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Chapter 7: Buffy

I’m an idiot. I stand there with a door shut in my face and realize I’m an idiot.

I don’t like it.

I also don’t like the way the bodyguards are looking at me. I glare back at them, daring them to lay a hand on me. They don’t look scared. Stupid guys.

For a moment I contemplate beating them up and breaking down the door. Which would be a fabulous plan if I had the slightest idea what I’d say once I got back in the room.

So I opt for Plan B.

Leave in a huff, head back outside, and look for something to kill. Violence always clears my head.

It doesn’t make sense. None of it.

I mean, it would have been a really cunning trap for me, if you know, there’d been an actual trap. Maybe whoever’s behind this got spooked by the fact that I was on to him, and not all ‘Oh Spike, thank god you’re back!’

Except what if it really is Spike?

It can’t be, we’re not on a Hellmouth.

Oo, a vampire. This should be good for a distraction.

“Hey, fang face!” I yell, to distract him from the girl he was about to snack on. “Why not pick on someone my size?”

Okay, obviously it’s not just my fighting skills that are rusty.

And then there’s the fact that I didn’t bring a stake with me tonight. I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of carrying one around with me.

But hey, I’m improv girl, and there’s got to be something I can kill a vampire with around here.

And anyway, a stake would make this too easy. This guy is not exactly the Master. Still there’s not much in the way of weapons in this alley, who knew the British kept their back alleys so clean?

And then I feel the slight tap as the pendant I’m wearing bounces against my chest. I give the vamp a good kick to the stomach to send him flying back and to give me a minute with my hands free. Then I unclasp the pendant. I let him get to his feet, and take a swing at me. I go low under the punch to come out behind him. Then I turn and pull the necklace chain tight around his neck.

It only takes a moment to pull it hard enough to sever the vampire’s head, and next thing I know I’m sneezing from the dust.

I lean against a wall and let the cool night air wash over me. I feel alive. It’s wonderful and terrible all at once. I belong here in the night, and I can hear Spike’s voice taunting me, telling me that I should have always known that.

And that’s when I know. It’s him. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but it’s him.

My first instinct is to rush back and tell him everything. Then I look down and see the pendant in my hand, Sam gave it to me back when we were dating. I remember him putting it around my neck, and I remember what it was like to love him.

And then my cell phone is in my hand, and he’s still in my speed dial.

“Buffy?” he answers. I guess he hasn’t removed my number from his phone yet either. “Where are you?”

“London,” I tell him.

“What? Why?” he asks half concern, half annoyed. “Look, Buffy we need to talk.”

“Yeah,” I say sadly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. . . I’m not sure, I don’t know exactly where I messed up. . .”

“Flying to England?” he snaps. “That might have been a mistake.”

I wince. But I kind of deserve it. “Yeah, look I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken off like that. . . it’s just. All of a sudden, I had to be me again.”

“Buffy, if you needed a vacation, a change of scenery. . .” his voice trails off, and I get what he’s thinking.

When we met I didn’t have a home. I was just wandering aimlessly around Europe. Well, not quite aimlessly, I was actually looking for newly called slayers, but he didn’t know that. He doesn’t know any of that stuff.

“It’s not that. It’s not the travel. I . . .” and suddenly I can see Sunnydale falling away into the desert, and things are almost clear for a moment. “My whole life was swallowed by the earth. Just like that, everything gone. And it seemed like such a good thing, like a chance to start over, be the girl I always thought I wanted to be. But the thing is, I never stopped being the girl I was. And I never let you meet her.”

“So let me. Look Buffy, I don’t get this, okay I admit it. But how can I if you’re on the other side of the world? Come home.”

I wince. He’s so nice, and so hurt. And he wants to make it work. He wants to fight through it, not just take off like Angel and Riley did. And that really makes me cringe, cause guess who the flight risk in this marriage turn out to be.

“Sam,” I say as delicately as I can. “It can’t work. I can’t be Mrs. Sam Adams anymore.” I can hear him start to talk, and I can’t bear to hear what he’s going to say, so I continue, “I’m going into the Underground now, Goodbye,” and flip my phone shut.

Yep that’s me. The big courageous hero. And so yeah, it’s true I have been standing in front of a train station for the last few minutes and I didn’t have to go in just then. I could have talked to him.

On the other hand there’s a hotel room full of slayers unsupervised.

And then it hits me. I’m an idiot. The kind of idiot who gets young girls killed. It wasn’t a trap for me. It wasn’t really about me. It was the girls. A way to get a bunch of the girls away from the school, away from safety.

And I walked right into it, or away from it. While I’ve been distracted with Not-Spike, someone was going after the girls, and I let it happen. After all these years, I still don’t know a distraction when I see one.

I don’t bother with the Underground. I’m not that far from the hotel, and I don’t have time to wait for the more infrequent late night trains. I run, and just hope it’s not too late.

It’s not. I get to the hotel and other than some underage drinking, the girls are just fine. Annoyingly curious about where I took off to after the concert, but fine.

It’s kind of too bad. I mean, not that I want something terrible and evil to have happened to them, but if it was all a trap I wouldn’t be where I am now. Trying to figure out how Spike is back, why he doesn’t remember, and how to convince him I’m not a psycho. Not to mention the big, ‘so what does this mean for my life and my marriage’ question that I am absolutely not thinking about. Nope, not even a little.

Not thinking about it at all.

More than anything I need to talk to someone. Giles is way out of the questions, as is Xander. Dawn’s a possibility, but she’d probably rush down here and try to make everything work out the way she thinks it should. Of course Willow was my best friend for pretty much forever, well not the last five years, but before then.

It begins to feel like I need someone to talk to about who to talk to. And then before I’ve quite made up my mind I’ve got my phone back out and I’m calling the only person who might listen and understand.





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