Drusilla had taken his words to heart and fled Sunnydale. He’d come back to the old mansion a few nights later to find the place quiet and abandoned. She’d even taken her dolls. The pain in his chest had surprised him, and not just in the way he had expected.
His chest hurt with the knowledge that the ties between him and Dru had disappeared long ago. In the past few decades, his mission to cure her had been the only connection left. Their faded emotional link had been holding them together. The knowledge had been hard to swallow.
Planning the destruction of the last being who had been making a hellhole out of his life had helped to push her from his mind. Buffy had proven to be a more difficult pray then he had anticipated. He’d relished planning his attacks and being able to focus wholly on his task. But the minute he was in her presence, everything had gone bust. Again. Any nutshell of a chance his idea had of succeeding, she always found a way to stop him from success.
He’d figured her out, though.
She had her pals—another difference between her and the two slayers before her. Those pals grounded her—gave her a connection with the human race; enabled her to save the humans time and again. But going after the slayer’s friends would be too risky. After he offed the first one, she would bury them and herself in some hole with weapons drawn. He’d never have his day then. Dividing and conquering had seemed a viable option but they’d be too smart for that. Besides, they wouldn’t let him or any new person get close enough to start poisoning ears.
He still hadn’t come to a decision when he found her out on patrol the other night and what happened… Two nights had passed, and his mind still wouldn’t wrap around the events. His thought got stuck on how soft she was on top of him, under him. The thrill he got remembering the feel of her pulling him back when he went to pull away. He’d relented then, giving up any arguments that held him back. But then she’d rolled them over and pressed into him.
Her sudden acceptance, reluctant in it’s coming, had startled him to reality. He had the slayer under him. The Slayer.
The encounter, the discoveries, were more than a bloke could take in, in one night.
Why hadn’t it felt wrong? And if not wrong, why hadn’t he lusted for her blood instead of her body? Why had she let it happen? More questions, and still no one to answer them.
But what made him pace most of all was the need to know more: What would happen if they met again? Would they fight and end up as they had? Would they just drop the play and go for the kiss?
Going back to his bed, he flopped down on his stomach and glared at the wall.
If he ended up kissing her again, would the novelty of it be gone? Would being with her still not feel wrong? Because her embrace shouldn’t feel right…
Right?
Burying his face in his pillow, he groaned.
Just then, a bright purple-blue light gathered above Spike’s head and condensed fleetingly into the figure of a slender woman. “I need your help, Spike.”
He lifted his head just as her misty body broke a part and floated down over him.
“Buffy? Are you in here?” The back door stood open to a dark starless night when Willow came into the kitchen. Even knowing that Buffy was gone, she searched the space.
“Giles.” She called as she went to the island and picked up a piece of paper. She turned as he came into the kitchen. “She went back to the school, didn’t she?”
She handed him the flyer for the Sadie Hawkins Dance.
Buffy walked down the middle of a hall in Sunnydale High. Struggling with James, she’d learned, had no effect on him. He’d taken control of her at her house and hadn’t relinquished it. The only headway she’d made was some bit of consciousness separate from his. She could only watch from outside of herself as James moved deeper into the school—with her body.
A light mist surrounded her and yet, that swirl of white seemed to be one step ahead of her—the master leading its puppet
She hoped on one else was in the school, or, since that swarm appeared, hadn’t gotten through. How could she stop him if there was? She couldn’t stomach watching her body kill someone.
As James moved past a glass case, he stopped suddenly and turned back the way he came. Her heart pounded at the sound of woman’s high heels on the linoleum floor. James’s turmoil clashed with her fear—the two combined made her dizzy.
“James.”
His pulse leapt within her body. Grace!
“You’re the only one.” His voice came from some unseen place and her vocal cords softly echoed the words. “The only person I could talk to.” James turned her body around to find Grace standing inches away.
Buffy mentally blinked. As much as s he was outside her body, James controlled what she saw at times. And he saw Grace. But… Spike stood only inches away with an expression of pain on his face. What was he going here?
“You can’t make me disappear just because you say its over.”
“I just want you to be able to have some kind of normal life. We can never have that, can’t you see?” Grace’s voice, like James’s, echoed from a ghostly realm, and, microseconds later, was repeated by Spike.
“I don’t give a dame about a normal life!” Tears were rolling slowly down her cheeks with the raw grief coursing through her from James. “I’m going crazy not seeing you. I think about you every minute.”
Spike’s presence flashed to that of Grace as she raised her hand and touched James’s cheek. He bowed his head and pressed her hand closer with his.
“I know. But it’s over. It has to be!”
Grace turned to leave but James chased after her and spun her around.
“Come back here!”
Buffy blinked—Grace was Spike again. Some flicker of awareness had her looking closer. Was he as conscious of what was happening as she was?
“We’re not finished,” James said, her voice echoing it. “You don’t care anymore, is that it?”
Tears easily fell from Spike’s face, and he could barely meet her eyes. “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how I feel.”
“Then tell me you don’t love me!” Once again, James took full control and Spike was Grace. “Say it!” Even his voice was his own.
“Is that what you need to hear? Will it help?” She could barely keep her face from crumbling. She was shaking her head. “I don’t, I don’t. Now let me go.” Her voice was followed by Spike’s as James’ hold wavered.
“No. A person doesn’t just wake up and stop loving somebody!” James’s control strengthened in a flash that made it impossible for her to follow their actions until Grace was Spike again. Then her heart stilled and her mind went numb.
She was aiming a revolver at Spike’s chin.
“Love is forever.”
As Buffy looked at the fear on Spike’s face, she was drawn to his eyes. They were as blue as they always were, but haunted with memories that weren’t his, and pain. Buried deeper, something moved, a deeper emotion that was all his.
“I’m not afraid to use it, I swear!” James told a disbelieving Grace. “If I can’t be with you…”
That undefined emotion was bared in Spike’s already full eyes—he was there with them, with her.
“Oh my god!” Grace says, Spike’s thicker voice coming thereafter.
As Spike turned and started down the hall, Buffy was in 1955 again and Grace had once again fully replaced Spike. James chased after her.
“Don’t walk away from me…”—as he followed her around a corner, Spike was back. “Bitch!” Her voice echoed in the silent hall and drowned out James’s leading tones.
They ran through a set of outside doors onto a balcony.
“Stop it, stop it! Don’t make me.” His last words faded with a pleading tone as she repeated them with anger.
Grace’s fear making him breath heavily, Spike panted, “All right. Just…” As he turned, Grace took his place. “You know you don’t want to do this. Let’s just both…” she took a breath, “ calm down. Now, give me the gun.” Grace held out her hand.
“Don’t. Don’t do that, damn it!” As he shook the gun, Spike flickered back. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some stupid…”
His violent shaking made the gun move in his grip and his fingers instinctively tightened. As the word kid was about to leave her lips to echo, the gun went off.
Spike jerked back with the impact of the bullet into his body. Lifting a hand to his chest, he looked down at the blood that covered his palm. He lifted his pain filled eyes.
Open-mouthed shock had Buffy staring back. What had she done? Had she killed the only person who had ever seen her?
“James.”
Buffy stared in disbelief as Spike started to lose consciousness and then he was gone. She gave up fighting James’s hold.
Grace’s system went into shock and she stumbled back and over the rail of the balcony. James stepped forward and saw her. Her eyes were closed and her hand lay across her stomach like so many happier times.
Choking on a sob, James turned and scrambled back into the school.
On the steps below the balcony, Spike’s supine body lay unmoving. White mist gathered about him and his eyes suddenly came open. He looked up at the balcony as music softly drifted to him. Rolling smoothly up onto his feet, he took the stairs two at a time and raced through the school to be at the music room door in seconds.
Grace’s panic washed through him as he stopped and looked through the glass at Buffy. She stood in front of a full-length mirror with unfocused eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she looked down at the gun in her hand.
Silently, Spike entered the room and crossed to Buffy’s side as James had her raise the gun. Reaching out, he pulled the revolver from her hand and set it aside. She whirled around and looked at him with wide eyes. She wasn’t Buffy—he was looking at James.
“Grace!”
At that point, Spike let Grace have full control of him and retreated.
“Don’t do this.”
“But-but I killed you.”
“It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”
“No.” James hiccupped. “It was my fault.”
“Hush.” Grace put her finger to his lips. “I’m the one that should be sorry. You thought I stopped loving you but I never did.” She slid her hand onto his cheek. “I loved you with my last breath.”
James let out a sob as his face crumbled and he touched his forehead to hers.
“Shh…” She wiped the moisture away from his cheeks. “No more tears.”
Stretching up, she kissed him.
Above Buffy and Spike’s heads, a swirling purple-blue light appeared. As they continued to kiss and cling tightly to one another, the ethereal light briefly intensified then was suddenly gone.
Spike slowly came back to himself and the kiss he was sharing with Buffy. She was soft and warm in his arms. The embrace answered more then he was ready to learn or accept. He didn’t know if he wanted to throw his hand back and roar in frustration… Or pull her closer and discover what they would.
Reluctantly, he compromised and slowly broke the caress. Brushing his lips over hers one last time, he drew back to look at her face. Her eyes were closed and her kiss-swollen lips were slightly parted. Her hand, which had come to rest on his chest some time during their kiss, played with the collar of his shirt.
She softly blinked her eyes open. Surprise flared in her wide, hazel orbs.
“Spike?”
Before he could form a coherent thought, running footsteps sounded from the hall. “Buffy?” one of her pals called.
He could only watch as she pushed past him and left the music room.