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"No man is free who is not master of himself."
--Epictetus
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"An anomaly William, thats what you are." The watcher, paused waiting for some sign from the master vampire, that she hadn't unwittingly stepped over some invisible line.

Spike cringed inwardly at the use of his old name, but he knew that the watcher was only trying to be friendly, and after all Buffy had called him William for years now. But that was different, that was Buffy. There wasn't anything that she could do that would ever be wrong in his eyes.

"Are you comfortable William, would you care for anything before we begin?"

He decided to teach her a small lesson in familiarity.

Spike leared at her, his voice rumbled in his chest. "What are you offering pet?" His eyes travelled up and down her form appreciativly, one eyebrow raised, head cocked to one side.

The female watcher gasped, and drew back from the table a little, "I though perhaps some blood, we have supplies here, if you would care for some, its not human of course, but its fresh."

Spike shook his head slowly, his eyes held the slightest glimmer of a golden sheen, never breaking eye contact, he leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Not that kind of hungry luv."

The watcher squirmed in her seat, looking everywhere but into his eyes, desperate for an escape from what had very quickly become an akward situation.

Spike hadn't shifted an inch, the smile that played over his lips, hinted that he was expecting good times to come.

His voice, that only a second before had been full of menace and lust, was now almost flippant, "A nice cup of tea though would be lovely, and if you have any of those little shortbread biscuits, like we had last time that would be nice too."

He leaned back, with his hands on his head, leaning on the chair, his amusement now openly displayed on his features. The watcher sighed and nodded to the butler in the corner to fetch the order.

"Do you want to read back what we have so far then luv, refresh my memory a little?" He of course knew exactly what he'd said during his last visit, but he wanted to check that she'd written it all down correctly, and hadn't embellished any of the facts.

"Of course, as you wish sir." She had taken the lesson on board graciously and wouldn't be so informal from now on.

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William Arthur Forbes, born in London, 1854. Father unknown, mother deceased 1887. One half-sister, Juliette Marie, born 1851, married in 1878.
Trained as a scribe for the London News, until your turning, at age 26.
Turned by Drucilla Maye Alleine in 1880.

No, he thought to himself, all very accurate, but not getting to the heart of the matter at all. He had requested this particular watcher as his biographer, because she reminded him of the Wicca, Tara, she was intuetive, and gentle. Someone that he felt he could be honest with, and who wouldn't judge to harshly, or belittle him. But if he didn't start being honest with himself, then this was never going to work out. Time to bite the bullet.

"Well luv, thats the facts of it, but there was alot more going on than just dates and names. William Arthur Forbes was a ponce. Completely dominated by his mother and sister, and destined to be stomped on by every human whos path he crossed. William was a slave to his weakness as a man. He was so whipped by the bitches in his life, that the offer of the demon was irresistable. It was a chance to be respected."

Spike paused and considered this last statement. "Respected wasn't what I meant luv. It was fear. I wanted everyone to fear me. All the cruel words and laughs... I wanted people to be so scared of me that they would never dare laugh at me again."

The watcher was cleary shocked by this outburst of honesty. The entire purpose of these interview sessions was to get to the reason that of all the vampires in the world, this vampire had managed to choose to be good. Without the aid of magick or curse he had found the path to what was, for all intents and purposes a conscience. But after 4 sessions, they hadn't even come close to examining the heart of the issues that had shaped William into Spike, and Spike into Mr Summers. She decided to press him for further explaination.

"And is that what happened. Did you get the fear that you craved?"

Spike snorted under his breath at the question. "Did I get feared? No luv, not by anyone that mattered to me. William the Bloody was still pretty much bloody pathetic."

"See, William's problem was that in his entire life no-one had given him any power, not over his destiny or his fate. My mother indentured me to my employer when I was only a child, working for a shilling a week, which she took off me the moment the coin was in my hands. My sister was cruel hearted and cold. She spent most of her days punishing me for existing and for somehow taking a microscopic amount of mothers attention away from her. The day she got married and moved out of the house was the happiest day of my short miserable life."

"Then my dark princess found me, I was in tears over some silly bint that I thought I loved, and she told me exactly what I had wanted to here all my life."

<<I see you. A man surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength, his vision, his glory.>>

"No one had ever claimed to see any strength in me, and when she asked if I wanted it, not even knowing what 'it' was, I said, 'oh yeah, I wanted it.' more than anything else that I'd ever been offered. If I had known that she was offering to share eternal power and being, at that point I might have been even more eager."

<<Becoming a vampire is a profound and powerful experience. I could feel this new strength coursing through me. Getting killed made me feel alive for the very first time. I was through living by society's rules. Decided to make a few of my own. >>

"Of course, somethings never change. And being a vampire just means different rules, a different society and a whole new set of schoolyard bullies. Sure I could scare the crap out of humans, but my new family, pretty much treated me like my old one had. Angelus was like the father that I'd never known. The father that hadn't been in my life by his own choice, and I hated him for that. And yet I wanted to please him so badly. He meant as much to me as Dru did. But nothing I could do was ever going to be enough. He was the reason I sought out my first Slayer. As a matter of fact, he was the first one to even tell me that there was such a thing as a Slayer. Ironic isn't, how that one word -Slayer- could have meant so much to us both over the years, and bring us together in the end."

"So I found her, and I killed her, Dru was pleased, and I think even Darla may have been mildly impressed, but Angelus was as unmoved as ever. O' course I didn't know then that he'd gotten himself a soul, but deep down, I knew that it probably didn't make that much difference. He wouldn't have been impressed either way."

"And so still, no one was thinking very much of William, or Spike either. Dru knew that Angelus was gone, even before Angel had realised it himself, and so she contented herself with me for a century or so. Biding her time til 'daddy 'came home."

The watcher paused from her writing and looked at Spike. She noted that he looked truely sad. "I realise that this was your family Sir, but I was always led to believe that vampires were communal when it came to sharing family members in their group?"

Spikes head snapped up and he glared at the watcher across the table from him. "We were never communal about anything. Life in that little family was a competition every day, even after Angelus was gone. It was a battle to keep Dru from hurting herself, from wandering off into strife of one sort or another." Spikes voice got low, and pained. "When she was well, she was the most amazing creature you'd ever see, but during her spells, she was helpless, weak, she reminded me of how I used to be, and I just wanted to protect her, and make everything safe and well again. Return the favour so to speak."

The watcher cleared her thoat, dreading that she'd drawn attention to it, and raising her hand in an unconscience motion to protect the soft skin of her neck. "And sir, that was how it was for the next century or so?"

"throw in another slayer in '77 and some fancy massacres now and then to liven things up, and you pretty much have it. Til Sunnydale that is. Thats when things really got turned on their ear."

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"You know, after playing second string to Angelus for a century, things get alittle tired, and I was looking for a distraction. I thought if I could bag a third slayer, then Dru might finally see that I was worthy of her adoration. I'd realized decades before, that her turning me had been an act of pity. That she had seen her own weaknesses mirrored in me, and that she had thought I would make a good companion for her, during her less lucid moments. She had been right too, two halfs do make a whole, and her strengths complimented my own, and together we were strong. I doubt we would have survived without each other. And that's probably why even after I made the choice to leave the world that she had given me, I couldn't go back and dust her. It would have been like dusting myself, my weak half."

"And that choice to leave, was made unconsciencely, the first moment I layed eyes on Buffy."

"She was everything that Dru could never be, and everything that I had always wanted. She had power, real power. Not intimidation, no threats or swagger from her. It was pure, and blinding. And I made my mind up at that very moment that I was going to have her.
Or I was going to die trying."

"So I set my mind to killing her. I was convinced that if I could drink from her, then nothing could ever stop me again. To have that power inside of me, it consumed my every thought from that point on. There was no one else for me. No other purpose."

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"It surprised me you know, how much of what we do is just from habit. Oh it starts out as a need, driving you towards the edge of an unseen cliff, but once the need is sated, and you grow comfortable with your desires, the killing just becomes habitual. The way humans eat out of boredom, or depression, you don't really NEED that third block of chocolate, but it makes you feel good, makes you feel alive, so you take it. It's the same with vampires. But the chip, it became my Richard Simmons, my Gloria Marshall. Suddenly all of the pain and torment that I had hidden behind the blood habit, was there for me to see, there was no escaping it, and William was right there along with it. And of course the simpering fool couldn't handle it could he?"

"He went all soft, and dragged the demon along for the ride. I really thought for a while that the was no point to even trying to make it better. But then I realized something that changed my whole world."

"For over 100 yrs, I had been fighting William, doing everything in my power to destroy what I considered to be the weakest thing about me. But when Buffy came to me, after she was staked by that flegling vamp, William was where my mind wandered to, when I tried to define who I was. It was all about William, not Spike but William."

"And it hit me, just as William was a slave to his weakness as a man, so was Spike a slave to the weakness of the demon, and the need to fulfill that hunger that drove him. If I was going to have any chance at all, at getting control over my destiny, and having the kind of power that I saw every day in Buffy, then I had to face William. And I had to make a man of him."

The watcher looked at the vampire, and shook her head slowly. "And you realised all of this, over what period of time?"

Spike grinned back at her "Oh pet, I'm still along way from understanding it all, but this has taken about 20 years or so. I've had plenty of time to come to grips with it all, and with what it means to me, and to Buffy. She however saw it very differently at first."

"See fate dealt me an ace. That damned chip. Oh I don't damn it now, but at the time, I thought that my world was over. But being forced to step back, and think with something other than my bloodlust, helped me to find the man that had been lost. And I realised that the man inside the vampire loved the woman, trapped in the body of a Slayer. Of course she didn't see me as anything but the monster that I had always proven myself to be. And the more I tried to show her that I could change, the more she opposed me."

"I understood why she didn't want to see me as a man, it was hard for both of us, humanity was a game I hadn't played in a long long time, and the rules had changed alot. William had been in a time capsule for over 100 yrs, and being allowed out to play was like letting a kid loose in a candy store, he wanted undying commitment, and epic romance. All the things that he'd dreamt of. And of course it didn't help that I pointed him towards the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. Guess my demon didn't want to play fair."

"But after a while, we got things sorted, and she realised that she couldn't live without me, and that I wasn't going to stop loving her anytime soon...not for at least a century or so, and so she finally agreed to love William, tolerate Spike and ignore the demon as long as he didn't do anything to draw attention to himself."

"Thats when the biggest gift of my unlife arrived, in the shape of Angel and, of all people Riley Finn."

**********************************

"Buffy had decided that I should have the right to choose my life, and that my new found humanity couldn't be complete until I made that choice of my own free will. I've gotta say, it frightened me more than a little. It was one thing to be good, with the leash on, another thing all together, to be free range."

"Angel was very skeptical, after all, he knew that he couldn't do it, couldn't be good without the set parameters. But Buffy explained to him that I had no soul to loose, and that my basic nature wouldn't be altered, just by removing the chip."

"I wasn't so sure."

"It was the ultimate risk, because not only did I risk loosing my one great love, but I risked loosing myself too. And I knew if that happened then I would never get Buffy back. She would think that all my love, all my words and actions, had been fake. But I also knew that if I didn't try, she would also question me and whether my change was genuine. So, Angelus found Riley, and organised, via some not so gentle persuasion, to have him find me the doctor that first operated on me, and have him remove his handy work."

"The chip had weakened my ability to provide for myself...to be strong. And I missed that strength so much. But the absence of that strength had taught me a different strength too. An inner strength that had never been there for William or Spike. They say that when you lose one sense, the others become stronger, well it was like that for me."

"Buffy had seen it, seen what I couldn't at that point. I was too close to see how much I had changed. The feeling of relience on others for my food, and protection had over-ridden my ability to see the developing power that was within me. It was almost impossible to recognise it, mainly because I didn't know it. So it wasn't my own belief in myself that gave me the faith to get the chip out. It was Buffys unwavering trust and love that carried me through."

"Being unchipped allowed me to be master of my own destiny for the first time in my life, or unlife. No mother or sister belittling me. No Dru holding me to her darkness with the fear of being truely alone. Buffy gave me free will, she is truely my creator. My goddess."

"The ability to choose is the greatest power a man *or beast* can possibly have....without the power of choice we are all enslaved to our personal demons. And knowing this, what Buffy gave me was the greatest gift anyone could ever be given. How could I do anything but live up to the trust that she has in me."

"You called me an anomaly, but perhaps its not me at all. What if its her, and her trust thats the anomaly. After all, how many demons have been offered unconditional love from someone that is capable of killing them? How often is kindness the first line of defence?"

The watcher studied him, looking for any sign of insincerity, but there wasn't any, here before her sat, a living contridiction. She needed to finish this report, and in conclusion decided that a Demon without a soul, that was also a good man, could be the most dangerous combination on earth. Only in retrospect will anyone know if this change is permenant. What happens when this love ends, when the Ex-Slayer passes on, and he is again alone. That is anyones guess. This love can motivate him towards great acts of heroism or villiany. Love will do that to you.

~fin~