[A/N: Yeah! You all reviewed! Thanks so much to all of you! *does a little dance* The giddiness factor is off the roof. Okay, maybe mentioning roofs wasn’t such a good idea. >_> The banner now has several song titles, artists, and lyrics in it. We should make like a Pokemon game out of it. Only instead of “Gotta Catch’em All!” it will be “Gotta Say’em All!” *hums Pokemon theme song like a four year old* Oh, the chapter? Just adding more fuel to the flame. Beginning “doubling” scene was borrowed from Ender’s Game; I couldn’t have thought of something that great on my own. Title from the Nirvana song, which is *not* overrated, so stop saying that on SongMeanings.net. The aggressive riff reminded me of the chapter. Really the whole story – rough and hard and difficult. And I realize I kinda just described Nirvana, too. Alternate titles included things that had the word “gun” in them, like “Janie’s Got A Gun” and “Guns n’ Roses.” Points to those who figure out why, although it should be painstakingly obvious by the end of the chapter.]
Buffy wouldn’t cry, she couldn’t cry. Who was she kidding? She deserved this and so much more from Spike after the years of torture she put him through. But a sob formed in her throat. She tried to swallow the sob in a discreet manner, but she just couldn’t. The sound of the sob brought Spike out of his ocean watching stupor and his cold blue eyes shot over to her. She couldn’t let him see her like this. It was just a moment of weakness. She quickly turned her face away from him.
Her hands started to clench tightly. That wasn’t a good sign, not a good sign at all. Buffy started to do what she always did when she didn’t want to cry. She started counting in doubles. One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four. She went as high as her mind could hold. Sometimes she only reached the tens of thousands, but in more dire situations she reached the millions. 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288. What was next? Should it be 1048472 or 1048244? She tried to double again, this time getting a funky number. Twenty-one something? That couldn’t be right. She hadn’t doubled out of the first hundred thousands, had she? It should be twenty something, she was sure of it. She started over. One, two, four... as soon as she reached the hundred thousands again, she noticed the pain had finally dissipated. Not another tear would be wasted. She would not cry.
* * *
Spike picked himself up and stretched a little, eager to see what all the commotion was downstairs. He’d heard a lot of ruckus, some shouts, and a midsong switch in the music. He had glanced at Buffy, but she turned away so fast he wasn’t able to see her face. He could take a hint; she didn’t want to talk to him right now, or at least didn’t want him to see her. He was at a loss as to why. He just told her the cold, hard truth; he had his epiphany, his discovery, his revelation, and it bloody well solved everything. No love was here, only hate, torture, lust...
They both had to know it. She had to know it. But, more importantly, he had to believe it. He didn’t love her; painstaking years of misery lay credence to that very notion. If this was love, then love hollowed a hole in the heart and tore everything apart, shedding blood straight from the start.
The past never lied. The past would always be there to haunt them. The past would always be an amorphous specter that shrieked cacophonic cries to keep them both up at night. Nothing could change the past. Nothing. She must have known that already. She must have.
“You gonna come in?” Spike asked as he started over to the window.
“In a minute,” Buffy replied in a distorted, somewhat offbeat voice, still looking away from him.
Spike started to climb through the window. He stopped about halfway in, legs inside but torso outside. He was completely and utterly split. He turned and shyly glanced back at Buffy. All he could see was radiant golden hair; he couldn’t see her face because she was looking away from him still, out into the ocean. Spike sighed and entered the bedroom.
He put his black duster back on, taking care to adjust the cuffs and the collar, and trotted down the stairs. Spike was greeted by a very different party after making his descent. The first thing Spike noticed was that people weren’t dancing to music anymore. The music had changed to Soundgarden’s My Wave. It was a truly great song, but the lyrics were all too appropriate to Spike’s situation with Buffy. Not a dancing tune, either.
Hate, if you wanna hate
If it keeps you safe
If it makes you brave
A little distraught by the fitting lyrics, Spike tried to focus on something else. He knew Faith must have shown up, as none of the populars would have ever known Soundgarden’s music or really any good music if it hit them on the side of the head and screamed magnum opus. They probably didn’t know what magnum opus meant, either.
The room was eerily divided in half now. Segregation had finally found its wicked way back into society. Did anyone soddin’ remember the past anymore? The disgruntled populars were all huddled in the kitchen, trying to have a party in the small, crammed area, while the outcasts were sprawled on the couch. Ziploc bags of a white powdery substance, probably cocaine, were being passed around in the latter’s area. As much as Spike was a badboy, he really tried his hardest to stay away from drugs. He’d seen people drink and smoke their whole life and die at ninety, but he hadn’t seen a druggie make it past thirty without committing suicide or writing depressive grunge songs or marrying Courtney Love. None of the above. Speaking of which, Nirvana’s Come As You Are started playing.
And I swear that I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun, no, I don't have a gun
Spike’s eyes finally wandered to the front door where a casually dressed Faith stood, arms crossed, next to a few kegs of whiskey. This was all her doing, of course. The segregation and the music and the group of druggies and the changed atmosphere. Faith waved to Spike, signaling for him to come over.
“Nice party,” Faith said sarcastically as Spike slipped over to her.
“Glad to see at least one sane person’s here,” Spike replied humorously. Faith had been called a lot of things, really, a lot, but none of them were ever sane. Hell, she was the most insane person in the room sometimes. But now, in this room, with Spike and the populars and the outcast druggies, she was probably pretty low on the list of people who were brandishing a firearm or betting on chicken fights.
Okay, so maybe Faith was at the top of the list.
“But I thought I told you not to crash it unless I was there.” Spike put on his best sad face.
“Oh?” Faith cocked her head to the side. “You think this is crashing? We haven’t even gotten to the windows and kitchen appliances yet.”
“Windows...” Spike mumbled in reminiscence. It wasn’t just five minutes ago that he was climbing through one with Buffy and staring out into the deep blue abyss. “Do we have to break the windows? Angel might get mad.”
“Oh please.” Faith looked disgusted by the mere mention of Angel’s desire for Cordelia. “That lovesick puppy needs healthier obsessions.”
Spike shrugged. She was right, of course. It was indisputable, not even warranting a response. Angel almost had as bad of taste in women as... well...
As me.
Spike could admit that in his head. That was his problem. Bad taste. But you could acquire a better taste for the finer things in life, right? You weren’t always stuck with the same yearnings and hopes and desires? Spike thought he didn’t even have any hopes. Hopes? He didn’t need no stinkin’ hopes! But with Buffy... with Buffy he had hopes. And he didn’t want— nay, didn’t need hope. Hope could go “shimmy the pole” behind some shrubs for all he cared.
His thoughts warped time a bit, and when he returned to Earth he had a cup of Jack Daniels in his hand. How’d I get that? He was about to take a sip when he heard a shatter.
Broken glass.
Faith broke one of the front windows. Probably the old fashioned way, by throwing some kitchen appliance at it. Destructive Faith... Good times, good times...
But bad times quickly reared their ugly head. A rather tipsy Cordelia popped through the porch door and teetered into the center of the room. She froze when she saw the broken glass and Faith alongside it, looking guilty as ever. “What are you, like, doing!?”
“Crashing.” Faith was good at one word responses. “Go away.”
“I don’t think so.” Cordelia tried to be as authoritative as possible, but her drunkenness made her akimbo stance look hilarious. She probably didn’t even know the definition of akimbo when she wasn’t drunk. But now it looked like she was just having trouble standing, rather on knowing the definition of tenth grade vocabulary words. She was drunk as a dragonfly. Yeah, dragonflies drank. A lot. Tipsy little bastards.
“You’re gonna pay for that window,” Cordelia slurred while pointing accusingly at Faith. Her finger wasn’t straight, but actually slanted, in a curve, and she kept ticking her finger at Faith. Spike assumed she was so drunk she lost track of what she just did and thought she hadn’t accused Faith at all, which was why she stupidly looped the motion over and over with a drunken expression on her face. Yes, Cordelia was hammered. Drunk as a waddling duck. Ducks drank, too. Inebriated feathers ahoy.
“I’m not payin’ for anything,” Faith replied flatly. “And you’re an inspiration for birth control right about now...”
Cordelia mumbled the next words, making them hardly even audible. Faith heard them, though. Crystal clear. “...even if it takes you years of drug dealing...”
Cordelia hit a nerve just then. A bad reputation was what Faith wanted, yeah, but she didn’t want people to say it in front of her. Because if they did, that meant her reputation was obviously not bad enough, because you just didn’t speak openly in front of a person with a bad reputation. Unless you had a bad reputation yourself, like Spike.
But Cordelia wasn’t Spike. Cordelia was just some random drunk popular.
Faith’s eyes became devilish slits as she stomped over to Cordelia. She put her hand behind her right ear and squinted her eyes a little, implying that she didn’t hear what Cordelia said. “You wanna say that again? I couldn’t hear you.” Faith was urging Cordelia to sign her death warrant.
But, again, Cordelia was as drunk as Jack Sparrow on a boat bow to stern with rum. She just continued talking, acting like she wasn’t in life threatening danger or anything. “Hell, you’d probably be expelled from school... if it wasn’t for the principal being your father and bailing you out and all.”
Faith’s eyes widened and her pupils dilated. Spike knew what was going to happen next. He could see it in her eyes. Why, it’d be none other than a glorious smack down. A cat fight. And as... err... pleasurable as it would be to see the two hot brunettes fight, and not just in the symbolic, payback type of way, but also the... err... well... that way, Spike didn’t want to hurt Angel by having Cordelia go off and die by drunken ignorance. Spike knew that whatever pain Cordelia endured, Angel also endured. To the power of ten.
And that’s why Spike jumped in between Faith and Cordelia.
“Hey, hey,” Spike’s casual and soothing words put Faith at ease. It might have been Spike’s overwhelming attention, too. Because Faith wanted that. She desperately wanted that. “What’s... uh, what’s going on?”
“These populars are insulting me,” Faith declared pathetically. God, she could be just as bad as Riley sometimes. Spike shielded the view of Cordelia from Faith, so luckily she couldn’t see the funny faces that Cordelia was making. Hammered and loose... adjectives that perfectly described Cordelia right about now.
“Then why don’t we go?” Spike silently kicked himself for inviting fuel to the flame. It seemed like a great idea when he thought of it. But now, not so much. He tried his best to herd Faith to the door when...
“Yeah, take Faith back home so she can go make meth and throw herself at you...” Spike gulped at Cordelia’s mocking and harsh words. He knew that Faith wouldn’t take much more abuse from Cordelia before beating the living shit out of her. Cordelia was almost there... almost to that last straw, that last brick in the wall that made everything collapse. The point of no return. No man’s land.
“Whaddya call me?” Faith darted passed Spike and back into Cordelia’s face.
“I said...” Cordelia hiccupped. Some perks to having Cordelia wasted were that she didn’t talk sometimes. That was always good.
“Hey look!” Faith pointed to Buffy, who was descending the stairwell. “It’s Abercrombie! Come to help Fitch?”
“Hey!” The drunken Cordelia knew an insult when it was delivered right in front of her. Sometimes, anyway. Seventy percent, maybe sixty-five on bad days? Sadly the probabilities were against her now. “Dun... dun talk to my friend like that! Leave! Or else I’ll... I’ll throw—”
“Throw me out?” Faith laughed at the thought. “But aren’t you afraid you’ll break a nail or I’ll mess up your pretty little hair or something?”
And that’s when it happened. Over the edge.
Whack! Cordelia slapped Faith smack in the face.
And so both Cordelia and Faith tumbled down the hill like Jack and Jill. Spike couldn’t possibly stop what was going to happen next. It was just a little cat fight, a little hair pulling, anyway. Maybe some crying, maybe some bleeding, maybe some nice new wigs would become available at the hair salon. So what if the two of them fought a little? It was no big deal, right?
But that was when something bad happened. Something very bad. Faith pulled something out of her jeans pocket. It made everyone in the room scream and flee in terror. Even the insane druggy outcasts bailed. Everyone ran away from it. From that. From that thing they saw in movies all the time. That thing that terrified the living daylights out of them if they saw one in real life. No, not Freddie. Or Jason. Hannibal? No, not him, either.
It was none other than a shiny silver handgun.
Faith had a gun.
Whomg! Right from tragic doomed romance to life threatening situations! Someone might get... but I wouldn’t do that. That would be totally awful. So no, of course I wouldn’t kill off Buffy or Spike. That would be mean to my beautiful readers and reviewers. I'm much more of a suicide type of guy, anyway. Of course, this doesn’t mean no one else isn't fair game. Where’s Riley when you need him? Scott!? PARKER!!!