Dry your tears

Disclaimer: see first part

AN: My TV broke down last night, so now there will be lots of time for writing after work.
This one is a little short though but I thought it was a good place to stop.

Part Three: First Impressions

"I, ... I don't know my name. I should know my name, shoudn't I? What has happened to me?"

Huh, well that was something new. Spike slowly approached the boy huddled on the floor. Xander was still hugging himself and muttering silently the same words all over and all over again.

"I know my name, I can remember it, just a few more moments. I will remember, who I am, where I am, I know that, really I know .... "
"AAAAAhhhhrrrrrrgggg, WHO AM I" he suddenly cried out and looked towards the vampire, who stopped at the loud exclamation from the boy.

"Ahm, calm down, Xander, no need to shout. Vampire hearing ... sensitive, remember?" The moment the words had left his mouth, Spiek knew that they had been wrong.

"CALM, WHO, WHAT ....VAMPIRE, you said vampire?" The boy jumped to his feet and began backing away from Spike. As Spike was betweeen Xander and the door the way Xander inched back brought him within mere centimeters of the hole to the ground level of the crypt. One step more backwards and the boy would have fallen

- and Xander took another step backwards -

"No, Xander STOP there's ..." and before Spike could finish that sentence, Xander Harris fell down the hole to the basement of Spike's home. "Oh shit, double buggering SHIT", he exclaimed before following the young man by jumping down and in that forgetting about his own injuries.
"Oh shit," came again when he reached the bottom, landing ungracefully and immediately being overwhelmed by the pain, he promptly passed out.


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For the second time in less than 24 hours Spike woke up aching all over. 'Getting into a a habit here, huh?' he thought groggily as he tried to remember why he had woken up on the floor when his bed was only a few feet away. 'Should have made it there at least.'
Still somewhat foggy it took Spike a moment to realize that he could hear a steady noise above the pounding in his head, the last most likely from falling down the ladder and landing headfirst on the stone floor.
The noise was coming from the direction of his bed and now that he concentrated on it, he could make out words repeated all over in a low murmur:
"This is a dream, gonna wake up anytime now, just open your eyes and you're at home in bed .... all just a dream, this is not real, not reall at all, no, not real... the alarm will go off any second now and then you'll wake up ... everything's allright, no worry, just a nightmare ..."

"Oh, for godsakes, Harris, shut the hell up, will you?" Spike groaned out and made an effort to get up.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG"

The scream left Spike's ears ringing for a few seconds before he finally gathered enough strengh to straighten himself up on his arms so that he could have a proper look around.

"What's with the yelling ...." was all he got out before he took in the sight before him. Xander Harris, backed up against the wall, wide eyed and staring at him as if he had suddenly sprouted two heads or something like that.

"You are dead." pointing at him with an accusatory finger, well, very much trembling finger actually and now that Spike took notice he could smell the fear coming off the boy. Pulse racing, trembling all over and short of a panic attack.

Suddenly Spike remembered just why he had woken up on the ground. Xander bloody Harris falling through his door, blabbering something about not knowing who or where he was and then falling through the trap door, and he himself, idiot that he was stumbling right after the boy.

"Right, Xander, calm down. I'm going to get up now, walk over to the bed, lie down and then we can talk, ok?"

Spike really wished right then that he never had left his bed in the first time.

It took him three tries to get up on his feet, without the boy so much as raising a hand to help him, if anything he even backed further away at every move from Spike and when Spike finally had made it over to the bed, Xander was in the opposite corner of the room as far away from him as was possible.

"You were dead. You were lying next to me when I woke up. I tried to find your pulse because you weren't breathing and I couldn't find anything. You were dead."

'Oh, so what now?' Obviously the little fall down the ladder hadn't brought the memories back and Xander Harris was still without any idea of just who and where he was.

"I am dead."

Well, afterall that much was true. Now, what to do about the boy? Spike let his head fall back on the bed and closed his eyes.
First, he could return him to Anya, let her deal with it. Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies could try to figure out what had happened and fix his memories. Best solution probably, only that he would inevitariably be accursed of having something to do with this and honestly right now he had no wish to cross the slayers path that soon again.

Well, second choice: he had been thinking about leaving hadn't he? He could do just that. Leave now, let the boy find his way home and he never would have to deal with any of them.

Or, he could leave and take the boy with him, if he got him to trust him in the first place. Wouldn't that be a nice parting gift. Taking one of Buffy's friends with him, god knew where and maybe send a photo in a few weeks?
At least it would be more deserving of the demon that he was than the first options he had come up with.

Well, what else could he possibly do?

A finger poking him in the ribs brought him out of his thoughts with an abrupt jerk.
"Argh, what was that for?"

"Just trying to find out if you are dead again? Looked very much like that from over there."

Well, cudos to the boy, he certainly was brave, sort of. The smell of fear had faded some and now Xander Harris was studying him intently, which made Spike just a little bit nervous. And he had moved to the bed without even being noticed by the vampire.

"You were not breathing again." The boy observed.

"I don't need to breathe. I am a vampire, we only need one thing, blood."
Ok, so that might have been a little bit crude, but then he was a vampire, and seeing Harris scuttle back a few paces and the pulse get up once more, certainly felt good to him.

He grinned suddenly, this could be fun after all. And if he had to leave Sunnydale, not that he had decided that much yet, but what was really here for him, so then why not get away with a big bang?