Fic - "Gifts" - Chapter 2

[green-maia.livejournal.com]

Title: Gifts
Author: Maia
Rating: G for the first few chapters; later chapters will be PG-13 for violence
Warnings: Multiple character deaths in later chapters
Characters: Dawn, William, Buffy, Giles, Xander, Willow, several original characters.
Feedback: Yes, please!
Disclaimer: Everything except the original characters belongs to Joss

Chapter 1




With deep gratitude to Beta Readers d_aulnoy, geekette8 and katlinel, and Medical Consultant ithilwen.
For all of your advice, excellent suggestions, encouragement and support: Thank you.


This chapter was first posted on my LJ here.








Gifts
Chapter 2


"I..." He looked down at the floor. There was silence for a few minutes. Then he went on, still looking at the floor, "I remember dying. I remember burning up. It seemed to go on forever." He swallowed. "Then the agony stopped. My body was gone. And then...it was...I don’t think I can put it into words. It was..." He trailed off.

"Was it different from the first time you died?" she asked after another little silence.

He shook himself. "What? Oh. Yeah. Completely different. The first time, when I became a vampire, you know, it was more like losing consciousness and then waking up again. It was bloody fantastic. But this - it was more than that. Becoming a vampire was like becoming someone else. When I was a child I used to wish I could become a character in a story: go to sleep William the bloody crybaby and wake up a Knight of the Round Table. Becoming a vampire felt like that wish come true. It felt like stepping into a story and leaving the real world behind.

"But deep down – I would never have admitted it, ever – deep down it felt illusory. Hollow. I mean, when you get lost in a good story, you’re losing yourself, but in a way you’re more you instead of less, you know? But being a soulless vampire was...it was...less." He paused. "God, I sound like a bloody..." He flushed a little - she’d never seen that before – and stopped, biting his lip.

She decided not to rescue him with another question. Instead she just sipped her tea and waited.

He continued, "When I died the second time, it was nothing like that." He looked up at her. "You know what they say about your life passing in front of your eyes?"

She nodded.

He looked back down at the floor. "The first time that didn’t happen. The second time, it did. The pain was... And then it was gone and I saw my life - my life and my un-life - all of it. And then, it ended, and it was as though I was...free. And everything was okay, and peaceful, and..."

She struggled to keep her voice steady. "Were you in heaven?"

"I don’t know."

"But you sound like what - like what Buffy said. About heaven."

He looked up. "What did she tell you, exactly?"

"She said she felt peaceful. And complete. And loved. And that she was still herself. And she knew everyone she loved was okay. What - what did she tell you?"

He looked down again. "Same thing."

"Was that what it was like? For you?" She’d taken refuge in that thought, when he was dead. But now that he was here again...

She thought of the yearning in Buffy’s eyes. She didn’t think she could bear it in both of them. But
Spi - William - didn’t have the aura of despair that had clung to Buffy that first year. Had he, when he first came back?

There was another silence. Finally he said, still looking down, "Sort of...yes...in a way. For a moment...or eternity, I don’t know...I felt...like that. Everything was okay, everyone was okay, I was at peace, I was...complete. But then...it was as though...I...dissolved. Buffy said she was still herself. I wasn’t. I mean, I was...but I wasn’t."

His voice filled with awe as he spoke. "It was like dissolving and becoming...everything. I didn’t exist. I was just part of...everything. I just was...the universe...every atom...every life...everything just was...it was...there’s no words..."

He looked up then, and his eyes were shining with wonder.

She felt it too, vicariously, for a moment. And then it was replaced by a sick feeling of deja vu.

He saw it, and he was with her, again. "Hey. Hey, Niblet. It’s not like that. It’s not like that at all. What I experienced was amazing. But remembering it makes me like being alive more, not less." He got up and went over to her and put his arms around her. She let him hold her for a moment. Then she pulled away.

He went back to his chair and sat down. "I’m not sure it was heaven, anyway, at least not the way the Sunday school teachers think of it. I wonder if it wasn’t just how I felt at the moment of my death. Eternity is timeless, y’know? Eternity in a moment, yeah? Maybe that is heaven - one eternal moment. Maybe it’s just the glimpse you get before oblivion. I don’t know. Or maybe – maybe it had something to do with how I died. With the amulet. I don’t know.

"But whatever it was, once I was alive again, it didn't make me wish to be dead again. God, I sound like such a bloody idiot. But no way round that." He took another deep breath. "Having experienced that - whatever it was - made me - when I was alive again, it made glad to be alive, okay?" He withdrew into defensiveness again, scowling into his teacup.

"Then why didn’t Buffy want to live?"

He studied his tea for a minute, and then said in a low voice, "I don’t know what Buffy experienced. I only know what she told me. I don’t know what it felt like, to her. But it seems like...the thing that was good, for her, was that she was dead. That she wasn’t alive anymore. That there wasn’t any pain. That everything she had gone through was over. It wasn’t about the experience itself."

Her college journalism instinct to sum it all up took over. "So basically, for her, heaven was not being alive, for you, heaven was a glimpse of something that made being alive seem even better than before?"

"Yeah. Guess so."

"Okay, then. You still haven’t told me how you got to be alive again."

"I don’t know."

"What?"

"I don’t know. All I know is that one moment I was one with the entire bloody universe and the next moment I was lying in an alley in London. With a heartbeat."

She stared at him. "So you have no idea how it happened?"

"None."

Damn. THAT was annoying. But if he didn’t know, he didn’t know. "Okay. So tell me what happened next."

He looked back down at the floor. He didn’t say anything for a while. The sounds of the street drifted in through the open window - cars, voices, birds (which she hadn’t expected in the city), and the occasional airplane overhead. She waited.

Finally he continued. "I found myself lying in an alley with a bunch of rubbish bins. I had no idea where I was. Or what had happened. I was confused. Disoriented. Felt dizzy and sick. Remembered everything, but all the memories jumbled together and I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. And...I...I...I...didn't have any clothes on." He flushed again. "It was as though...as though my body, and only my body, had been re-created exactly as it was just before I was turned, brought into the 21st century, and my mind and my soul had been dropped into it. I was...terrified. I just lay there shaking for...I don’t know how long. My memories... I couldn’t make sense of what I remembered, there was just this mess of images and feelings, no rhyme or reason, no meaning. Just...terror."

Buffy, when she had first returned, standing on the tower, asking "Is this Hell?"

She wanted to reach over and take his hand, but he seemed to have curled into himself as he spoke, and she thought maybe giving him space would be better.

He seemed almost oblivious to her presence. "I don’t know how long it was I stayed there. After a while, as the shock wore off...I tried and tried to make sense of all my memories. Get them into some sort of order. I wondered if maybe my whole life as a vampire had been a dream. But I could hear cars on the street. It was raining, and I was wet, and cold. And hungry, too. Very hungry. When I was turned, I hadn’t eaten in a while. Had to find some way to get something to eat. But I couldn’t go out in the street in nothing but my birthday suit. So I went through the rubbish bins. Found a few rags someone had thrown out. Put them on. Went out in the street. Wandered around a bit. Got strange looks. Got hungrier. Didn’t want to beg. Finally did. Someone gave me 20p. Took it. Bought a bit of bread. Didn’t know what to do or where to go. Went to another alley and slept. Spent a few days like that. Scrounging for food. Even tried stealing, but I was so weak and disoriented, I couldn't manage it. Couldn't think straight. Ate out of some rubbish bins, after a while. Crusts of bread. Then I got sick. Throwing-up sick. High fever. Had a 19th-century immune system, yeah? Germs had over a century of evolution on me. Eating out of rubbish bins hadn’t helped. Lay there in an alley puking my guts out and shaking with fever. Got delirious. Finally had a lucid moment when I knew I had to get help. Ran out into the street, half-mad. Ran right in front of a car. Got hit."

Dawn had tears streaming down her face. He didn’t seem to notice. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the floor.

"Next clear memory was weeks later, in hospital. I’d been badly hurt by the car. Lots of broken bones, internal bleeding, concussion. Raging infections. Pneumonia. Nearly died. Got some vague memories..."

"Oh God, Spike...William." She was sobbing. He looked up, seemed to see her again, and his face changed from anguished memory to concern for her. He got up so quickly that he knocked his chair over, went to her, put his arms around her a second time, and she was crying on his shoulder. And feeling guilty because he was the one who had been through all that and yet he was comforting her.

"I’m sorry, Niblet. Shouldn’t have said so much. Talking about it brings it back, is all. Got carried away. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said so much..."

She pulled away and glared at him. "Yes, you should! I asked. I want to know. I just...the thought of you...and I didn’t know."

"How exactly could you have known?" he asked while setting his chair upright again. The sound of it clattering had evidently woken the kittens, who had come over to investigate. One of them - the black one, Christina - jumped up onto William's shoulder as he sat down again. The other one, the grey one - Dante - came over to Dawn, sniffed at her curiously, then jumped up onto her lap. She petted him and he purred. Christina purred and nuzzled William's ear, then jumped down onto his lap. He petted her. She began to knead his trousers with small sharp claws. He muttered "Ow" but didn't stop her. "Do you know why they do that?" he asked Dawn. "See, when they're nursing, they do that to help the milk flow. Later on, makes them feel secure."

She remembered her mother telling her that. Back before Dad had left and taken the cat with him. Of course, the memory was fake - she'd never met either her father or the cat in reality - but she'd stopped caring about that. It felt real.

She took another sip of her tea. "So what happened next? And no editing. I can deal."

He went on, continuing to pet Christina as he spoke. "I woke up in hospital. It was weeks later. I was in bad shape. And - I had a visitor. Rosemary. She had been the one who hit me with the car. Wasn't her fault, of course - I ran right out in front of it, delirious and all. But she felt terrible. She'd been the one to call an ambulance. She'd gone with me to hospital. She was wealthy and well-connected and she thought I'd get better treatment if someone was looking out for me than if they thought I was just a random homeless bloke. She waited the entire time I was in Casualty - you know, the Emergency Room. And the first thing I remember clearly, after the accident, weeks later, was her visiting me.

"And she'd worked a few things out. See, her husband's father was a Watcher. Her husband, Arthur, was supposed to be one, too, but he refused. He thought killing vampires was wrong. Thought vampires ought to have rights too. Refused to have anything to do with the Watchers. But when the First started killing off all the Watchers they could find, they killed Arthur, too. Didn't care that he wasn't a part of it.

"Rosemary was American - grew up in New York City. But she moved to England when she was in her twenties, and married Arthur, and they lived together in England, in Cambridge, for 37 years. Also lived in Africa for several years – they were both zoologists. Lived in Botswana. Studied lions."

Christina continued to purr on his lap. Dante continued to purr on hers.

"A few months after Arthur was killed, Rosemary decided to go back to America. Back to New York City. She was almost finished putting her affairs in England in order when I ran out in front of her car.

"Rosemary was a witch. A very powerful witch. After the accident, she had a feeling about me. And then, when she first visited me, and I was still delirious, some of the things I said – it got her thinking. She and Arthur had had some records that no one on the Watchers’ Council knew they had. And she had lots of connections. She did some digging, and she worked out who I was, and what had happened. She couldn't work out how I'd become human again, but she knew it was - unprecedented. So she decided to stay in England for a while more.

"I was in hospital for months. In bad shape. Lot of pain. Very ill. And at first, I couldn't remember much. Concussion. A good thing: by the time I started to remember again, I knew enough not to tell the doctors the truth about what I remembered. Might have wound up in an asylum..." He shuddered. "I hate hospitals. They remind me of... I hate them. I was scared. Confused. In pain and no idea what was happening. Rosemary was an anchor. She helped me get through it.

"When they finally let me out of hospital - the accident was at the beginning of July, and they let me out in October - Rosemary took me home with her. Took care of me while I recovered.

"Recovery took a long time. Lot of physiotherapy. And I was on antibiotics for a year. I'd tested positive for consump...tuberculosis. My Mum...my Mum was dying of tuberculosis..." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "Guess I would have died of it, too, if I hadn't been turned. Anyway...I couldn't do much, for a long time. Rosemary and me - talked. I couldn't do much else. She was making a quilt. I helped her. Reminded me of when I used to help my Mum. And - we talked. Rosemary... Rosemary helped me. Listened. Helped me sort my memories. Helped me with...all of it."

"Rosemary also helped me get used to the modern world. Because, the odd thing was: as my memories came back, the memories of my life as a human, before I was turned, felt more recent than my memories of my life as a vampire. It's like - there's a line in A Tale of Two Cities, you know, where Sydney Carton asks Mr. Lorry if his childhood seems far away. And Mr. Lorry replies that if he'd asked twenty years ago he would have said yes, but that as he gets old, it's like completing a circle, and his childhood feels closer to him than midlife.

"It's like that, for me. My life as a vampire feels like it happened a long time ago. And everything that happened when I was human, before I was turned - that feels like the recent past. Stuff that happened when I was five years old feels closer in time than...than Sunnydale."

She drew in a sharp breath. He finally looked up at her. She knew she ought to just listen to the rest of the story, but she couldn't help asking - and she couldn't keep the accusation out of her voice, "Is that why you didn't contact us? We seem like just a dream to you?"

"It isn't like that. It doesn't feel like a dream. It feels like a memory of a long time ago."

"So we're ancient history now."

"No!" Christina had fallen asleep on his lap, but now she woke up, startled. She jumped down off his lap, and trotted out of the room, offended. Dante slept on in Dawn’s lap. "It's not like that. It doesn't make it - it doesn't make you - matter any less. Something that happened a long time ago can be more important than something that happened recently, right? And it wasn't because of that, that I didn't contact you. It was other things..."

"What other things?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you!"

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have interrupted. Go on."

"It was...as I recovered - I felt out of place. Out of time. My life as a human seemed closer to me than my un-life as a vampire. The nineteenth century seemed closer than the twentieth. I felt like I had to learn to live in the modern world all over again. I'd never seen it in sunlight. And recovering took so long. I felt so weak. So helpless. And so unsure of everything.

"I wasn't sure, being human - I wasn't sure if I was the same person, yeah? Everything was different. I guess your body affects you more than you realize. The way my body reacts to everything... I mean - as a human - I get a little queasy at the sight of blood."

"WHAT?"

"I really do. It's weird. I can remember how it felt to be a vampire. I can remember the way I reacted when I saw or smelled blood then. I can remember how it felt - but now my body is different. So I react differently. And it's not just blood. It's everything. I'm still the same person. I just react differently to things."

She thought about that. "Kind of like how, when you're eight, the kissing scenes in a movie are boring and gross, but when you're fourteen, the kissing scenes are the best part?"

"Yeah. Kind of like that."

"Okay." She paused for a moment. "I can understand why you didn't contact us at first. But why not after you recovered?"

"I was scared."

"Of what?"

He was looking at the floor again. "I'm so different, as a human. I wouldn't be any use in a fight. I miss fighting, you know - I remember how exhilarating it was. But...I'm...kind of a coward and a weakling as a human. Couldn't imagine I'd be of any use to anyone. Especially...Buffy."

"So you thought Buffy would think you're less of a man or something? That's ridiculous!"

If you could bore a hole in linoleum by staring at it, his floor would have been swiss cheese by now. "Kind of ruin it, y'know? I mean...I died a hero. Went out in a blaze of glory. Kind of ruin the effect to come crawling back as a ninety-eight pound weakling."

She pushed Dante off her lap - he protested loudly and then left the room in a huff - and stood up. "You are a selfish bastard!"

"What?"

"Did it ever occur to you that I might love you and need you regardless of whether or not you can fight? Did it ever occur to you that you’re the closest thing I have to a brother? Did it ever occur to you that I missed you so much I sometimes wished I'd never been made human so I wouldn't have to hurt so much? Did it ever occur to you? Did it? And Buffy! She was devastated when you died! She was in love with you! And you were so worried about being remembered as a goddamn HERO that you couldn't act like a decent PERSON!" She was crying again – tears of rage.

He stood up and yelled back. "Dammit, Niblet, you KNOW I love you! You KNOW it! And if you don’t know, you’re an idiot! But I needed some time alone! I needed it! I needed to find out who I am as a human being, without input from the sodding Scoobies! I needed to find out what I wanted for myself, not what your sister wants from me! I knew if I went back, all weak and scared, I’d just wind up turning into her sodding puppet! I needed some goddamn TIME!" He was trembling. "I’m sorry, Niblet. If I could have contacted you, I would. But I couldn’t ask you to keep a secret like that from Buffy. And I wasn’t ready to see her. I knew if I saw her once, I wouldn’t be able to stay away. I needed time. I’m sorry, Niblet. I’m so sorry."

She got it, then. Because she had done the same thing. She had deliberately chosen a college as far away from Buffy as possible. Because she had wanted to find out who she was, alone. Who she was when she wasn’t a Key that had been made from the blood (created in the image?) of her powerful sister. She’d wanted to find out who she was when she was just Dawn Summers, not Buffy’s little sister.

That’s all he’d wanted, too, then. To be his own person.

She sat down again, and he sat down again, and she told him, that she got it. She told him why. Then she looked at him and realized something for the first time. "We’re a lot alike, aren’t we, Will?"

"That we are, Niblet. That we are."

They sat in silence for a while. A bird sang – it must have been right outside the window. She wondered if there was a nest on the window ledge.

Finally she asked, softly, "Where do we go from here?"

He laughed. She hadn’t expected that. He picked up a napkin and threw it at her. She ducked. He laughed again. She laughed too. Then he said, "It’s getting late. Are you hungry? I could throw something together."

"’Kay."

He got up and went to the fridge and opened it. "Pasta and vegetables okay?"

"Yeah. I’m, ah...a vegetarian."

"Me too."

"WHAT?"

"Yeah. Figured I have enough blood on my hands."

"Oh."

"But the cats need meat. Little predators, they are." He closed the fridge, got out two cans of cat food, one labeled for kittens, the other for "mature" cats, and started to open them. Within moments Christina and Dante appeared, and another cat, a large tabby. "That’s Merlin," he explained unnecessarily. "Little monsters can hear a can opener a mile off."

"Do you miss it?"

"Miss what?"

"Being a vampire. Being able to hear better than a cat. Super-senses and super-strength and all that."

"Sometimes. Yeah, I miss it. Sometimes. But – like I said – it seems like a long time ago, now."

"So – what did you do? After you recovered and all?"

He finished feeding the cats and washed his hands before answering. "Rosemary had a lot of connections. She basically adopted me. Got me a fake birth certificate that said I was her son, and Arthur’s son. They’d never had any children. And since she was an American citizen, and Arthur was British – I got dual citizenship. My birth certificate says I was born in Cambridge, England in 1977, to Rosemary and Arthur Hallows.

"So – you must have their name, now. No more Whitethorn?"

"I didn’t want to lose my Mum’s name, so took it as a middle name. William Whitethorn Hallows, now."

"It’s a nice name."

"Thanks."

"When did you decide to go back to William?"

"Right off. It just felt...more me, y’know? I mean, it just feels more...right. Actually I...I... always thought of myself as William. Even when I was a vampire. Would never have admitted it, of course. But that’s how I thought of myself. Deep down."

"I knew that."

He looked truly astonished. "How?"

"I dunno. Just knew."

He looked at her with that expression of his - love and awe and tenderness and a kind of reverence. She’d missed him so much.

After a moment he turned away, and got out a chopping board, and took vegetables out of the fridge, and got out a wicked-looking chef’s knife, and started to chop.

"Can I help?"

"You’re a guest!"

"I could still help." She got up.

"Sit!"

She sat.

"So – what happened next?"

"Rosemary was moving back to New York City. She’d grown up here. In this apartment, actually. Her family had had it since the twenties. Asked me if I wanted to go with her.

"So I did. Got a job as a bartender. Only really transferable skill I had, y’know? Did that for a while. Then, a friend of Rosemary’s who owns the restaurant where I work now needed someone to help in the kitchen. I did a bit of that, found I liked it. ‘M pretty good at it, too." He chopped vegetables as he spoke. He chopped like a professional. She really couldn’t have helped much.

"You lived here?"

"For a while. Then got my own place – tiny little place in Queens. Long commute. But it was mine – first time, as a human, that I was on my own. Paying my own way, y’know."

"And then?"

He stopped chopping. "Rosemary got sick."

"You said – she had cancer?" Just like Mom.

"Yeah. Breast cancer. She had, you know, chemotherapy. It helped. For a while. Made her so sick though..." He looked down at the floor again.

"You took care of her."

"Yeah. Moved back here, to help. Then, she was in remission, for a while. And then - it came back. And they said the chances that more chemo would help were very small. And...she decided...she decided not to have more chemo. Said that she wanted to enjoy the time she had left. She said...that the thing that was most important to her, more important than staying alive, was being herself. Being who she was. And that...if she spent her last months in and out of hospital, that wouldn’t be Rosemary. We argued about it. We argued a lot. And finally, she got angry, and she said...she said...she said..." his voice dropped to a whisper. "She said that if she tried to prolong her life, it would feel like...like losing her soul."

Something clicked in Dawn’s mind then. The shadow in his eyes whenever he’d talked about his Mum. Oh, God. His Mum. He must have turned his Mum to save her. Only he didn’t save her, he destroyed her. God.

He hadn't taken his eyes off the floor. "So...she had always wanted to go to the Galapagos islands. Never had gone. Asked me to go with her. We went. She was so happy. And – she died there. The way she wanted to. The way she had lived.

"There was a poet she loved – Mary Oliver. Had one of her poems done up in calligraphy for me, when I was recovering from the accident. Called 'Wild Geese' – thought it said something I needed to hear. But her favorite was a poem called 'When Death Comes' - and her favorite line was 'When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement' – and I...I put that on her gravestone: 'A bride married to amazement' – because that’s what she was..." and he was crying. Really crying. And she was too. They held each other, and cried.

And finally they stopped, and he kissed the top of her head, and laughed, and said, "We certainly have gone all out with the waterworks today, haven’t we Niblet?"

And she nodded, and laughed too, and said, “I’m REALLY hungry now!”

And he went back to chopping the vegetables.








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Chapter 3