"Can we rest now, Buffy? Can we rest?"
She can't think, or feel, anything, any one emotion she can recognize or name. She's feeling too much, thinking too much, and all of it is just zapping around her mind like gnats on meth, sizzle sizzle pop burn and like that Just Say No egg in the frying pan, this is your brain on drugs or what it does when Spike tells you - tells you - what he just told her.
She can't speak, kinda impossible with that big jaggedy rock someone shoved down her throat, no idea how it got there but she can hardly swallow around it and as for breathing, well, that's no picnic either, she can only draw air in broken little hitches like hilarity or panic and wouldn't he just love this, never let her forget it or live it down, that he's left her breathless without touching her or even trying.
She can not move, her limbs held in the firm gentle grasp of the utterly impossible, the bizarre, the so-out-there-it-can't-possibly-be-true and yet she knows it is
Spike has a soul. Spike has a soul. Spike. Has. A soul.
Spike has -
- terrible burns, she can smell them in the smoke rising from his body, and ugh! GOD! She gags. No one ever told her how revolting the smell of burning carrion is.
And now no one ever will have to.
She gags again and coughs, which hurts something awful thanks to that stupid rough-edged rock that isn't going anywhere soon, obviously, and she bends almost double over her folded arms, eyes flooding with tears. Because the stench is so disgusting. Nausea-tears, that's all they are. She isn't crying, not for him.
She isn't.
You are dead inside! she'd shrieked at him once. Maybe not, not anymore, maybe not ever - but the outside surely is. Oh God, it reeks. He reeks, and that's just so not Spike.
She jerks herself out of immobility, so hard and so painfully that she thinks if she turns around and looks, part of her might still be frozen in the same spot, like she's torn herself in two to get to him. As they reach for his shoulders her hands feel as if they belong to someone else, someone brave and kind who would never ever want to run screaming from this chapel of revelations and horror. She's a bystander, that has to be it, a bystander at a train wreck, watching the heroic EMT take hold and lift the victim away with a ghastly tearing sound that makes her want to throw up everything she's ever eaten and then the rest of her insides as well.
Her knees give out on her and she crumples to the floor, holding him. Limp as a marionette with its strings cut, he sprawls clumsily across her lap, moaning softly. She bites back a gasp as she surveys him, her fingers hovering over the still-smoldering burn high on his left cheekbone, that so-beautiful cheekbone made hideous by reddened and blackened flesh. Neck, chest and arms are all torn and scorched in a mirror pattern of the cross he'd draped himself over.
Ugh. Torn. She peers up at the cross, grimacing at the thought of having to pick off bloody gobbets of Spike-flesh. But nothing remains of whatever he left behind, save for a few smoking bits that burn away as she watches, sending up desolate little curls of smoke, the only signs they'd been there at all.
God, WHY had he done that? Done any of it?
Why does Spike do anything? What had he said?
For her. To be hers.
Oh. No.
No no no no no
It's the mantra of Buffy Default Mode #1 and her mind grasps it like a lifeline, something vital and familiar to ground her, and she chants it silently as all those roiling feelings fly headlong into the bug zapper known as Denial, leaving behind only one, the most familiar of all.
When it blooms over her like a terrible flower, she pushes him off her lap and scrambles to her feet, staring down at him, shaking with it. Fury, her old friend and comrade. And its natural partner in all things Spike: Loathing.
She loathes him.
She thought she'd hated him after the attack in her bathroom. Heaven knew she had every right to. But that feeling pales in comparison to this, this raging tsunami of revulsion for the terribly unnatural thing at her feet. He is unnatural, in far too many ways to count - and oh, how she hates him for it!
When she could bear to think about the attack, she'd ascribed it to his demonic nature, its need to take and have, the impulse control of a three-year-old. An inevitable explosion of unholy desires held too long in check, proof positive that she was right to break off their affair and even to treat him as awfully as she had. She'd brushed herself off, scrubbed away the taint of his unclean touch and resumed her place on her high pedestal, looking sadly down at his actions as no better than could be expected, given what he was.
And then - this. This thing he had done. Just the fact that he'd attempted it cracked her pedestal and set its foundation teetering and swaying like a bridge in an earthquake.
How DARE he?
She wants to kick him, crazy muttering wreck that he is, kick him until he can't speak or move or show anyone (yeah, Him too) how inadequate their own efforts are compared to his willingness to go anywhere and perform any task, to become something that might someday, possibly, if he was very very good and very very lucky, earn a crumb of her regard.
He earned his soul. Won his soul. For me. Oh, God.
Him being cursed with one would've been all right. If I'd thought of it then - if I'd had the chance to - I might've wished it on him. I was a vengeance demon's wet dream that night, they would've done it, no problem. But no! Not him! Stupid idiot vampire that I can't even call evil anymore! That went to the ends of the earth and listened to me and let me beat him up and watched my sister and protected my friends even though he can't stand them -
No. She stops that train of thought right in its tracks, wrenches the brake so the metal squeals and sparks. She must hate him, compartmentalize his actions as just one more reason to detest Spike, because if she doesn't pigeonhole them that way she might actually have to think about it and maybe even accept the notion that the Earth's rotation just shuddered to a halt and then resumed spinning the other way.
So she stands there, cold and silent as Death itself, watches him twitch and groan with enforced detachment, like a scientist testing chemical effects on a lab rat. He stirs to wakefulness, or whatever passes for it for him, and sits up.
"Very spirit of vexation. Curds and whey. Curds and whey. Run away, little girl. Mustn't kiss the spider, not ever. Drink its poison for tea, you will."
Oh, God. Her resolve begins to crumble. He's just...so...gone...(oh Spike) But she has no idea what to say, or do, so she just stares as his eyes flicker and wander, scanning over everything yet comprehending nothing. And the awful flat muttering monotone, so completely devoid of animation, sounds so wrong coming from Spike, droning on.
"Have to go, don't you see? Called on me all proper, left a card. Engraved invitation, done up special. Calling me - calling me -" He lurches to his feet, causing her to take a reflexive step backward, and sways there a moment, looking over and past her as if she isn't there. "Going now, yes. Mustn't be late for the party. It's a surprise." He giggles, a thin horrible sound, then staggers toward the door.
"Spike, wait -"
She takes his arm, stumbles backward a moment later as he pushes her violently away. His eyes swirl gold and blue and venomous green, and his voice is snakelike too, hissing at her: "Mustn't touch, not yet. Ruins the reputation, taking liberties." And then, like a flipped switch, he calms, and suddenly he's there with her again, smiling at her softly, sadly. "Won't hurt the girl," he murmurs.
"Spike," she whispers, approaching him slowly, stretching out a cautious hand. Her heart swells as his eyes brighten, and his own hand hesitantly lifts toward hers, just a little further and they'll connect -
And then his head snaps up, turns like a dog's to a silent whistle. The candle behind his eyes snuffs out and his hand slaps hers away, hard enough to sting. She cries out, cradling her hand to her breast and he darts away, up the aisle and through the door.
"So sorry. Not right, to be late for supper. Won't happen again."
