In time you'll see that some things
Travel faster than light
In time you'll recognize that love is larger than life
--Neil Finn, Faster than Light
Because Buffy had lost track of time with Spike it was late when she got home; everyone was already up. Willow and Tara were upstairs, the shower running. Dawn was in the kitchen and looked at her blankly when she came in. She'd been reading the paper and shoveling down the last of the pancakes. Tara made them, Buffy could tell -- she always made the funny shapes.
"Hey," was all Buffy could think to say. A long, bumpy road stretched out in front of her.
"Hey, yourself," Dawn said, but Buffy couldn't tell if it was petulant or just resigned. Dawn looked her up and down, casting a cold eye over the clothes she'd worn the night before.
"If I tried to talk to you about it, would you even let me? I can't imagine what you must be thinking of me." She motioned to the back porch and Dawn followed her out, head ducked low, a crease in her forehead and her mouth drawn tight. They sat on the chairs in the yard and Buffy sighed, scanning the trees and the painfully bright blue sky, wishing she could be anywhere else right now.
"So, you guys probably were talking about where I was when you made breakfast." She glanced at Dawn, her mouth twisting at the corners. "I was with Spike. I didn't mean to stay out all night. It just kind of happened."
"Duh."
"You're angry with me, and I get that. But are you angrier because I'm a skanky ho of a bad sister or because it was Spike?"
Chipping and biting at her fingernail polish, Dawn didn't say anything for a while, just breathed in and out. "I don't think you're a ho."
"But you think I'm a bad sister?"
"No." Chip. Chip. Bite. "I wanted you and Spike to get together. The way I feel about him..." She finally looked at Buffy, a face soft and young, a true kid sister, the way Buffy most wanted her to be. "It's not the way I feel about other guys at school and stuff. He's just... I like him because he's older and he's cool and he says mean things about people in that sarcastic English way. And he's a total hottie. But it's not a for-real kind of liking."
"Then you're pissed at me because?" Buffy asked, raising her eyebrows, completely confused.
"I'm not pissed at you!" Dawn shouted a little too earnestly. She lowered her voice, talking between her teeth. "I'm not pissed off. I just... Spike is so into you. And if you're into him now..."
Buffy spread her hands wide. "Whoa, nelly! Hold all five hundred of your horses there. That's not in the yet, yet."
"Oh, please. You're completely into him now, even a blind man could see it. You guys were dancing in a total 'get a room' way or something at the Bronze, and you were so... miss hootchie mama with the booty contact there. In case you didn't notice."
Scowling at her, Buffy remained silent.
Bite. Chip. "But it just made me wonder. I liked thinking that he kinda liked me on my own. That he didn't think I was just your bratty kid sister. If you're sleeping with him, then he finally got what he wanted. He got you. And is that the only reason he helped me? Did he save me just because he'd get you?"
Her heart felt weighted, pulling her down, down to the bottom of the sea. "No! God, no, Dawn. He did it because he cared about you."
But Dawn wasn't so sure that Buffy could see anything outside the little box of where she'd kept her picture of Spike all these years. "I guess."
Sometimes Buffy was just such an idiot, you could see why she couldn't keep a boyfriend. Guys would put their feelings for her right out in her face, their worship for her, and she'd just walk along, la de da, completely missing the whole thing. And the stupidest thing about it was that Buffy deserved more than she got, and you had to wonder about someone who missed seeing even the crappy low-rent love when she deserved to get the deluxe version.
It had been such a long time since Buffy had touched her, really touched her, so it was wonderful when she reached out and gently smoothed Dawn's hair. Dawn leaned into the caress, remembering their mother and the way it used to feel to know you were loved and safe.
"Dawnie. I don't always get what's happened with Spike. The Spike I knew for years, the one we all knew, was evil and horrible. He took pleasure not just in killing people, but in terrorizing them and being sadistic. He didn't kill to feed, he did it for fun. You didn't know him then; those memories weren't given to you."
"I know. You all hate him. Or at least, you used to."
"It was more than that. God, it's so complicated." Buffy rubbed her hands across her face. "He tried to kill me, to kill Willow, he nearly did kill Xander... and he doesn't have a soul, so right and wrong... they're not easy concepts for him. I think lately he's tried really hard to do the right things because he feels for me and for you. He liked Mom a lot, too. But it's something he has to do very consciously, very deliberately, or else he'd slip into the thing -- the person -- we knew before. He can't bite anyone, but that doesn't mean he couldn't still kill them, do you see what I'm saying?"
"Yeah. I get that, I do. It's just... if you guys broke up, wouldn't he... hate me? Kill me because he was mad at you?"
It almost made Buffy laugh to think of it terms of breaking up and being a couple and being into each other. But there was some truth to it all if you looked at it from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old. She remembered a time when it was all about hearts and flowers and true love. Before Angel turned bad, before the world crashed in around her... before she'd died.
"No, I don't think he would," Buffy said. "Everything he does now he's doing for his own reasons. It wasn't his choice to be stuck here or to have feelings for me, but it was his choice to help us."
"Are you going to keep seeing him, or was last night a one-nighter?"
Buffy wondered if she'd been this grown up when she was sixteen, or if the kind of company Dawn was surrounded by made her say all these wild things.
"I don't know. I guess I will. There's so much baggage to deal with about everyone and him." And a prophecy, and a feeling like I don't belong here, and the constant sound of death in my ears every time I fall asleep. "Plus, I have to be really careful, we have to be really careful. I'm your guardian now and having guys over, even if no one knows they're bloodsucking fiends, or me staying out all night with *any* one, is going to get noticed, and it could be serious trouble for us. I don't know what to do about that right now."
"Is Giles going to freak?"
"Big time. Imagine having to explain me to the council."
Dawn put on an English accent, a very bad English accent, and said, "Yes, she's a very headstrong girl, and there's this unseemly attraction to vampires, but she has saved the world a few times we must remember."
"Pretty much, yup."
"Spike never was like other vamps, though, was he? I mean, he does some kinda weird things, and sometimes he's so much like all the guys at school that you just have to roll your eyes and go, whatever. He's not like Angel, but he's still not like other vamps."
Buffy thought of how he felt between her legs, the way he thrust into her like he belonged inside her body, how his eyes never left hers even when he climaxed.
Here, kitty, kitty. His voice in her mother's kitchen. Official sponsor of my killing you. Fangs heading for her throat, yellow eyes pinpointed at her neck. Love's not brains, children, it's blood. I'm all you've got. "No, he wasn't like other vampires." One good day.
She reached over and took Dawn's key necklace between her fingers, turning it this way and that. "I guess I didn't want to know it before, but he wasn't."
Buffy woke that night to find herself in her sleep clothes, standing somewhere down Revello Drive in the dewy grass of someone's lawn. How the hell had she gotten here?
She looked down at her bare feet covered in freshly mowed clippings. The address was... three whole blocks from her house. Crap. She scanned the area, uncertain, wondering if someone had kidnapped her in her sleep and brought her here for some kind of hazing ritual or other nefarious purposes, and began tentatively walking back home.
This would be just perfect if she was discovered wandering around weaponless in her jammies by a pack of vampires. What an entry in the Watcher journals Giles would get to make.
From behind her Buffy heard a sound and whirled, fists up, to find Spike standing there, palms held forward.
"Only me, Slayer. What the bleeding hell are you doing out here like this?"
"Spike. I... I don't know. I woke up here. I went to bed and then I woke up here." She scowled at him. "What are *you* doing out here?"
"Came to check up on you. Reckoned you wouldn't be back... it would take you awhile to sort it all out and do the 'I'll never let him touch me again thing,' and just thought I'd peek in on you. Make sure you were safe."
Spreading her hands out, Buffy shrugged in a gesture of "Well, as you can see" and started walking again. Then she stopped and looked at him. "Wait. You were going to peep through my window or something? Is that what you're always doing down on the front lawn? Watching me?"
He squinted down the block. "Yeah, well, you caught me. I'm stalking you." Under loud protestations, he scooped her up and began carrying her home. He should feel embarrassed at being caught out, but his fear for her sanity pierced him to his rotten core. "It's maybe a damn good thing since you're wandering about defenseless. Don't you know that big S on your chest is like a neon light luring all the bugs to you? And I wasn't peeping. Peeking in on you. It's not the same thing."
If a copper happened by they were done for. Dru had taught him a lot of those cheap Gypsy tricks to put the whammy on people, but he'd never been all that good at it. Took too long to hypnotize people, and he preferred to snap necks instead. Spike hurried back to her house and slipped in as quietly as he could, dropping her gently to stand. But Buffy didn't take her arms from around his neck. "Come upstairs."
Drawing his head back, Spike looked at her in bewilderment. "It's one thing for you to stay with me," he whispered sharply, "but it's another thing for me to stay here with you."
Speaking softly into his neck, Buffy mumbled, "I'm scared to sleep. I can sleep if you stay."
All right, so he'd dreamt this a hundred times, but with his recent practice in Doing the Right Thing, he shouldn't even be tempted to stay. Spike took off his coat to set it on a chair. He picked Buffy up and carried her silently upstairs, setting her gently on her bed.
All the times he'd been in her room it had never been with her to stay. It still looked so girlish. The side of her that never had the chance to really come out, the side he wanted to see sparkle. If he could do nothing else for her he wanted her to have the chance to be girlish once in a while, to feel free enough to be the young woman she was. He moved silently into the bathroom and returned with a towel, tenderly wiping off the dew and grass that covered her feet. Obviously she was freezing even on this summer night, her body trembling against an arctic wind that came from someplace inside. Spike lay beside her on the bed stroking her golden hair, offering her his feeble warmth. She looked so haggard, with dark circles under her eyes. And she seemed thinner, though he didn't think that was possible. Of course she was still impossibly lovely to him.
"Pet, what's going on? This isn't normal for you, is it, the talking and walking in your sleep? You ever done this before?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Not that many people could tell me if I did."
That made him laugh. "Well, something's bothering you. Any idiot, even me, could see that. I want to help you, but I can't if you won't tell me. What are you seeing?"
Before she'd wakened on the street, Buffy had seen herself jumping off the tower, sheet lightning and rolling smoke surrounding her. How did she explain to Spike, or to anyone, that she was sure it had happened, that it hadn't felt like a nightmare but as real to her as this right now?
"I can't." She buried herself in him and pulled the covers up higher despite the heat of the night. He was so solid and strong beside her. No, Buffy thought, I don't love him, but boy am I in like right now. "Talk to me."
Almost no one had wanted him to talk, ever. Even in life, most people he knew had wanted him to shut up; in death Angel and Darla had hated listening to him. Dru had listened from her own strange planet, but even she'd disappeared for long stretches, as though she had to be away from him to find pieces of herself, hear only herself inside her head. Since he'd been stuck here in Sunnydale he'd listened to the words "shut up" ceaselessly.
"What about?" he asked in mild astonishment.
"Anything," she whispered. "What was your life like? Before, I mean."
"Oh God, you wouldn't want to hear about that, believe me. Pathetic doesn't even begin to do it justice." Her grip tightened on his waist, though, so he told her of his world then. About ladies with fans and fainting couches, about gaslit streets and the sound of horses clip-clopping along cobblestones, and the smell of coal-filled air. About a time when he knew what morning really was.
After awhile he felt her relax into sleep. He sat up, holding her tiny hand, its web of blue veins twitching with blood under the translucent skin, and watched as she slept her restless sleep.
For some reason Willow woke early, as if something was asking her to be up and ready for it. Maybe it was just the fragment of a dream, she decided, listening to the birds outside the window. Next to her Tara lay peacefully still under sleep, so Willow got quietly out of bed, wrapped a robe around herself, and went downstairs to start breakfast.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Spike's coat on the chair in the dining room. Everyone in the household had had the Big Talk with Buffy yesterday, first Dawn and then later Willow and Tara, about what had changed with Spike and how Buffy didn't know where it was going but that it wouldn't go anywhere if people were uncomfortable. Buffy had stressed that it was important to look like a good guardian for Dawn. Now Willow was a little nonplussed by having Spike spend the night so obviously and so soon. Although thankfully they hadn't made any noises last night and as far as she could tell, no one in the house had known.
As she was contemplating this, a voice said softly, "Red."
"Aigh!" she shouted, and did a little bunny hop. Not only could you not see vampires sometimes, you couldn't even hear them coming. It was incredibly unfair -- they were powerful, silent, nearly invisible, plus they could put the whammy on you with almost no effort. It all seemed like an incredible inequity.
Spike put a hand up. "No fear."
Easy for him to say, Willow thought. "I didn't hear you. I... you were here last night?"
Nodding his head in the direction of the kitchen, he asked, "Can I talk to you?"
"Okayyy," she said warily. Something about him scaring her like that reminded her too much of past encounters. Willow followed him into the kitchen. He took a beer from the refrigerator and started drinking. Willow cringed at the early hour before she remembered that this was the end of his day, really.
"Wasn't planning on being here and we didn't do anything, if that's what's got you worried."
"Well, then, why are you here? Are you, like, being a peeping Tom or something?"
He rolled his eyes and made frustrated hand gestures. "Why does everyone think I'm peeping and stalking?"
"I don't know," she answered brightly. "Because you stole her sweaters and made a shrine and used to hang outside like obsesso-boy? Oh! and you built a robot so you could have pretend sex with her?"
He took a long pull on the beer. "Okay, you got me there," he said and stared at Willow glumly. "Look. I know I'm not top of the pops round here. But there's something wrong with Buffy. And it's getting worse every day. Last night I ended up here because I found her sleepwalking. She was about three blocks down and not wearing a stitch except those cute little bottoms and that tiny top."
His mind wandered as he said that, remembering what it had been like to see her body slowly revealed to him. The matchless beauty of it. The wonder of looking down to see her head in his hands, her mouth around his cock. Spike closed his eyes. It didn't do to get so distracted.
"She was sleepwalking?" Willow's eyes were huge with alarm.
"Has she ever done that before? Talked in her sleep, especially about how she's supposed to die?"
"Well... I don't know, Spike. Most of us, we never spend the night with her." She touched her hand to her face, staring down at the counter. "I guess it's a good thing after all that you've had the chance to have... found that out."
"Don't know. What I do want to know is -- can you and Tara do some kind of spell? Get inside her head? Because she won't tell me what it is and she's clearly not telling you either. I don't know if..." he trailed off, rubbing his hands over his face. How did he say this so they wouldn't try to step in and prevent him from being with Buffy? "I need to know whether this thing, this vision she thinks was about her, is what's causing this. Or if it's me."
Willow pulled her head back, stunned. She'd never given him credit for being able to figure things like that out even though she'd seen time and again how perspicacious he was about people. She put a hand on his arm. It was the first time she had ever touched him willingly. "I don't know if you know this, but Tara can see people's auras. It's just a gift she has. And she's been warning us that Buffy's has been darker and darker lately. We didn't know if it was losing her mom and all that, or something else. At least we know there's something else now."
"But can you find out what's in her head?" he asked, his voice rising in frustration. " I don't want to... to violate her, but it's eating her alive, whatever's causing this. She looks like hell. Well, as much as anyone that beautiful can look like hell."
That made Willow smile. "I don't know. We can see, Tara knows spells like that better than me. You want a ball of light or to teleport something, I rock, but for people's emotions, Tara's your girl." A sharp needle-glance in his direction. "Or, *my* girl. Not yours, no way."
"Hey," Spike said, holding his hands up like a thief caught bang to rights in the cash box, "a man can admire without taking."
"He could also admire without his eyes bugging out of his head like hard-boiled eggs every time he sees her boobs."
"Shows how much you know about men." Spike started pacing back and forth across the kitchen in his long, loping strides. "Look, Will. If I'm the cause, I need to know." His stomach churned, now he was talking about it at last.
"It's so weird to be here talking to you like this. Like you're Joe Normal Guy in love with my best friend. You tried to kill me twice. You terrified me."
He stared at her for awhile, trying to figure out what she was saying. "Oh! Um... sorry, really sorry about that. New man, yadda yadda."
Willow gave him a cute, tight smile and nodded her head. "I figured. Maybe I shouldn't tell you, but I don't think it's because she's involved with you. Tara said that when Buffy is around you, her aura seems quieter and lighter."
He stopped pacing, blinking, something inside him tightened and achey. "Really?" he asked, though he didn't expect an answer. Some things were too wonderful to be questioned. You never knew what the answer would be, so it was best to leave them as they were.
"So, what does my aura look like, or has she ever said?"
"You're dead, Spike. You don't have one."
"Oh, right. Should have figured."
"Spike. You know you're going to have to change your life a little if you want to be with her. Do something better if you want to be in it for the long haul."
"You think I could be in for the long haul?"
"It's up to you. But Buffy, she's not large with the big bad. So you might want to be thinking ahead about the good and all. Now that you're a new man, yadda yadda."
He opened the back door and grinned at her. Then he faded into the early morning twilight.
Upstairs, Buffy woke when she heard the back door closing, and looked around groggily. On the bed next to her was a note in Spike's tiny, precise handwriting.
"Best to leave before there's a scene. See you tonight.
--S
You're beautiful when you sleep."
Smiling, Buffy put the piece of paper in the nightstand drawer. She was going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't mean she was only beautiful when she slept and the rest of the time she looked like hell.
It had been so much more than she could have expected, the way he took care of her last night. How he hadn't asked for anything in return. If he'd initiated sex she would have responded, the embers inside her smoldering quietly, constantly waiting for a spark when he was near. Instead he'd stayed quietly by her side, talking to her, and she'd listened to his accent shift and his voice change a little as he'd told her about things he'd seen throughout the past century. She got out of bed, putting her hand for a moment on the side where he'd lain. But there was no heat there, no trace of his body. Now she was just alone in the day again.
"All's I'm saying is that right now, Buffy doesn't *know* what's right for her," Xander insisted, looking at the table full of women surrounding him, glaring at him. They'd met at the Magic Box when Willow had called them to detail her conversation with Spike.
At least Giles was on his side, but he was staying over by the counter as if the physical distance removed him from the problem. Xander was flummoxed that they weren't freaking over Buffy sleeping with Spike, slayer of slayers, tormenter of all their lives for years. For the past few months he'd watched how Buffy and Dawn acted around Spike, waiting for the moment when Spike turned their gratitude to his advantage. Now here it was and the girls were just... rah, Spike.
"I don't think that's what's causing her to turn to Spike," Tara said quietly. "I think what pushes her to him is that he loves her and gives her the security she needs right now. Something else is causing her problems."
That was easy for Tara to say. She'd never been on the receiving end of severe head injury from Spike.
"You guys know about post-traumatic stress disorder, right?" Tara asked. "It manifests itself sometimes months and months after a traumatic event. And Buffy's had, like, clusters of them recently."
Willow nodded at Tara. "Tell them about the aura."
"When Buffy's with Spike? Her aura calms a little. But it's been getting darker and darker. And soon it might be too dark for him to help with. So I don't know if we... we should do anything to force her away from him." She shrugged her shoulders up tight towards her head and dipped her chin, looking down at the table.
"As much as I hate to say it," Giles finally spoke up, "I'm forced to agree with Tara. I don't believe Buffy's decline is due to Spike. If we can find a spell that won't be invasive, if we absolutely can't get her to talk... perhaps we can find out what this prophecy or vision is that she thinks is coming for her."
It was terrifying for all of them to watch Buffy spin out of control, wondering how much each of them -- from Giles's impending departure to how they'd handled Joyce's death -- was contributing to her disintegration. And how much was simply the overwhelming responsibilities she'd been encumbered with in recent months of saving the world from a demented god.
"Buffy's been through a great deal. If the one... person she feels safe with is Spike, then our badgering her about it won't help," Giles added.
"Giles, is there anything in the Watcher histories that deals with this? Slayers and vampires getting together?" Willow asked, her eyebrows nearly at her scalp line.
"Nothing at all. In fact, I've long since stopped trying to figure out how to report anything about Buffy to the council. She's unique. It was utterly unprecedented for a vampire to love a slayer, let alone her to love him back. With two vampires... it verges on the farcical."
"No kidding," Xander said bitterly. "Ya think?"
Giles glared at Xander with his most Englishy look.
"Does Dawn know about this?" Anya asked, as always reminding them of the things they forgot to consider.
Willow shook her head. "I don't think Buffy's said anything about her visions, and we sure haven't. And Spike's been really careful."
Xander scowled at her, then turned to scowl more intently at Giles. "I mean, safe and Spike. What's wrong with this picture? Aren't any alarm bells going off in anyone's heads except mine? Any voices going self destruct in T minus five minutes?"
The rising anxiety in the room wasn't helped by knowing Giles was leaving. With the one grounding influence soon out of the picture, they'd be left with the possibility of Buffy carrying on with a vampire who didn't have the tempering influence of a soul. How long that chip would last, no one knew, and she might be unwilling to listen to anyone but Giles.
"I don't think it would have been anyone's choice, Xander," Giles said evenly. "But we're not in control of Buffy's life. Even in the early days, I never was, and I can't imagine you should have developed a misapprehension in that regard, either."
All three of the girls drew their lips tightly together and looked down at the table. Xander was obviously outnumbered.
"But... just... Spike! Of all the vampires in all the towns in all the world, why did she have to pick that one?" His voice was reaching the place where only dogs could hear it. Buffy was having sex with Spike. He was sleeping overnight in her bed. The creepiest creep in creepdom was macking on Buffy like she was his sexbot and she liked it.
Shaking her head, Willow said, "Well, Spike's always had that freakish ability to zero in on what the rest of us were thinking or feeling. Remember when he pushed us apart last year? It's just that, now he's using his powers for good instead of evil, I guess. Oh! Like... like Darth Vader, how at the end he turned to the good side of the Force so he could help Luke."
Tara smiled at Willow and they gazed adoringly at each other.
"I think he's still Darth minus the deathbed conversion," Xander snapped. "He wants into her pants, and he knows Dawn and Buffy want to build a statue in his honor now. He's manipulating them."
"That doesn't give Buffy much credit, does it?" Giles asked dryly.
"If she wasn't so... under the weather lately, do you think he'd be where he is now?" Xander turned to Willow. "I don't get it. When she dumps him, what do you think he's going to do? Don't you remember when Dru dumped him, what he did? He nearly killed you and me, and by extension Cordy almost died, and you lost Oz for a while. How can you think he's not going to get like that again? Because the vampire version of sentimental and depressed? Really scary."
"Thanks for the Judgment at Nuremberg recap, there," Willow responded, tension crackling in her voice. Tara watched Willow anxiously. "I don't know that he'd do the same thing. He knows better now."
"Anyone besides me notice that it's the guys who are anti-Spike, and the girls who are all, oh, let him use Buffy for his own nefarious purposes?"
Xander looked down as Willow's fingers closed around his wrist, very hard, a warning gesture she'd used on him since elementary school. Xander looked at her eyes, fiery with her demands.
"Stop it, Xander," she said quietly. "Buffy is our friend and she's in trouble, and singling Spike out as the cause isn't fair. She's had a lot of pain lately. Her mom, Glory, now Giles." She glanced at Giles, who twitched his head a little and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "And Spike has done some good things."
Xander stared down at the delicate hand on his wrist. Even Willow was smitten by Spike now. "I didn't understand how a slayer could choose a vampire before, but I understand even less how she could choose another one. And I mean, Spike."
"I kind of like him," Anya said off-handedly.
It appeared that Xander was trying to speak, but no words came out.
"Well, he says what's on his mind, unlike the rest of you, and he can be funny. Plus he's very attractive in a kind of louche, retro way... if you like that sort of thing."
"Is he working some kind of mojo on all the women here? Because this is just -- it's one thing for you to go soft on him and be all, oh, he's mister sexy with the accent and the cheekbones and the adorable overbite, but I just can't believe Buffy can forgive him enough to be sleeping with him." When he shut up, all the women were staring at him again, eyes wide.
Anya had risen and was dusting off stock items, always a sign she was bored and wanted to move on. Other people's problems were not of interest to her. "I can think of worse things," Anya said behind him.
"Worse! Like what?" Xander asked incredulously.
"Like being lonely. Like not being loved when you could be. Like knowing you have a destiny no one else could understand and you're stuck trying to fulfill it on your own while everyone takes and takes from you, but rarely gives."
They all looked at the table, lips pressed together, twitchy as coffee addicts before the first cup. Giles put his hands on the counter and stared into the glass. There wasn't anything anyone could say to the scorching truth of that.
"Okay," was all Xander could get out. The bell above the door jingled and in walked Buffy.
"Okay what?" she asked brightly. They all stared dumbly at her, shifting their mental states from talking about Buffy to talking to Buffy.
"Just... we're talking about Giles. Leaving, about Giles leaving," Willow said, reaching for the save.
"Oh. He... he told you," Buffy said sadly, sitting down on Anya's vacated chair. "Without me."
"Just now," Tara answered, nodding.
"And we were talking about how it would affect your future," Willow explained nervously.
Glancing at each of their faces in turn, Buffy could see the lie written softly on their hopelessly honest features. The way they all looked at her, the harsh, scrutinizing glare from Xander. They were discussing whether she and Spike should see each other -- probably using the same old notes, a tired tune. How he was manipulating her. How evil he was. Blah blah blahdy blah.
"O-okay," she said. "Hey, I have to train, so I'll just..." she got up and went to the back room. Didn't wait for Giles to come and tape her hands or dispense fatherly advice, taking care of herself instead. As she pulled the tape tight, she heard the door close behind her. Turning, ready to lay into Giles for not letting her know he was going to tell them, for talking about Spike, Buffy was confronted by Xander with his mouth pulled down in an angry frown.
"I didn't know you were sleeping with him," he said, his voice tight with jealousy.
"I slept with him one night. And it's not your business, anyway."
"When your evil monster boyfriend kills your friends, then it's their business. Buff. You're my friend. We help each other. We love each other. I don't want to see... he's evil, Buffy. At least Angel had a soul, but Spike has nothing. He's still evil, and he's going to hurt you."
"I think it's more likely that I'd hurt him."
"What could you possibly get out of this? He's... okay, he's got that whole Joe Cool, I'm a rebel and I'll never ever be any good thing going on, and I know girls like that, but is the rest of it worth it just for a guy to play with as your toy?"
"Oh, right, and you and miss greed is good are perfectly normal, is that it? Everything's just average and fine with you two. Sure."
"At least I'm not putting out for a vampire."
"Putting out? Putting OUT?" Buffy made as if to hit him and Xander recoiled, almost afraid she would. But she held her fist at her side, eyes flashing their anger like a freeway warning sign. "I'm not putting out. I'm involved with Spike. And yeah, I understand how strange and unacceptable that is, but you've gone way beyond the line. You have no right to tell me how to live my life."
"Considering that Goth-boy tried to kill me personally, and has tried on a number of occasions to kill my friends, including you, yeah, I think I have a right to butt in."
"No, Xander, you don't. Because that's in the past. So is your well-documented hatred of Angel, even when he was on our side. Spike's on our side now."
"He's only there so he can get into your pants."
"God! Listen to yourself, you sanctimonious prick! Where do you get off telling me I can or can't see him? He saved Dawn's life, he saved all of us. And he saved me most of all because if he hadn't loved me enough to do what he did, I was going to die on that tower. There was a prophecy."
Xander took a deep breath, trying to understand what she was saying. But it didn't matter. "You don't even see what the problems are that must be going on, do you, that you keep sleeping with the very thing you're supposed to kill."
"I don't keep sleeping with anyone. Jesus, Xander. It's all about you, isn't it? Who you can stand. Who you approve of. Did you ever once think about me? That I'm lonely as hell? You and Anya get to be together and get married and have babies. I won't ever get to do that. Not only do I have an early pull date stamped on my forehead, but even if I lived that long and could find someone who'd put up with the slaying and the history and the misery that is my life, I couldn't ever have a baby and bring it into this world. I'm stuck with this." She brought her hands to the side of her head, pressing hard. "And if someone, some *thing*, wants to love and take care of me, then I don't see why you can't suck it up and deal."
Her voice had suddenly gone from a shout to a whisper. She was crying now, tears trailing down her face and dripping from her chin. Her nose was running in an embarrassing fashion and she sniffed hard. "I don't care what your history is. I don't care how you feel about him. Accept him. He's gentle to me and he cares about what happens. When he's around and I let myself go just for a little while, I feel loved and normal. Neither one of us has any illusions about it. We both know it can't last. I didn't want to be with a vampire again. But I am. And if you cared even the tiniest speck for me, you'd shut your yap and let me try to deal with it knowing my friends were behind me."
Xander sat down hard on the bench by the window, hands in his lap. He nodded. "You're right. And Anya just hollered at me about pretty much the same thing." Then he laughed and looked up at her. Buffy's shoulders were sagging, but she didn't say anything. Didn't give in to him, the steel rebar of her will keeping her straight and strong in front of him. "I'm sorry. I didn't think about how... it's hard for me to want to share you with anyone but us, especially when it's someone I don't trust. But if you do, then I guess I should back you up."
"It's all about backup." Buffy sat down next to him, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of his T-shirt. Just as long as she didn't blow her nose on it.
"I'm sorry you're so lonely. I look at you and all I see is this incredibly beautiful woman who any guy in his right mind would want to be with and devote himself to. Kinda hard to remember that all you've been through since Riley left means you haven't been able to be with anyone. It's just... you don't love him, do you?"
"No. Well, sometimes I do. He's different when he's with me and Dawn. The guy who saved Dawn, that's what he's like most often. But it's not a mad pash kind of love. And Xander, no matter what, he is saving the world guy, now." Saving me guy, she thought sadly.
"Except that saving the world guy was preceded by killing your friends guy and manipulating people to their deaths guy."
"I know, Xander, I know. It's just... I think this is how he's changed. And you're forgetting he was saving the world guy before, too -- that time he helped me take on Angel and Drusilla. He never had to do any of this. He did it because he's different."
"Now he's got you believing that, too?"
"I didn't believe it until I really saw it." Remembering that night at the Bronze, the clarity of vision. To finally view him beyond the curtain of hate and fear and find light there. "Sometimes I don't trust my feelings, and that's usually a big mistake. I have the special Slayer Deluxe Edition of feminine intuition, and it says he's the real deal."
"For now."
Buffy brushed the hair from her forehead, and Xander was struck by the dark circles under her eyes. "I don't think either of us has any illusions that this will last or is something grander than it is. But he understands what I do, who I am, in a way no one else has for a long time."
Nodding, Xander said, "All right. As long as he's good to you." He took Buffy's hand. "This prophecy you keep talking about. What is it? You're starting to look like you might be trying to revive the heroin chic look here, and it's kinda scary."
"I don't know what it is. Probably nothing. I think I just can't get over what happened that night, and it's like it veered off in another direction from what it was supposed to be. That's all." Closing inside herself as always, the morning glory at night.
"Like PTSD?" Xander asked.
"Okay, that came from Tara and Willow, didn't it?" she asked, smiling bitterly.
"A little. But you think?"
"Maybe. I got a lot to sort through." She stood up and held her hand out to him. "Wanna wear the puffy suit? I feel like I could hit you a lot right now, might be cathartic for both of us."
"Can I hit you back?"
"You can try," Buffy taunted.
When she came to him that night, Buffy was silent and cool, stilled, a river frozen over so nothing moved beneath it. For a long time she simply sat across from him on a bench, her eyes drawn down from the weight of her life, filled with sadness. And Spike had no idea what to say, no way to move her to life, so he waited.
"Giles is leaving," she finally told him, ice-crusted voice crackling with tension.
"I know," Spike answered, looking at his hands. "Overheard him tell you."
Her eyebrows went up. "So now you're eavesdropping, too? You don't really go in for the scruples much, do you?"
"Well, I'd already done stalker and obsesso guy, and you know -- evil and so on."
"I'd heard that about you."
"Didn't want to say anything though. Reckoned you'd been hurting enough."
"He's not leaving for awhile, but I can't stand the thought..." She cried then, the ice thawing. Spike lunged across the room, scooped her up and held her so tightly he thought he might crush her. He let Buffy cry for a long time, just listening, holding her.
After a while Buffy quieted and brushed tears away from her face. She should be embarrassed to do this in front of him, but it had felt good, right. "Everyone knows now. About us, I mean."
"Yeah. Willow caught me leaving the other day. Told her nothing happened, but you'd blabbed to the estrogen house already so I looked like a prat. Again."
"I figured it was best. If I didn't tell them... the shock could be worse."
Smoothing her hair, he said, "Don't imagine anyone's taking it well, least of all the men."
"Bing, bing, bing! We have a winner for understatement of the year." Buffy ran her hand up under his shirt, over his stomach, hard and cool like marble under her fingertips. A sculpture of her own. He made a little noise in the back of his throat.
"Think the heavy mob will come with torches in the middle of the night and stake me?"
"Not a chance. Then they'd risk the wrath of the slayer. Think how unpleasant that could be."
"Actually, I do like thinking about that." He grinned at her as she moved up to kiss him. His mouth was open and inviting. After awhile he said wistfully, "Now that I have to behave myself, fantasizing about Harris and the watcher getting thumped by someone is as good as I can get."
"Less talk, more kissage," Buffy said. She pulled him back to her, unbuttoning his shirt and sliding it off his shoulders as they kissed. This being lost in someone's arms but not dwarfed by their size was pleasant. Spike wasn't that much bigger than she was, but he matched her strength deliciously and she could completely rely on his endurance.
They went downstairs to his bed. Spike stripped his jeans off, a bath of golden lamplight on his pale skin. Buffy traced her fingertips through the furrows of muscle down to his hard cock, pushing back the foreskin to expose the head, so smooth, already slippery with pearly liquid. Slowly, with aching tenderness, he took off her top, then her jeans and panties, kissing and stroking her. Her skin goosebumped in the cold of the room and against his heatless body.
They slid onto the bed wrapped in delirium, Buffy writhing against him. Her need to forget everything had brought her here, and Spike was doing just the right things to make her forget it all except the fire between her legs, the hard readiness of her breasts, the flavor of him on her mouth. The way he kissed her was reverential. He entered her, vapor into air, surrounding and filling her, unseen and silent. Perhaps this was what a vampire felt when he drank -- subsumed into someone else's essence. Absorbing their life.
Spike knew he couldn't last against her furious movements, the way she clawed and thrashed. He peeled one of her hands from his back, then the other, and slid himself deeper inside. As far as he could go without drinking from her, as close as he could get to her soul. Home now.
Holding her arms above her head, Spike pinned her birdlike wrists in his hand. Buffy braced him with her legs on either side as he thrust languidly inside her, watching the fathoms in her eyes deepen, shifting and changing. Breath left her parted lips, caressing his skin as she let him hold her there, trapped by something other than his strength. The soft heartbeat of her desire beneath him.
Then she held him tight with her thighs, held him on the edge of climax, forcing herself back in control before letting go and meeting him with her hips. He fell through a darkness dusted with stars that sparkled behind his eyes, finally opening them to see the twilight of her face as she smiled.
"I love you," Spike whispered against her throat, easing her arms down. They closed around him like angel's wings. Her pulse rang sweetly in his ears as he kept moving into her, still hard, waiting to hear the building catch of breath in her throat as she came.
"Yes," she said, hips bucking beneath his at last.
Spike clutched her tightly. Her answer was both invitation and submission. One word, allowance to her heart, invocation to this new being he was, made nearly human again by the simple act of loving her.
They lay together silently, her hands defining the geography his back, Spike afraid to say anything that would break this world she'd conjured for him into thousands of hard-glittering shards.
"Were you like this when you were alive?" she asked quietly, startling him.
"Like what?" Spike was afraid she'd say something brutal, remind him of his status.
"So loving." He froze, immobilized by the realization that she saw him that way.
"I... yes. Suppose I was. It was what led me here. How I met Drusilla -- being in love. Wanting to love, but instead rejected. Dru saw that."
"I can't understand how you could--"
"Don't. I can't understand how *you* could either. Let's call it a draw, shall we?"
Buffy pulled him closer, head pillowed on her breasts. "Were you always with her? All that time?"
Trailing one finger down her arm, he watched her skin move under his fingertip, so alive, so human. Colored by blood and light. "For a long time. But she would drift away, sometimes for years. We would break apart and come together, like waves around a rock."
"I didn't know you were so poetic. Poetical?" It cut her, though, sharp and cold. He was so loyal in love... he would never move on from her. She would destroy him by being his for only this time.
He laughed low in his throat. "You have no bloody idea."
"Were there others?"
"Yeah."
"A lot? Lovers?"
"Sex was sex. Love was with Dru. I kept them apart."
"Humans?"
"Of many kinds."
Silence sharing space between them until she understood what that meant. Of course. If sex was just sex, it wouldn't matter who with. Vampires weren't large with the gender definitions.
"Would you... would it be separate now?"
"No, Buffy." His voice more serious than she'd ever heard it. "These rules are different."
His brittle shell, the thing that kept him apart from others, kept him hard and cold, was crumbling under her hands. Slivers of its thin pieces embedded in her skin. He was open to her now, she saw inside the shell, and it wasn't as ugly as she'd thought it would be. Could time and change wash away her effect on him, the way water washes away writing in the sand?
After Xander had left her at the Magic Box, Buffy had stayed in the training room waiting for Giles. He would want to dress her down for Spike, for everything, but he'd surprised her by only asking, "When you feel better, what then? If he's helping you now because you feel lost or traumatized, when you're all right, will you stop? There's no telling what he would do."
Of course everyone was afraid of that. Part of her was afraid of it, too. The intensity of Spike's feelings in any situation was never in question. "I don't think it will be that simple or that brief," she'd told Giles, but Buffy wasn't so sure. She was supposed to know love and forgiveness, but could the powers that controlled her destiny really have meant these feelings for a vampire? Especially this one?
"Spike," she whispered in his ear, the breath tickling him mercilessly. "Why me? Why would you love me?"
How did he tell her what he couldn't know himself, what he'd tortured himself over for so many months? His quiet stretched tautly through the air before he answered, voice thick with pain. "Because you were good."
"No, really," Buffy said, laughing. He liked the sound it made in her lungs. Pulling his head up to face her, he was met with lips that kissed his softly.
"It's true. No joke when I said my life was pathetic. I was just... miserable. Being a vampire gave me something I'd never had -- power. The evil in you, it wants to use the power. Destroy anything that works against you. And I know how you feel about that. Can't change who I was, only who I am now." He kissed her again. "But being stuck here after that chip, without power, I had to depend on simple human goodness. On you. Had to see you, really see you. Found I didn't want to kill that goodness in you; instead I loved it. Don't know why. Who ever knows why they love someone? It just happens."
"You were going to kill me the day you thought your chip was out."
Leaning above her on his elbows, he traced the perfect pink shell of her ear with his finger, then circled his arm around her head, twining his fingers in her hair. "Did you know that was the day I finally realized I loved you? If I'd got the chip out... still not sure I would have done it. Wanted to. I was so tired of you being inside me, always around me. It was like being choked to death. But I don't know that I could have gone all the way. If I'd tasted you... I don't know."
They were mute for awhile until she said, "I still want a normal life. This... we can't be normal. It can't last."
Spike shifted, turning over, and held her within his arms, the back of her head resting in the crook of his shoulder. "I know that." When he was alone with her he deluded himself that she would love him in the grand, passionate way she'd loved Angel. That she would want to transcend the limitations and peculiarities of their lives. But when he was in her regular world, with her family and friends, knowing what the future might hold for her, then he was burdened by the certainty of hopelessness. "You're unique, you know. Or maybe you don't know. Everything... your family, your friends, who's loved you. There's never been anyone like you."
"But I want to be like everyone else." Her bruised voice hurt him.
"Never happen," he said, kissing the top of her head. "You know, I was always a bit fascinated by you, even when I wanted to best you. One of the first things I did when I got here was to tape you to watch your fighting style. Used to watch it sometimes just to admire and to know, in the way you can admire an enemy."
"Okay, first? Ew. And second, more of the TMI. I really didn't need to know you'd been watching me on tape."
He slapped her lightly on the arm. "Idiot. Not that way. To study your technique."
"Look, you're the sweater thief and robot builder. Don't think I haven't been keeping a tally of your freakier behaviors."
"Glad to see you're at least thinking of me." Spike pulled her hand up, kissing the inside of her wrist. She'd wondered before why he loved her. How could anyone know that answer? It never happened because you thought of it, decided it. Just one day you looked at someone and suddenly the knowledge was there, in the flutter of their eyelid or the turn of their wrist. "As usual, Summers, you're missing my point. What I'm trying to tell you is that you'll never be normal, even if you weren't slaying. You're a superior creature. Slaying, being the Chosen One, all that did was bring it out where everyone could see it. And it's why anyone loves you."
And why he could never keep her, he knew. Spike spent too much time trying to order everything in his mind, imprint it there like a snapshot, because this was fleeting and someday she would be gone.
"What happens when we stop?" she asked, her tremulous voice betraying the fear she would probably always have of him no matter what he did to prove himself.
"Kill me. If you wouldn't, I'd make you." He'd seen enough of this world now. If she took her light away, then he belonged in eternal darkness.
Inside her throat there was a strangling noise. Her arms came up around his neck, pulling him forward so his face was next to hers. As she kissed Spike she slid against him, demanding with her body that he hold her as tightly as he could. They stayed that way until they fell asleep.
Buffy dreamt of holes in the sky, earthquakes and blue fire that consumed her, demons screeching through skies blackened with smoke, until she was startled into awakeness by Spike's hand on her arm. Hollering at her from a distance. Looking down at his hand, trying dully to understand what was happening, she realized she was completely naked and shaking, standing not far from his crypt.
"What the fucking hell are you doing?" he shouted at her again.
When she didn't answer he threw her over his shoulder firefighter-style and carried her inside and down the ladder, dropping her softly onto the bed. Then he picked up her clothes and started dressing her.
"Fucking hell, Slayer, fucking bloody hell. This has to stop. I'm taking you home. The witches are going to find a way to deal with this if you won't let us help you, or help yourself."
Buffy looked at him stupidly, realizing slowly that he was genuinely angry with her. The only response she had to his anger was to cry, and sobs ricocheted through her chest, the hiccups shaking her even harder as he slipped her top over her shoulders.
His face was contorted by anger and pain. For a moment he looked like he'd always looked to her before, a vampire, a dangerous, deadly vampire. That made her cry even harder.
Presently he stopped and looked at her. "Slayer. What is wrong? What is this thing that's driving you mad?"
"I was supposed to die that night. I told you," she said between gulping breaths. Words poured out of her faster than tears. "The first slayer, she talked to me in a vision, she said that death was my gift. I didn't understand it at first but that night, afterwards, I started to realize she was telling me a prophecy that my death would be the gift that kept Glory from winning and kept Dawn alive. I was supposed to die, and it screwed with the prophecy. You even said -- you can't fuck with a prophecy or it will come back and bite you later."
By the time she'd stopped Spike's fingers were digging into her upper arms in a way that meant he'd forgotten how strong he was. He shook her so hard her teeth snapped together and she almost bit her tongue. Face alight with anger, color in his skin that she hadn't seen except in full game-face, mouth twisted in a grimace. Fighting the vampire inside him, pushing it back into the dark depths of his being.
"Are you off your fucking head?" he bellowed. "You stupid twat. That's not a prophecy. A prophecy is something that's been sitting around moldering in a book somewhere on the shelves of some tweedy librarian like Giles. A seer--"
"Sears?" she sniffled.
Eyes rolled ceilingward, beseeching a greater power than was ever likely to help his wretched being. Spike made exasperated noises but loosened his grip. "S-e-e-r. Someone who looks into the future and sees what could transpire. It's something that's written down and then rots in the book for bleeding donkey's years until the right person finds it and the right person fulfills it. What you got was nothing but a useless fortune cookie. It could mean all sorts of things. That's all! Death was your gift -- could have gone either way, Slayer. You gave a gift to the world by saving it -- through *her* death."
Her voice was harsh and bitter. "Then why do I keep having these dreams that I'm dying? Why do I sleepwalk and talk in my sleep? In my mind I see that tower and I know I'm dying."
"Things like that... the things she said to you and what you faced down. They have a way of affecting people. Maybe you just haven't dealt with it. And you probably feel guilty for Ben having to die, although why is beyond me, he was such a--"
Buffy broke his hold on her by snapping her arms out and hitting him with the sides of her hands. "Shut up." Color rose in her cheeks and she glared at him. Buffy grabbed her jeans and pulled them on, then her shoes. But Spike just fell back on the bed laughing at her as she dressed.
"Oh-ho, there's my little fireball. That's the slayer I know." He got up slowly and came to her, ignoring the blows against his chest and arms, catching her fist in his palm and shoving it back at her. "You're not going to take it now, are you? You'll fight it because that's what you do. That's the only way you'll conquer it."
She stopped hitting him as his arms circled around her. "I see myself," she whispered. "I'm falling into something... fire and lightning. I always die. If you see yourself die in a dream, aren't you supposed to really die?"
He held her tightly, his chin resting on her head. After all this time watching her battle this, yet not seeing what it really was, he finally understood. "Because you wanted to, didn't you? You wanted to finally stop carrying all the weight."
The years had built and built until they crushed her. All she'd wanted was to be free, to take that final burden and make it hers, leap off that tower into nothingness. Spike thought of the past few weeks, of her sad, haggard face as she got rid of her mother's things, of making that awful sandwich and of doing homework at night in between paying bills, of the mercurial teenager she was now mother to, and it all made sense. When he'd been offered the riches of power and immortality, the chance to stop carrying the weight of life, he'd leapt at the chance to slip the traces of the sad human world he'd been bound to; Buffy had finally seen a gift of freedom before her that night only to have it cruelly torn from her grasp at the moment of release.
Inside his arms she melted to him. Tension slackened, her weight grew heavier as he held her up. But she wouldn't answer him, and that was all the answer he needed.
"Fucking hell," he said almost inaudibly. "I am taking you home, and I won't tell them what you said, but you are going to let yourself be taken care of. Is that understood?" Holding her chin in his fingers, he tilted her face up. Her eyes glistened with tears. Spike kissed the salty trail of her pain down her cheek, a different kind of essence than blood to steal inside himself.
Buffy nodded.
"We're going to get through this." We, he thought wryly. When did there get to be a we? The universe was out of order.
When he'd got her home, they found Tara was up. She helped them upstairs without a word.
"Get some sleep, luv," Spike said, yanking the covers up over Buffy. Tara's air of quiet calm made him think they'd been expected.
"I'm not an invalid."
"No, but you haven't had a decent kip in weeks and you need to rest. When you wake up, you can do whatever you bloody like, I don't give a rat's arse. Unless it involves wandering about weaponless, in which case I put my foot down."
"I'm glad to see you're still the same charming evil guy we always knew and hated." She smiled at him when she said it, though. Spike would overreact if he thought she was dissing him.
"What'd I do now?"
"You called me a stupid twat. Back at your place. Like I was going to skip past that on rewind?" She ran her fingertips over his hand. "But very clever on the pissing me off." Buffy looked over at Tara and said, "He called me names so I'd get my back up."
Tara dropped her head and smiled, and then Spike got up, sliding his hand away.
He took Tara out of the room. "When Dawn and Willow are up, we need to get them on watch detail." He explained what he could, keeping mum about why Buffy was letting these visions consume her. "But it's down to you witches. You've got to find something that will ease her back out of this."
"It's funny," Tara said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I couldn't sleep. Finally I gave up because I kept thinking something important was happening. I didn't expect it to be... to be Buffy sleepwalking." Tara knew there was more than what he was saying, because Spike told her with his eyes, the nervous twitch of his body. He had no idea how transparent he was to her. It would offend him to know, but it wasn't a terrible thing, just that he was so much more uncomplicated than a human being. Everything was right on the surface, the id controlling all his actions, no underlayers to his essence. He just was, which made it far easier to read him. And these days he wore so much of his ghost heart on his sleeve that everything he felt was clear as glass.
"Aren't there things... there are things you can use for this, right?" Spike asked anxiously.
"Oh! Oh, yeah, of course. We can help her, I'm sure of it. It's almost like she's trapped in different dimensions, you know? Her mind is one place, and her body is another. But the part of her that's here... it wants to be free, doesn't it? Of this life?"
Spike gaped at her. "I'd ask how you knew that, but I probably wouldn't get it anyway. You figure that out before, or was I just the gormless one who couldn't suss it out till tonight?"
"No, you just told me, in your own way."
His head tilted to the side and his eyes opened wider. Tara could swear they sparkled with a life he didn't have. "I have to go, sunup's soon. Make sure Dawn knows not to leave her if you and Will run off to do your witchy errands. Be back by night."
"Probably you'll be pissed at me saying this, but you have a sweet side."
Drawing his lips together tightly, Spike shook his head. Then he smiled. "You spend a hundred years with a lunatic, you get the hang of how to talk to someone who's troubled."
He gave Tara's arm a squeeze, and for the first time she didn't flinch at contact with him. Things had changed so much now, she realized. They really were all a team, no matter what had happened in the past. She had no idea what the future held and what potential dangers a broken and grieving Spike could pose, but for now he was a part of them. As he walked down the stairs and out the door, coat swinging behind him with the rhythm of his cocky strut, she smiled. There could be moments inside all the pain of life that made you want to believe this world truly was a gift.
These days with all the Summers trauma and the Summers sexcapades, he never got enough sleep. Even during the day when Spike would normally rest, he'd pace and worry, his concerns for Buffy overshadowing his usual patterns.
But this time exhaustion got the best of him and he fell asleep in front of the TV, completely comatose until he heard Dawn shouting at him in that high-pitched scream that could peel wallpaper off. Not sure where he was. The sound seemed to be playing over and over. Is it live, or is it Memorex? He leapt out of the chair, head groggy, fists up, ready for a fight. But it was just Dawn, panting.
"Spike! It's Buffy! She's gone!"
It took him a moment to get what she was saying. "Gone? What d'you mean? I told you to keep an eye on her!"
"I was! I did! We were there all day talking to her and finding out what happened and all. Willow and Tara went to the Magic Box to get Giles and some stuff to give Buffy that would make her feel better and we were just sitting on the couch watching TV and then I got up to make her some tea and when I came back she was gone!"
Spike squinted at her, trying not to let his exasperation show, but for a brief moment he wanted to smack her hard. She was looking at him helplessly, the same way she'd looked at him that night on the tower, and it brought out all the anger and resentment again.
"I can't believe you... Oh, balls. Look, we haven't time for this. Did she take weapons?"
"She didn't take anything. She was barefoot and wearing sweats and a T-shirt. Where would she go? We have to find her!" Now she was getting hysterical, and Spike could not abide hysterical women. It was tempting to smack her like in the movies, see if it worked, but he didn't relish his head exploding.
"It's dangerous for her to be out if she doesn't know what she's doing," he snarled, putting his coat on. "Demons, they get wind of this, she's toast." He grabbed a crossbow out of the trunk and a few other nasty toys, and turned to Dawn. Her lower lip was trembling, the guilt turning her into a big teary blob. "Stop it, Niblet. I know where she's gone."
"You do?" Dawn wiped her hands across her eyes.
"The tower. It's the in place round town these days, you know." He grabbed her hand and went for the door. "The only trouble is, she wants to throw herself off it because she thinks she was supposed to. And if we're too late..."
That earned a huge hiccuping sob.
"Get yourself together. She's going to need you." He narrowed his eyes as they got outside. "Bloody good timing at least. Sun's setting and if I stay in the shade..."
He hauled her along, knowing she couldn't run as fast as he could without help. For a moment he considered getting the car, but they could run the distance in a town this small just as easily, and it was parked across the cemetery, anyway. Have to do some better emergency planning in future if he was going to keep hanging with the crisis crowd.
They ran and ran, Dawn flagging as they got closer, until Spike saw something coming out of the alley they were running through. If he looked to the south he could see the tower looming above the warehouse buildings down there. But they had an impediment now. Vampires, a lot, coming towards them. And oddly, one of them looked familiar. Spike shoved Dawn behind a Dumpster. "Stay there. Don't come out until I tell you."
"Spike," she hissed, "we have to get Buffy."
Why did everyone always state the obvious to him? Did they think he was that thick?
He looked around. "There's four of them. You're tasty. You think they're going to let us just skip on down the road?" He pushed her hard and she stumbled back, alarmed by his roughness.
The tall vampire leading them didn't just looked familiar. In a booming voice touched with a Nordic accent he said "Spike! It really is you. What a surprise!"
It took a moment, but Spike finally remembered. Long, nearly endless winter nights in Scandinavia where you could roam for hours feeding at will, not fearing the sunlight. The welcoming people, hearths cozy and inviting, asking you in. Giving up their warmth to you.
"Jens! What the bleeding hell brings you here to the land of palm trees and sunshine?"
Jens held his hands out. "A Hellmouth! What brings anyone here? Heard this was the place for all manner of trouble." He came closer, but stayed far enough away that Spike couldn't raise the crossbow without calling attention to it. And with four of them, he wouldn't have time to reload quickly enough. "I'd also heard," Jens continued, "that you'd gone soft and were palling around with the slayer. Now, I hadn't thought that could possibly be the Spike I knew, but... who's that little slip of a girl you're hiding back there?"
Dawn whimpered. Oh God, oh God, they were going to die before they could save Buffy and it would be so lame; the rescuers who got killed trying to rescue. She had great faith in Spike, but four against one! Buffy would kill her if she tried to take out a vamp, but this hardly seemed like a winnable fight without help. They'd dust Spike and then come after her. If she died, Buffy would murder her. And Spike was so conversational... what if he was willing to give her up to them, make new vampire friends so he could feed again with their help?
Oh God! Her heart was pounding so hard she choked.
Spike rubbed his hand over his forehead. "Well, you see, it's really a lot more complicated than that, Jens." He brought the crossbow up then and fired it straight into the heart of the vampire on the far left, threw it on the ground, and with a quick movement broke off part of a crate, hurling the splintered end with swift accuracy so it landed in the center of another vampire's chest. Both of them exploded into dust. After a moment's hesitation Jens leapt forward towards Spike, fangs out. He was at least a foot taller than Spike, enormous in girth and height, but that allowed Spike to duck under him, jump up, and land both feet on his back. Jens pivoted and rushed Spike, but Spike kicked him again in the knees, buckling them. As Jens grabbed at him, Spike plunged the other arrow into his chest.
"And I really haven't got time to explain," he said as Jens disappeared in a cloud, screaming. "Got to see about a girl." Spike whirled, ready to take on the next vamp. He wiggled his fingers, beckoning, and bounced back and forth from one foot to the other. Apparently the remaining vampire seemed to think better of it and turned tail down the alley.
Dawn watched him run, letting out air after holding her breath the whole time. She could pee her pants right now, she was so scared. Everyone had been telling her for months how scary Spike was but she'd never seen him fight, not really. Not take on four vamps like he was the freaking Tasmanian Devil.
His intensity was frightening and his vamp face made the peroxided hair seem scarier somehow, not just punk cool. He'd made a motion with his tongue, a leering gesture, that completely wigged Dawn. There was a power in him and a fearlessness, a rage she'd never seen before. With complete insight she knew just why Buffy had been so afraid of him, why they all had such a hard time letting go of the past.
Still with his fang-face on, he held out his hand to her. "Come on, we've got places to be." Aiugh! her brain screamed and did a spazzy jerk. She stepped backwards.
Even behind his animal face he looked wounded. Quickly he de-vamped, talking to her softly, still holding his hand out.
"Sorry, Popsicle. Didn't mean to scare you."
"No," she lied, grabbing his hand. "You didn't, I just... I've never seen you like that before." They ran down the alley, through another one.
"You knew him?" Dawn asked, grimacing.
"Yeah. Old pal. Danish footballer... or... no, something else, before he was turned. Never was very clever."
"You need better friends."
"Oh, you mean like you?" She stuck her tongue out at him but his back was turned to her.
Finally they got to the tower. Buffy was nowhere in sight, but it creaked and swayed. Spike looked up.
"She's up there, I can smell it." He turned to her. "Can you do it? Can you go up there again? She'll never come to me."
Dawn nodded. "I can do it. But you have to come with me." They began climbing as the wind whipped around them furiously. "You... you can actually smell someone from far away?"
"You want me to answer that in detail?"
"No!" Gross. As if. "No, it's just... kinda creepy."
"So everyone likes to remind me."
Buffy heard them coming for her. She didn't know who it was, but she could hear them. A part of her wondered if it might be the first slayer, come to claim her forever. Maybe Glory. But no, they were gone for good.
Around her the sounds of thunder and fire roared even though the sky was clear. One step and she could be free of it. Death a gift to her at last. For all the times she'd saved the world, finally a chance to rest, to be at peace.
She knew what Spike had been saying to her, that it wasn't a prophecy and she had to die. But none of it addressed whether she *should* die. They could carry on without her. She could be with her mother, and someday, maybe Angel. When his atonement was complete, and they could walk in light together.
The tower shifted. Perhaps if she stayed here long enough, it would collapse in the wind. Then this wouldn't even come down to an effort on her part. Exposed like this, alone, waiting -- it seemed as if her whole life had built to one moment. Would anyone even know or care that she was gone besides her small circle of friends? The world went on even when you sacrificed everything for it. It didn't care what you gave to it. Still the world asked you to save it, but gave you no reward except pain and misery and loss. Death was no gift, not to her, not from her.
Behind her came the sound of clattering feet, but she didn't turn. Then Dawn's voice.
"Buffy," she called, like a thousand times before. Rescue me. Help me. Save me. As if that was the only thing she had to offer anyone. "It's me. And Spike's here."
Buffy didn't turn around, just continued to stare down at the city below her, the one she'd saved so many times. What would have happened if she'd never come here? Would Glory's plan have succeeded eventually, simply because there was no one powerful enough to keep the Key from her? Or would any of it have transpired at all? Maybe the Master would have risen or Spike would be running the show with Dru. She could still have been in Los Angeles, living her normal life. Anywhere but here.
"Buffy, you have to come down. If you're awake and can hear me, we have to get you down from here."
I'm awake, Buffy thought. Awake, conscious, alive, here. But I don't want to be.
Dawn stepped toward her. It must have killed her to walk up here. What was Spike thinking, dragging her up top like this? Suddenly Buffy turned.
"I'm awake," she said, but the wind carried away her words. She put her hand up to stop Dawn, but Dawn kept walking gingerly towards her.
"Buffy, please, come down. Please let us help you. I can't lose you."
What would you do, Buffy wondered, if you did lose me? In the long run, would it matter?
"Buffy, I love you. I need you. We all love you." Dawn was only a foot in front of her now. The tower jerked hard, jolting them. As she tried to maintain her balance, Dawn's foot slipped and she yelped.
Spike made as if to come towards them, but Buffy said "Don't." He stopped, looking at her quizzically. Everyone wanted something, even Spike. But at least he gave something back.
Buffy turned and looked over her shoulder at the city below them. Had her dreams been telling her this was the answer? Maybe she had misunderstood. Maybe there was no answer. The first slayer's words had been open to interpretation. I'm supposed to give and forgive. Myself. No one else.
Then she turned back to Dawn and said, "It's all right." It was. It could be. She stepped forward as Dawn took her hand, pulling her towards the stairway. Buffy squeezed her hand as they walked.
She didn't look at Spike as they started to descend. He came up behind them, guarding them, which amused Buffy. When they reached the ground he put his hand on her shoulder. Finally Buffy turned her face up to him. "I feel so empty of the things I'm supposed to have. Isn't that why I'm supposed to be here? Because I'm empty and have to give my life to show love?" She started to cry. Letting herself die would be taking, not giving. Taking their love with her.
"No, you're bloody well not," he barked. "You're full of love. Don't you even see that, you nitwit? It pours out of you like sweat, like blood from a cut." Buffy looked at him sharply. How could he know to say those words that belonged to the first slayer? Had she said them in her sleep? "You give the world a gift every fucking day by taking care of it. If that isn't love, then I don't know what is."
Dawn's eyes were huge as she watched Buffy, tears in the corners threatening to overspill.
Spike heard a noise behind them. The witches and the watcher. Good. He needed them to take the girls home, let him take care of business.
Giles reached them first, out of breath, clearly scared to death. But he stopped and looked at Spike, then at Buffy, back again to Spike. Knowing, possibly, what was really happening.
"It's over," Spike said. "Take her home."
Willow put her arm around Buffy's shoulder and Dawn took her arm. Spike turned away from them and they stopped, watching. He found a lead pipe and picked it up, hefting it in his hands, twirling it around. Nice and solid. He looked up at the tower, its cold blue steel and iron shining bleakly in the sodium lights. The demon overtook his features and he snarled low in his throat. "Get out of here, now."
As they left he hit one of the bottom struts as hard as he could. It cracked one of the footings, the blow reverberating up his arms, into his head, with a nice satisfactory chill. So he continued to hit it, moving around its base, weakening it, letting the wind help him. Until he finally heard the heavy groan of the left side starting to go. "Useless, evil, piece of shit," he bellowed, landing one last blow, and this time the groan turned into a scream as the metal bent, inexorably, slowly crumpling. Spike ran as fast as he could down the street for blocks until he heard the crashing start. He turned to watch it fall like a house of cards, buckling into a stack of useless scrap.
When he got to the Summers house they were all there, even Xander and Anya. The girls were upstairs fussing over Buffy, putting her in some decent clothes and making her feel comfortable.
Spike helped himself to a beer while Giles made a half-hearted apology to him, grumbling the whole time.
"He's trying to say thank you without actually having to thank you. It implies you have a more important position with Buffy than he does," Anya said helpfully. Xander coughed into his glass.
Staring off in the middle distance, Spike said, "She's more fragile than anyone seems to understand." He looked at Giles at last. For a moment Giles thought there was a flash of humanity in Spike, something that showed a greater concern for someone else's welfare than for his own. Empathy. He didn't like the idea of turning Buffy over to Spike for everything from training to heart-to-heart talks, but it looked as if that was the way things were going to go now.
"So, where's Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, then?" Spike asked as Willow came down the stairs.
"They're coming." She looked from Giles to Spike to Xander, wondering if they had been behaving themselves.
"So," Xander said conversationally, "You helped save Buffy yet again. Just *think* of the mileage you can get out of this one."
"No, she saved herself." Spike glowered at them.
"I suppose this means," Xander glanced at Giles for confirmation, "that we have to get used to you, like we did with Angel."
Spike worked his jaw a little, narrowing his eyes. Willow could feel the agitation fill the air like ions, and her eyes darted nervously around the room. "She likes a little monster in her man. It's a part of who she is. If you don't like it and don't believe it you can always trade Angel and me for a vampire to be named later. Because it'll probably just happen again."
Xander grinned maliciously. "Better the devil you know, at least."
"You're one to--"
"Enough!" Willow barked. They both shut up and looked at her. "This is about Buffy and taking care of her now, and making sure she's through this." She pointed at Xander. "You! Suck it up. Spike's a part of Buffy's life by her choice, and you're just going to have to deal with it if you want to be her friend. Don't make this harder for her."
Willow saw Spike smirking triumphantly at Xander and pointed at him. "And you, id-boy! You're just going to have to deal with the fact that Buffy's our dearest friend and we were here before you were. You are going to get along, or so help me, I'll turn you both into dung beetles." She made her resolve face, which she knew Xander would get, although whether Spike understood the danger he was in she wasn't sure.
"So. Okay. If you're really going to be part of our lives, have you ever given any thought to doing something... semi-legitimate?" Xander asked.
"What, you mean like a job?" Spike snorted. "Hardly."
"Oh yeah, because Buffy, she's going to like you keeping up with the evil schemes and the underworld lifestyle and all. You need money. The way you get it now, that's not going to sit with her after awhile. How much stealing do you think she'll put up with?"
Spike knew that was true, even though he didn't want to give points to Harris for anything. "What, precisely, would I do that was more acceptable? Work at Doublemeat Palace?"
Willow was getting excited. "You could be like a detective or something, pick up cases that the cops ignore because they're so stupid here, or that no one else would take because of the whole supernatural thing. Oh! 'cause like, you have the contacts in the evil underground, you're reasonably clever, you've got vampire senses and power... and you know some magic stuff, I've seen that. More than you let on. "
"And be like bleeding Angel with his whole help the hopeless incompetents twaddle? I don't think so!" Why did no one understand that he didn't want to be anything remotely like Angel, ever?
Xander smiled cruelly. "But Buffy loved Angel, and it's that whole helping people thing she goes for."
Spike narrowed his eyes. "All right, that's a point, I'll grant you."
"No, it could be so cool!" Willow said. "I bet there's lots of people with weird things happening that only someone who really knows this stuff could figure out. I mean, this is a Hellmouth! All kinds of action and adventure for a vampire who can't hurt people and wants to do right by his lady. And then, like, if there has to be slaying of any kind, well... you and Buffy could work together even more!"
"It would be very cinematic," Anya commented, "the demon private eye and the beautiful slayer. Or like that show on Sci-Fi Channel, about the vampire police detective. You could drive around at night in a classic car, and be wryly charming to all your clients."
"I'll think about it," Spike said evenly, not wanting to give them anything to go on, but he had to admit, the idea did appeal. Still get in a spot of violence now and then, help the slayer and remain part of her life, but mostly give him something to do since the chip had pretty much removed fuck-all of his existence. Yet it seemed suspicious, them trying to find some way to help him.
"We're not... setting you up," Tara said. "We're not playing a joke on you. I think it's a cool idea, sort of."
He smiled at her kindness. "Could be, yeah." He thought of Buffy's comments about the first slayer, about giving and forgiving. Some of this bunch could do that. Maybe that's what marked you as human, being able to forgive. If he wanted to be part of the human world again for Buffy and for Dawn, then he had to give, too. "I like it," he said, nodding at Willow and Xander. Even Giles was looking sort of interested, less sour.
Behind them they heard footsteps as Buffy and Dawn came down to join them. Buffy seemed at peace now, he could see it in her, light again in her eyes after darkness for so long.
For a while they all sat around munching on really bad nachos that Xander had made, talking about Giles's plans for England. Giles watched Buffy and noted how much more at ease she appeared. Maybe he really could leave her, after all. His life would seem so much emptier, he knew, but even with this crisis now passed she'd come through it on her own and with Spike's help. Perhaps she would never be truly loving to Spike, but she appeared more comfortable, maybe even happier, when she was with him. Stranger things had happened.
After a long night the others drifted away to homes or to bed, and it was just Spike with Buffy. When the last friend had left, Buffy turned off the lights and sat down on the couch next to Spike, who was hunkered down into the cushions. It taxed him to be around everyone and be personable.
"So, once again, you save me."
"Rubbish. I didn't save anyone."
"No, of course not. You don't keep saving the world, or me, or Dawn..."
"Really, you can quit banging on about it at any time. And don't go making googly-eyes at me like I'm your big hero. I had enough of that with kid sis, and frankly, it's embarrassing."
"You know, I know who you are. You can quit with the bovver-boy act."
He arched an eyebrow at her and smirked.
Rolling her eyes, Buffy said, "Oh, please, like I haven't been nearly living with an Englishman for the past five years. I do pick up a few things, you know. Spike. I have to warn you. There's no real reward. You do the work, but... bupkus on the tips."
His eyes in the low light were stormy and mysterious. "I already have my reward."
She snuggled next to him. He eyed her sideways, suspicious and amazed. Then she did the most extraordinary thing -- she took his hand and held it in her lap, as if they were sweeties snuggling after homework. Buffy relaxed against him and he tightened his grip around her tiny hand, closing his eyes, absorbing the texture of her skin through his. They sat that way for a very long time, not speaking, just listening to the sounds of the night through the open window, watching the curtains flutter in the breeze and the light from the moon shift through the living room as it passed by.
"I'm not going to get in the habit of rescuing you," he said crossly, breaking the silence. "I've changed, but I don't want to be just hanging about like Mighty Mouse, expected to swoop in and save the day every time you get some foolish notion in that very blonde head of yours. I've had enough of barmy women to last me a lifetime. Is that understood?"
Buffy laughed, a sweet little music note he didn't hear often enough. "Understood," she agreed, and put her head on his shoulder. "But you're stuck with us."
"Am I?" he asked, checking the runaway emotions as best he could. There were truths in here between them, great dark beasts. Scary ones. "Stuck with you." The possibilities of her answer terrified him.
"For now." She moved closer to him, nearly in his lap. "And anyway. You're really crappy at this, you know."
"What?"
"Being grouchy. This big bad thing. It's not working anymore. You keep messing it up by being good."
"Take it back or I'll bite you, and damn the consequences. Wait till I see that shaman and get this chip done. Then we'll see who's good."
"How you do talk." Buffy knew there an element of truth to what he was saying. He'd made the best of a bad situation for himself and he'd given up everything he loved -- no matter how loathsome Buffy herself found it -- just so he could love her and be with her.
A long time ago, when she was still so full of hate for him, he'd said that he was love's bitch. And he hadn't seemed ashamed of it, either. The way he'd pegged her and Angel, how he knew things about all of them they didn't know about themselves, showed he was more focused on emotions and affections than most humans she knew. There was still a long way to go to adjust to him in her life like this. But at least she knew there was a road ahead of them to walk.
As he leaned over to kiss her ear, she felt the sweet tingling of desire start slowly in her belly. Buffy closed her eyes, letting the sensation of his tongue tracing along her ear take over her mind. Sightlessly turning, offering her mouth to his, bringing him into her. Then his hand was on her breast, her own hand sliding in just under the waistband of his jeans. Eventually she drew her mouth away, opening her eyes to his, blue like a sky full of promise.
His lips were moist with their kisses. Buffy traced her fingers over the sharp outline of his cheekbones, the blade of his jaw.
"No matter what happens in the future, no matter how bad or ugly things get, just know that right now, you're beautiful to me," she whispered. He closed his eyes, and the way his shoulders dropped signaled to her his complete surrender. Buffy moved astride him, fingers snaking through his short, curly hair. His kisses were liquid and cool, running through her like a stream down to her toes.
Quivering, voice shaking, Spike stopped her and said, "We can't. Someone... we shouldn't, not here."
"No one will come down. They know we're here, they'll leave us alone."
"Buffy." Spike shook his head at her foolishness. There was something wrong when he was the sensible one.
"I need you. Inside me. A part of me."
She fell backwards and Spike gazed at her lying on the couch before him, her hair a tangle of flax and earth, eyes like a lion's, golden and feral. Lips sweet and soft like a ripe fig. Spike slid her sweatpants off slowly, then her panties. When she lifted her hips for him, he shivered with want. His fingers slid along her clit as she quivered, then dipped inside her beautiful warm wetness. Buffy's sure hands pulled him by the belt closer to her. Unbuckled the belt, opened the fly, and tugged at his jeans.
He entered her slowly, watching her face as she closed her eyes, the way her mouth parted to let her soft gasps out. Entering a heaven he was forbidden, the human inside him awakened and alive again each time they made love. Buffy's hands traced along his back following the bones of rib, scapula, hip. Thrusting deeper, his hips met hers push for push, her breathing becoming shallow until he felt her shudder beneath him.
Spike continued to move into her, his mind awash with golden light, until he climaxed and she held him in her arms as he flew down from this dizzying height.
It took her a few days to regain her equilibrium, but back in school, Buffy felt like she was finally getting her game back. The homework was tough but Willow and Tara helped out, and it gave her a chance to be closer to Dawn sometimes, the two of them studying together in the evenings before she had to go out patrolling.
One day, an average day, she was struck with the thought that maybe no one had a normal life. Or at least, not the kind of normal life she'd come to idealize, had desired since destiny knocked down her front door. Maybe this was the normalest she would get. Few slayers had lived this long and passed into adulthood. Even fewer had had family, friends, school. Kendra had been more typical than either Faith or Buffy, having trained for her calling, her whole being focused on the potential of duty. Buffy was an anomaly, her close family and support relationships almost unheard of.
You couldn't go around telling everyone you were destined to save the world from the forces of darkness. So your life became necessarily private, lonely. Yet Buffy was the least lonely slayer she'd read about.
That was the tricky part of being responsible for the world, of course: the thanklessness and the loneliness. But truly, Buffy knew, she wasn't alone. Love enveloped and filled her.
When she got home that evening she ate dinner with Willow, Tara, and Dawn, then did the mundane chores that now filled her life. Willow and Tara had gone out to the movies; Spike had come over because he always came over and nobody minded. Carrying a basket of clothes, Buffy stopped on her way to the laundry room to watch Spike arguing with Dawn over a poem she was reading for class. The words wanker and hack kept coming up, and Buffy smiled despite herself.
Maybe, she thought, this really was what life was supposed to be like, at least for her, and her picture of normal would never fit. No glass slipper that matched her foot alone. And maybe that's what the first slayer had been telling her.
Buffy was surrounded by demons and witches and conjurers and vampires, but this was real life for a slayer. She could forge strength and beauty from it, grow in the way a flower can grow in the cracks of ugly, broken pavement.
If death was her gift it could mean many things. The death of something like Glory was Buffy's gift to the world, and maybe someday, her own death would be a gift, too, when it was needed. This was an open-ended destiny; she saw that now. It was based on what the world asked of her and what she was willing to give to it.
Spike looked up then and caught her watching them; he tilted his head to one side and his face softened as if he understood what she was thinking. Knew that at that moment she was envisaging a new future, one that grew, Phoenix-like, from the remnants of her suffering.
Buffy gazed back at him and then turned to go downstairs. Life was about learning, about fitting it all together. Understanding the lessons. Death might be a gift. But love was one, too, and trust and forgiveness. She knew now that she had enough of all those things to share.
End
For Merry, with thanks for all the encouragement.
October 20, 2002