.

“I wonder why he wanted us.”

She huffed, knowing that the actual Spike had taken over and that the memory had been interrupted by his musings.

“There is no ‘us’,” she replied, glancing at him where he had reclaimed the spot at her side.

“Did you have to push me so sodding hard?” he muttered, rubbing his chest a little and she smirked.

“Just proving how I’m always right and you’re always wrong.”

He cocked an eyebrow at that.

“Really?”

He truly wanted to make her eat those words, but he hadn’t anticipated just how twisted his mind worked. In the next moment the heavy rock music was glazed over, turning into the notes of a classical violin.

“Pardon me,” he heard himself say and when he turned his head to the side he felt his insides churn with displeasure.

He remembered this party well.

And the night.

He was hours away from Drusilla’s cool clutches.

“I am searching for a replacement word as the one I have is rather hard to match with a rhyme,” his other self continued to a much too baffled Slayer.

And it wasn’t that she had a hard time processing the fact that William probably wouldn’t have looked the way Spike did when he came clambering into her life. Bleach wasn’t big in the nineteenth century England, she did know this. But she never would have thought. With the brown hair and with the glasses and what had he said? Jeez, he was actually nothing less than the poster boy for good-wholesome-preppie. She had thought he was a thug. She had pictured him something like Oliver Twist where the twist was that the streets were much more ruthless and the children darker, dirtier, shameless and selfish. That he was an orphan. Not that all orphans were naughty little brats, but...

She wondered about his mother. Who was she who had saved him from the gutter? And his father. Why had Sarah’s father badmouthed him?

She tried to collect her scurrying thoughts and turned her attention back to the young man before her.

“Oh...” she said, needing to gain time in coming up with an answer.

In doing so she looked down and saw that she was wearing a very nice dress. It was green silk and according to the fashion she suddenly noticed all the ladies were wearing.

“You can undress me, too?” she asked, eyes in Spike’s, only William didn’t seem to see Spike and his eyebrows rose high.

“Pardon me?” he said, making Buffy whip her head back to him.

“Oh,” she repeated with a smile. “Eh... You were asking me something.”

“Yes, you see, I am trying my outmost to put together a piece of lyricism and as it is I simply must find a new word to replace the one that I have.”

She stared at him, not able to work away the shock which was taking over. Seeing him like this was like seeing the moon fall out of the sky – something she’d never expected could happen.

“Right,” she said with another smile, hearing Spike grumble behind her. She ignored him. “And what word is it you have?”

“Effulgent,” William replied, looking at the paper in his hand and then back at her. “It is frightfully decent a word, but does not quite ring the tone I am looking for.”

“Ah,” she nodded, desperately trying to remember some of the Jane Austen she had read in high school. Then she thought of Giles as a shining example and continued: “It is quite the predicament. Have you considered radiant?”

“Already did try that, I’m afraid. Quite the same predicament with that one.”

She smiled brightly and he looked startled, but then returned the smile, correcting his glasses.
Spike huffed.

“You’re William,” Buffy stated and the young man blinked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“I’m the crazy American girl, staying with... Lily,” Buffy said.

Spike didn’t like this at all.

Why the hell couldn’t he get himself to shut the hell up already?!

“Buffy Summers,” she added, reaching out a hand and William took it gingerly, observing her face.

“I have the strangest feeling we have met somewhere before,” he said.

“Hmh.” Spots people meet, spots people meet. “The opera, maybe?”

“Oh, no, I never go,” he said, suddenly growing self-conscious as he let go of her hand. “I’m very sorry; I am being terribly forward and not at all hospitable. Would you like some punch, Miss Summers?”

“No, thank you,” she shook her head, narrowing her eyes as she watched him and then asked: “Why don’t you ever go? To the opera, I mean?”

“Because,” Spike gritted out, “he can’t afford it.”

He circled the pair until he stood behind himself, glaring at the useless image and shaking his head.

“Pitiful William,” he grumbled. “Can only get an invite to these parties thanks to his mum’s station in life. Being well-liked with her clientele has rendered her son more than a few favors to nights such as this. But he’ll never fit in, will you, old boy?” he scoffed.

“Your mother...” Buffy mumbled and then she remembered the conversation he had had with Sarah. “She’s a seamstress.”

“One of London’s finest, but only a seamstress,” Spike nodded. “Not a brilliant Parisian fashion-setter. A copy-cat. However good, never good enough.”

Buffy furrowed her brow at the true bitterness in his voice.

“Are you ashamed of her?”

“No,” he smiled. “I’m too proud of her. I always knew she was better than what was whispered about her behind her back. About my father. And when he died...”

He trailed off, suddenly defensive. This was none of her business, was it? Why the bugger should she even care? He suddenly knew what she was doing, knew what she wanted. To poke her nose in and get a whiff of something truly him... It wasn’t the same as sticking her head in and seeing. She would never do that, she would never dare to. And so he would rather leave it as it was, than have her judge and misunderstand.

Buffy looked at the man before her, took in his face, so different from the vampire’s. There was no harshness of learning what the world truly was, there was no calculation of his surroundings or of the people, merely a staggering need to please, which was so obvious she thought she could nearly touch it. He was meek, subdued, withdrawn. Soft around the edges, which were to harden so terribly to form crannies fitting the demon coming to possess him. He was her, five and a half years ago, when she knew nothing of what she was. Of what part she was to play in forming the world she occupied.

Always been bad, his words rang through her head and despite herself she had to smile, turning her eyes in Spike’s again.

So he had lied about his past, she wasn’t surprised. Though amused. She could understand why he wouldn’t want this to get out.

He seemed to sense what she was thinking and growled from the middle of his throat before turning away from her, walking a little into the room and looking around.

It was small, warm, inviting. They were in a house, and people were clearly having some sort of party. Well-dressed ladies and gentlemen were mingling comfortably. Most seemed to be old friends. Buffy looked at them, and then back at William.

“What are you writing?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, nothing,” he shook his head, embarrassed at her interest.

“Let me see,” she encouraged, but he turned serious.

“Not before it is finished,” he protested gently and her smile broadened as she looked into his eyes, so full of carefulness, gentleness even. “And I do have some more hunting to do.”

“Mh, sounds like fun. Don’t remember myself as fun,” Spike commented.

Buffy gave him a look.

“Wanna sit?” she asked.

“Rather stand,” Spike answered, but she slipped her hand onto William’s arm as he escorted her up to a sofa.

“You have the most delightful accent,” he heard William comment and he rolled his eyes.

“Bloody hell,” he swore silently.

It was a nightmare. A cold, dark nightmare and he was stuck in the middle of it. He wanted out. Needed to get Buffy out of there. Out of him. He couldn’t do this anymore. He had to stop, had to focus on some way to control where they were taken. But it was like trying to tell himself what to dream, and though it had worked before, now it eluded him. He simply had to stand there and let it happen, let her speak with a piece of him long since dead.

He stared at her sitting next to his human self. How strange. How very strange. To see her so at ease with him. Was all the tension he got from her about the fangs? Then he realized that he knew what it was about – the demon. The beast within. And he didn’t think it was the threat of it, but the knowledge that it was there and that the soul was lacking. It made is so much simpler, didn’t it? To staple a note to his head saying evil. Why was she so scared to admit that he might be right, and that there might be more to a demon than she was so set on believing? More to him.

Buffy looked over at the vampire, who wore the outer appearance of a regular thundercloud. How typical. She decided to disregard him; only when she turned her gaze back in William’s she was overwhelmed with how impossible a task that was. Because, despite what she told herself, he was sitting at her side. Despite what she tried to convince herself, she couldn’t overlook the similarities between mortal and immortal. Spike’s mannerism was different to the extreme from William’s. William was timid, retracted, attentive to what she was saying. Spike was incapable of listening. But then William would look at her in a certain way, would smile one of those small smiles that she couldn’t help but feel like she recognized, no matter how rare they might have been up until this moment.

She glanced at Spike every now and then. He looked uncomfortable. She liked that. She found herself listening extra closely to what William was saying simply to annoy the bleach head. His aggravation practically drifted at her through the air. So, a weak spot. She had found one of his and she wouldn’t stop pressing down on it.

“I also find the Shakespearean prose to give large hints as to what you should wish to obtain with your sentence. He finds ways of explaining in one line what it would take me an entire paragraph,” William was saying and she nodded.

“I see,” she said, and then a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

“There’s nothing here,” Spike hissed. “We’re moving on.”

“Okay,” she said patiently.

He let her go with a jerk.

She waited, raising her eyebrows when nothing happened.

“Well?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t bloody well know how to get us outta here,” he grumbled. “And I still don’t get why the hell he chose you and me to do this, to find the bloody answer to the riddle.”

“It doesn’t matter why,” Buffy said, the room slowly growing black around them. “What matters is how.”

“What? You want me to line up every sodding demon I’ve ever come across?”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“Come across in Sunnydale would do,” she replied.

There was a low rumble and then a flash as spotlights were lit over the head of those demons he had spoken of; lined up and ready for the Slayer and the Vamp’s watchful eyes. Buffy’s widened slightly before she turned them once more on Spike.

“There we go,” she said.

He raised one shoulder in a shrug.

She recognized a lot of the faces, beginning to walk down the line like a general observing her prisoners of war. Many of them she knew as dead, and she realized Spike did as well because the spotlights over those demons were going black as the two of them continued their stroll.

“At least we’re excluding a few,” Buffy said.

“Yeah, but what do we get for it? Think we’ll be able to limit them down to the one we’re after?”

“No, but we can limit them to the ones likely to rhyme. Can you help with that, by the way? I mean, you’re pretty fluent in the language of...”

“Shut your gob,” he growled and she smirked, slowing as she came to a demon without a face; there were no features there, just smooth skin.

She furrowed her brow.

“This is new,” she said, turning her head to Spike just as the incognito demon’s arm shot out, grabbing her around the throat with one large hand, beginning to press in on her air pipes.

She felt herself lifted by the strong grip, her toes just above the floor. Her eyes were beginning to roll back in her head and there was a flicker before her eyes.

What’s happening? her thoughts cried, but soon they were flattening out as well.

The last thing she glimpsed was an image of William and an image of Spike combining into one, and then she thought she heard his voice as it softly sighed her name.