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Author's Chapter Notes:
Extremely tired and going to bed. have a beautiful day, all.
Chapter Seventeen

The chill in the basement made her shiver.

Buffy clung to the cardigan she’d retrieved from her room as soon as the emotionally difficult job of chaining her school friend to the wall had been taken care of. Xander and Giles had been uncharacteristically silent while they waited, not knowing exactly how long the process of turning would take for a new vampire to exist in the world.

He was stretched out on a basic cot against the wall, the chains just long enough for his hands to lie beside his body. Buffy knew that it wasn’t just the atmosphere in the dank basement that caused ice to creep through her veins. Prolonged looks at this boy that she’d once walked in the sun beside was enough to add an element of gothic horror to her night.

It was late. Spike hadn’t returned and anxiety ripped at her to go and find him. She had a bad feeling, despite suspecting that he wouldn’t come back to them quite so willingly. There was nothing to indicate a need to anticipate problems—if you could exclude the fact that a grief-stricken yet defectively ensouled vampire was gunning for dust.

“How long do these things take, Giles?” She’d always been under the impression it was a couple of days from the draining to the dusting, given that most were in the ground before she got to them. Things like funeral services took planning. But what did she know? It was probably outlined in that nifty little handbook that gave her all the nitpicky hints about being the perfect slayer, but being that she never got one, she was operating under a severe lack of knowledge.

I wonder how Giles justifies not letting me read it? Maybe he knew me and study, not so mixy.

“I’m actually not that certain. The Council was able at some point to gain access to a number of…er…bodies, and observed the length of time it took for each to regain consciousness. I rather think the length depended on the sire. O-of course, Spike is a master vampire—”

“Huh?” Xander butted in, his face a picture of confusion before understanding shifted and anger took its place. “But, isn’t he kind of young? And what did he have to do to get that honour?”

Giles was suddenly shifty, looking at Buffy before quickly diverting to the floor, his hands scrabbling for the ear piece of his glasses as the nerves set in.

“I-it would seem that Spike was—is—known as the Slayer of Slayers. He’s killed two in his time, Buffy. If what Angel said is true, and Spike doesn’t have a soul, then it seems more than reasonable to assume he was here to make you his third. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.” Compassion settled around his eyes and he let go of the stiffness that was his calling as a watcher, moving decisively to hug Buffy awkwardly around her shoulders. “I know you care a great deal for him.”

Buffy nodded, her heart beginning to ache with how much. She was scared now. Terrified about him being out on his own when he was obviously reacting emotionally to something that she had no clue about, as well as knowing that Darla’s dusting wouldn’t remain a secret for long if it hadn’t already reverberated throughout the clan, and Spike was a sitting duck for The Master.

“Giles, that whole soul thing? So not what it’s cracked up to be. And if Angel has one, it’s defective. Spike doesn’t and yet I trust him anyway. I—” She wanted to say the words to her friends, despite not having been explicit with them to Spike himself, yet the stunned look in Giles’s eyes forestalled her confession. “Look, what you just said? So not news. Spike told me everything already and I trust him. I…care about him. He didn’t do this to be evil. He did this to be good.”

Everyone looked again to the deathly pale prisoner of the Summers’ basement and Buffy felt tears prickle at her eyes. She didn’t want this to be happening. It was one thing to have this as her calling—to go out every night and stake the badness of the night so the rest could sleep safe and indulge dreams of things better. It was entirely another to have to look at one of her friends and see the life bleach from their skin only to be replaced by artificial animation in death. A horrifying monster. Despite Xander’s hopes, Buffy knew this would only end in badness.

The silence this time was a little more comfortable, though it stifled through the shared knowledge that none of them really knew what to do—what to expect. There was little to do but wait, and unfortunately none of them were much with the patience. There was nothing left but to fill the emptiness with talk, and as soon as Giles opened his mouth, Buffy felt twitchy.

“So, you knew then? That Spike made up the story of having a soul. Was it to get into the group and slaughter us all?”

Yup, straight for the jugular.

“Yes, I knew. Well, okay, I just found out, and before you hold your breath and go purple, it was my idea not to tell you. Spike thought it was over, and I wanted you to just have some time to see that he wasn’t just a monster and that he could be good if we just gave him a chance.” She stopped, held herself strong and clenched her jaw. Catching Giles shocked glance, she stared him right in the eyes and said the words that would change everything.

“I love him.”

Either her watcher would accept how they felt about each other, or not. Heart thumping wildly in that scared way it does when you wait for parental trouble, Buffy watched and took her turn at bating her breath.

He said nothing.

Looked at her for one shocked and disappointed moment, and turned away. Buffy stood confusedly to the side as Giles flopped down on an uncomfortable slab of the floor near Xander and then took a book from the duffle bag he’d carried down the basement stairs from his car after Jesse had been settled.

Well, that hook had been kind of weak—as in letting her off it really fast. Buffy sighed in relief as she took to pacing in front of the huddled pair. The older man took his time to open the book carefully, his fingers reverent of the pages as he turned them slowly. Only when his eyes widened and he sat forward, repositioning his glasses to see more closely something so entirely captivating did Buffy feel the urge to interrupt. To push her luck. She was getting a bad feeling, and added to the previous fear she’d felt welling inside at Spike’s absence, it was adding up to all sorts of scary images in her head.

Giles’s head whipped up too fast and his glasses dislodged, allowing Buffy to catch the flash of guilt there. Somehow, in the pocket of time between his disbelief of her actions and his tentative reading of the cryptic book, he’d found something that Buffy wasn’t meant to know.

“What?” she demanded, her voice all kinds of hard now that there was something other than Spike’s motivations at hand. “You’ve got ‘uhoh’ face. ‘Uhoh’ face is never good.” Beneath it all she was wide-eyed and innocent, scared of all the baddies that were out there and targeting her because she was the Slayer.

“I-it’s nothing, Buffy. Just a prophecy that I will need to do some further work on in order to translate it accurately.” He tried to brazen it out, taking to his feet and shuffling uncertainly until he quickly stuffed the book back into his bag—at complete opposites with the way he’d venerated its very existence earlier—and sat back down.

“So, Xander, how are your studies coming along?” Giles smiled at the adolescent, being both desperately encouraging and panicked.

“Ah, you know,” Xander answered as his eyes darted questioningly to Buffy’s, asking for some kind of clue. “Pretty much as non-existent as it was the last time you never asked.”

Buffy felt the dead weight of dread as it settled in her stomach. Giles was keeping something from her. He’d read something in that ancient book that probably affected her and he didn’t want her to know about it. That just felt so wrong.

Her worried eyes settled on the body on the cot and Buffy suddenly felt like the walls were closing in. It was all happening again; the evil she’d escaped by leaving LA was following and spreading, and yet here she thought it could hurt her a whole lot more than before. No matter what she did, she couldn’t escape it. Evil sought her out—and even if it was Spike and he changed for meeting her, it was never going to stop. Not until she was dead. Or all her friends were and she didn’t care anymore.

Looking at Jesse sprawled flat out on top of the sheets, she couldn’t help believing that it was starting already. Tears sprung to her eyes and Buffy felt the weight of helplessness.

One friend down, three to go.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He felt so cold. Wasn’t meant to; wasn’t meant to feel anything. Not now that he was so beyond physically broken that the pain was just a numbing backdrop to the emotional torment.

He’d not wasted any time berating himself for getting into this mess. He couldn’t even hold on, expecting the cavalry to gallop to his rescue. Not the way he’d run out like a coward. Even if Buffy hadn’t wanted to stake him after what he’d done, after what grief he’d more than likely caused her, and she didn’t hate him as much as he was beginning to hate himself, she had no clue that he’d been caught. His girly run out the door would probably be enough for her to think he wanted to hide and that would keep her hesitant long enough for him to be dust—or fulfil whatever nasty plan the bat-faced pillock had in mind.

Besides, she’d likely have her hands full. He didn’t even question that Xander would be as coercive toward her as he was to Spike, convincing her to give the newly turned school mate the benefit of the doubt by letting him rise. Not for one second did Spike contemplate that she would have planted her stake in the boy’s chest—even if he had no doubts that it was exactly what she should do.

Dru had surrendered her game to the minions—to that wanker Luke—and retired to wherever it was she wallowed her loss and dreamt up her insane predictions. Spike was relieved. No matter how much he loved Buffy now, it hurt to see the face of the woman he’d spent over a hundred years worshipping and caring for wanting to do him damage. And not the kinky kind, either.

Luke’s fists hit a whole lot harder and believe it or not, his punishments were much more twisted and devastating. As it now stood, Spike couldn’t move one small part of his body. He couldn’t even crack open an eyelid without feeling a tearing pain. He was covered in blood—could feel it dried and caked on his flesh. Sometime after Luke had entered the scene, Spike had been relieved of his jacket, the leather being ripped from him to show the manacles holding him helpless wouldn’t impede them taking it. He’d been rendered shirtless, then, and they’d painted their death patterns on his chest and poked him full of holes.

When his eyes were still under his command, Spike was reminded what the bitch Darla had first seen in Angelus. The ugly forehead look seemed to be a family trait and he only could thank his lucky stars Dru had seen something else in him and made him the black sheep. Black—because he wasn’t. Plutonic hair, a heart that loved the Slayer; he’d left black way back in Europe and it was Dru’s fault entirely. If she’d let them go to Prague he’d more than likely still be happily feeding on young, innocent virgins. Anyway, bugger the rambling. He was thinking about Luke and how the nasty bastard never changed out of his demon face. The Master was surrounded by demons of the purest intentions and Spike was left regretting his jump over the fence. At least—no. He couldn’t regret it, couldn’t feel that what had happened between Buffy and himself was wro…

“Argghh!”

Something white hot and sharp sliced its way through his gut and struck the rock wall behind him. Spike screamed out in agony, his eyes shooting open against the blood crust that had hidden the view of his own attack from him. Luke, a grin from one lopsided ear to the other, watched as the pain took Spike over and he sunk as far as the chains allowed.

“You’ve been bad, Spike.” The deep, amused tones were barely heard as Spike felt the groans against such intense pain fight their way from his internal darkness. “You must be punished for your transgressions. You will not be alone in this. Not once we catch Angelus and show him that there are consequences for not protecting one’s sire. How long do you think you have, Spike, before I show you mercy and end your miserable existence?”

He couldn’t answer. He honestly didn’t know. And to top it all off, he didn’t know what to wish for. Make it quick, something screamed in his head, wanting to continue his not so courageous night and have it finally reach its end.

But then another thought barged its way to the surface, just as his head was lolling and he was fighting the onset of darkness and unconsciousness. It was the voice that had turned him in Buffy’s direction and taught him that there was sense in falling in love with her. It told him to hang on, because no matter what he thought, no matter what he expected, she was coming.

Against the agony of his position, he waited.

She would save him.





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