As soon as the door slammed, Spike turned back around to the group. “Okay, guys, we’ve got a sweep to do, and now that that—bitch is gone, we won’t be loaded down. Let’s get moving.” He quickly brought Dru back to her room, laid her down tenderly, and exited the apartment. The others followed.
Everyone in the room swiftly and silently gathered their things. One by one, they slipped out of the door, walked down the stairs, and into the alley next to their building.
Spike watched his colleagues assemble. The soft, sickly glow of a streetlamp illuminated their faces. They all looked sad.
When everyone was there, he said, “You think she bought it?”
“I think she bought it a little too well,” the whelp said, frowning at the closed door. “Did you see her? I don’t think the Buffster’s ever been that upset.”
“Yes, you were very cruel to her,” Anya said flatly. “Especially after you two enjoyed many orgasms earlier tonight.”
Spike groaned, burying his head in his hands. “Bloody hell.” It had hurt so much, seein’ his girl stare at him with betrayal in her eyes—again. Forcing cruel words to come out of his mouth, watching as each statement made her crumble just a little bit more, had damn near broken his heart.
“You know it had to be done, Anya.”
“Yeah, but...poor Buffy,” Red said, frowning. “I think she really believed us.”
Spike frowned. Buffy’s emotional state was probably even more fragile than it had been before he’d spilled his soul out to her. But his girl was strong—she’d survive.
“What if she thinks we’re all against her? What are we going to do then? I mean, as it is, once we let her in on the whole security cameras thing she’s so going to hit the roof,” Cordelia pointed out.
“The fashion bitch is right,” Faith said. “B’s smart, but just a little tightly wound. She’s not gonna just forgive you for that stunt you pulled.”
Spike knew she was right, but dammit...”’S not like I had a choice! Bastard put cameras in every room in the bleeding house!”
“Who?” A new voice asked. “Rayne?”
Spike shook his head. “Riley, Bit,” he told Dawn. The girl came and sat next to him on the wooden crate he occupied. “Sodding ponce had the house wired. I had to convince Buffy we all hated her.”
Dawn winced. “Ouch.”
“Quite right,” Anya told her. “Especially since earlier that night Spike and Buffy were trading orgasms.”
Spike glanced at Dawn. The teen had an absolutely huge grin on her face. He barely restrained a groan—he knew what that smile meant.
“Aieeeeee!” Dawn shrieked, bouncing up and down so hard that the crate’s wood creaked. “You guys did it! Omigod, I so knew this was coming! Oh, it’s so cute!”
“Or it would be, ‘f Buffy didn’t currently think I hate her,” Spike reminded her.
He winced as her face fell. “Oh. Why the hell did you do that?” She fixed him with an accusing look.
He shifted uncomfortably. Bugger it all, the Bit was like his conscious, only more annoying.
Now she was archin’ an eyebrow. “Explain now, Spike.”
He glared at her. “You remind me of m’ old schoolmarm, you know that?”
“Spike...”
Warning, I’m-gonna-beat-you-bloody tone included. “A’right, a’right,” he snapped, “Gimme a minute.” He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and began:
“Got a phone call from Red in the middle of the night. Told me the ponce’d set up cameras in all our rooms, includin’ the bedroom. She was out on the fire escape. Told me Riley was still with Rayne an’ was lookin’ to either recruit Buffy back or kill her. Only way he could get her back would be ‘f we turned her away—an’ since he was watchin’ the house, he’d know ‘f it was just a charade. Everybody else already knew, Red’d told ‘em earlier, when they were out.
“So when Dru tried to kill ‘er, I took the opportunity an’ made her hate us all. Now she’s wanderin’ around somewhere.”
Dawn’s eyes were wide. She heard crazy things every day—the place she worked at wasn’t exactly known for its pristine clientele—but this pretty much took the cake. “Okay, what happened to just killing Riley?”
Spike shook his head. “No can do,” he told her regretfully. “Woulda thought you knew even before we did—Rayne’s movin’ in. He’s got half the lap-dancers shacked up in Sunnyhell right now.”
“Oh my God,” Dawn said softly. “Really not good.”
Spike nodded. “The only way to be able to keep fighting was to get Buffy out, an’ it had to look convincin’. There was no way to tell her. She doesn’t have a cell phone, an’ it’d look way more suspicious ‘f she got a call in the middle of the night than ‘f I got one.”
“So you pushed her away.” Dawn shook her head. “That sucks big-time. What are you going to do now?”
“Good question,” Faith said. “We gonna try to get B back?”
He wished to God that he could answer yes, but he knew he couldn’t. The second Red had told him Riley had gone mad scientist on them, he’d known Buffy was lost to him. He shook his head.
“By now, she’ll be in Captain Cardboard’s care. That’s the only safe place for her—‘f they think she’s cut ties with us, they won’t hurt her. Maybe when we make the last move, we can get her back. ‘Till then, she’s gone.”
His voice was steady, almost calm, but his innards were in turmoil. Buffy. His thoughts were racing frantically, but it was her name that kept surfacing. My Buffy. God, ‘m such a wanker. She could be gone forever. There could have been another way. But he knew the truth: there hadn’t been. He’d done what he’d had to do, and now it was tearing him apart.
“Wow. Harsh.”
Spike glanced at Dawn. Her voice, too, was nonchalant, but he knew the Bit almost as well as he knew himself, and she was upset. The only thing hiding it was years of experience on the street.
“Speaking of final confrontations, when exactly is that going to be? I’m tired of playing cat-and-mouse with Rayne. I want vengeance, and I want it now!”
Spike cocked an eyebrow at his sister. “Impatient, much?”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Very.”
Good thing he’d come up with a plan, then. Probably one of the worst plans in the history of bad plans, but it was somethin’, at least.
“Right, then. Here’s what we’re gonna do.”
~*~
The SUV was quiet, much more upscale than the DeSoto—and way, way less comfortable, to her way of thinking. Riley drove so well, they could have used him as an example in a high school driver’s ed class. Buffy was super-bored.
They’d stopped by his apartment and he’d fixed up her wounds and given her some aspirin. Before they headed for LA, they’d also stopped by Wal-Mart and gotten her a tank top and some underwear. Buffy knew it was silly, but she kept wearing Spike’s shirt. She felt like it was her last link to him.
Riley had tried to initiate conversation, but Buffy’s replies had been monosyllabic when she’d bothered to say anything at all. She knew he was making an effort, but she still didn’t trust him.
She also couldn’t make herself care. The numbness was leaving, and with every mile they drove came more pain. She didn’t want to go back to LA. She wanted to stay in Sunnydale, with Spike. But she couldn’t.
Because he hated her.
“Of course you’ll live with me for the time being—“
Buffy’s head lifted sluggishly—she couldn’t seem to move quickly. “What?” she screeched, before she remembered that he’d just saved her so she should probably be nice. “I mean, um, sorry. You have a house in LA?”
“An apartment,” he told her. “It’s small, but it should be big enough for two. We’re going there now. You can crash on the couch, and then tomorrow we’ll see about getting you a job. Okay?”
He was being really nice, she noticed distantly. A little too nice, if you asked her. “Riley.” For the first time since he’d found her, her voice was hard, aware.
He tensed. “Yes?”
“Why are you doing this?”
His muscles relaxed, and she wondered what he’d thought she was going to ask. “I told you, Buffy,” he said, in a tone that sounded almost like a recital. “I’m turning over a new leaf, and helping you is the first step.”
“Really.” Flat skepticism rang out in her voice, and she realized—she was still worried about how much she could trust Riley. She was still sure that she could trust Spike. Part of her was insisting that everything that had happened in the house was all part of some bizarre-o dream.
God, she was messed up.
“Yes, really,” Riley snapped. For a moment his voice sounded menacing, but then he modified it. “I mean, yes. Of course. Look, Buffy, I know you don’t trust me, and that’s okay. Just give me a chance. Please.”
Hadn’t he said that before? Buffy frowned. She couldn’t remember. Everything was hazy from the moment she’d seen Drusilla on. Everything except Spike’s cold face, his pain-filled eyes.
Hate flooded into her. He’d been in pain? She was in pain now! He’d hurt her, called her names, turned away from her and told her he didn’t love her. She had to put him behind her...
She smiled at Riley. “Okay. Chance given.”
...No matter how much it might hurt.
~*~
Riley turned out to be true to his word. They drove for about three hours before reaching LA. He wove through the streets, sighing when they stopped and cursing other drivers.
If it weren’t for the fact that her heart felt like it was being torn apart, it would have been a nice, cozy, domestic scene. As it was, it felt like a kind of refined torture.
He drove through town until they came to a nice, reasonably upscale street. Parking outside a tall brick building, Riley grinned at Buffy and said, “Honey, we’re home.”
She frowned. “Please don’t say that,” she requested quietly. “I’m hurting, Riley.”
She watched the emotions play across his face out of the corner of her eye: frustration, murderous rage, and then determination. When she turned to face him full-on, his face was again smooth. “Sorry, Buffy, I forgot,” he said seemingly contritely. “You want to go inside now?”
Buffy settled on nodding. She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out.
When her feet hit the pavement she had to fight to keep her knees from buckling. God, she was tired. The emotional night had left her feeling ready to collapse. Just a little while longer, she told herself, and then you can rest. With Riley in the same apartment...no, Buffy. No second thoughts. They betrayed you.
Riley took her hand and led her to the door. The doorman let them in without checking ID, which Buffy found a bit odd, but not really suspicious. With his hand proprietarily on her elbow in a manner that seriously bugged her, he steered her over to an elevator.
As they walked, Buffy looked around herself with interest. The room was well-furnished; the reception desk was dark wood that matched the floor. The ceiling was tiled, but the tiles were the same soft golden as the couches at the far corner of the room. Low lighting and soft music invited the apartment’s occupants to sit down and enjoy themselves.
It was luxurious, which was surprising. Any other time Buffy would have wondered where Riley was getting all this money, but now she just wanted to sleep. Even as they walked, her lids were dropping.
She wasn’t too tired to not be astounded, and more than a little afraid, when the elevator opened to reveal a tiled white box. It was almost blindingly pale. “Riley?” Buffy asked as they started to walk in. Wait—she didn’t want to go in. Something was up.
“Riley, stop!” She frantically tried to dig her heels into the ground, but her legs weren’t working right. Actually, she realized suddenly, they weren’t working at all. She blinked, but when her eyes closed she had to fight to keep them open. All her limbs were floppy, and Riley was practically carrying her.
“Aaah!” She tried to scream, but her throat muscles were lax, too. It came out as a whimper. At about the same time, she realized that even if she had been able to scream, it wouldn’t have helped. The whole building was deserted.
“Shut the hell up, bitch,” Riley spat, hitting her across the head and stepping into the elevator. The doors closed, and she was encased in horrible, blinding whiteness. She didn’t want to close her eyes, but she did anyway. Even those muscles were limp.
The last image in her mind was of the ‘aspirin’ Riley had given her. Drugs. It was a trap—oh, God, Spike!
She felt Riley hit her again, making her head spin. The elevator door opened, and she forced her eyes open slightly. Fuzzy blackness edged the corners of her vision.
Rayne’s smiling face greeted her, along with a crushing blow to her stomach.
And as she went spiraling off into darkness, her mind screamed one name: SPIKE!
~*~
A/N: Okay. Tiny chapter, I know, and big-time cliffhanger, but I figured, an explanation might be a good thing =) Thanks to everyone who reviewed with WTF???!!! kinds of responses. I’m really sorry these last two chaps have been not so fun. Maybe it’s sadistic, but I like knowing I made you guys mad, cuz then I know I’m doing my job, so thanks!
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