Chapter 2: Unwelcoming
Buffy opens her eyes even though she can't remember ever closing them, lashes flutter and lids squint from the sudden bombardment of sunlight. All Buffy can see is a brilliant bright blue. Disoriented, it takes her a moment to realize that she's lying on her back staring up at the sky. She pushes herself up off the sandy ground and stands taking in her surroundings. She had been expecting to see Spike, after all this is his mind, but the vampire in question is nowhere to be seen. She's alone here, at least for the moment.
"Defiantly not in Kansas anymore," Buffy says and notices how flat her voice sounds, it's as if it's the only sound to be heard for miles. No background noise, no echo and certainly no response.
Soft sand is below her boot covered feet and growing out of it are dozens of rose bushes, some as tall as the Slayer herself. Buffy stands in a small clearing among the flowering plants. Their stems and leaves twist toward the sky and the flowers upon them are the brightest purest white. She brushes the sand off the back of her jeans and walks toward one particularly large white rose. It juts out from the bush in utter perfection and calls for Buffy to inhale its sweet perfume. Buffy leans in to smell it and brings her hand up cupping around the flower moving dangerously close to its thorns.
Don't.
Buffy spins around at the whisper, her hair flipping around her face and the rose becoming quickly forgotten. She sees no one, but a new aspect of the landscape has formed. Before her is a large stone cave. Black rock reaches toward the sky like arms clawing to escape the earth and in that stone is a deep tunnel with darkening depths like a howling mouth frozen in agony. Cautiously she moves toward it. The sun is high in the sky and creates a perfect line between the sunlit sand and shadowed rock, Buffy stands at its edge and peers down the throat of the darkness.
"Hello," she calls into the cave. Her voice echoes down the cavern bouncing off the rock and Buffy is glad for the eerie flatness that encased her voice before to be gone, still though there is no response. "Anybody home?"
The Slayer takes another step moving out of the light and into the cold stony cave. Now bathed in shadow Buffy looks over her shoulder at the field of white roses behind her. Then, when she turns back around she finds that she is no longer alone. Buffy gasps surprised to see a boy standing before her. He stares up at her with big blue eyes; eyes Buffy would recognize anywhere, eyes that she's glad to see life in once again.
Buffy kneels down to the boy's level; he looks to be about five or six. Curly light brown hair lies across his head and he's dressed older than his age would suggest, wearing trousers and a shirt resembling what a man would wear in the eighteen hundreds.
"What's your name?" Buffy asks offering the child a smile, although she already knows the answer.
"William," he says in the sweetest voice Buffy has ever heard. Then he reaches a small hand toward Buffy. She takes his tiny fingers in her own and stands up glad to finally have found Spike, or at least a version of him. Buffy knows however that this version of Spike is not the one she needs to reason with to help him escape his mind. How many versions, how many parts of his personality that she'll encounter she does not yet know.
"Can you take me to Spike, William?" The boy does not respond, he just turns and starts to lead her into the depths of the tunnel and Buffy follows.
The dripping of moisture off stalagmites and the reverberating thud of two sets of footsteps, one large and one small, is all that can be heard through the cavern of Spike's mind. Young William pulls Buffy down twisting crevasses, and through long channels within the cave. She follows him every step of the way. Now Buffy watches as William enters a particularly thin and dark crevasse. Fearlessly she follows the boy down the claustrophobic corridor and finds that it quickly opens up to a wider space, however as Buffy comes out of the skinny stone passageway she finds herself somewhere new, somewhere not in the cave.
Buffy looks on at William as he stands in the center of a bedroom, the space around her has a style to it that would be ancient even for her grandmother. The bed is a low wooden four poster bed. An intricate woven rug lies across the wood floor, papers are scattered across a writing desk beside a window with thick curtains, and a tall wooden bookshelf filled with text sits in the corner. This is his room.
"Why are we here William?" Buffy asks. "I need you to take me to Spike." As she looks at him then she sees him close his eyes and shake his head from side to side. Light brown curls bounce and flop against his forehead. "You can't take me to Spike?"
"Too dangerous," William says in a soft voice. He turns from her then and runs to his bed. William drops down onto his belly and reaches under the dust ruffle. He squirms back out and runs back to stand before Buffy with his small fingers gripped tightly around something. Buffy bends down before him and he reaches his hand out to her. As his fingers unclasp Buffy can see that a large yellow glass marble rests in his palm.
"Is that for me?" Buffy asks and William nods his head with enthusiasm. She reaches her hand out and William drops the marble into her palm. Buffy holds the round piece of glass between her fingers watching the light swirl around inside the orb. A smile crosses her face as she stares at the tiny gift.
Thud, a loud noise is heard from outside the room and in shock Buffy drops the marble to the ground. It bounces on the wood floor with a tapping sound. Quickly she rushes to pick it up and as she clasps the glass ball in her fist more banging is heard. Thud, thud, thud, Buffy quickly recognizes the loud spaced out pounds as footsteps, powerful, angry footsteps. Her eyes meet William's fearful blue ones and the boy draws a sharp intake of breath.
"You have to leave," William says as he starts to push Buffy toward a large armoire which stands behind her. Its doors are open wide and clothes hang within. "Quick, he's coming."
"Who's coming?" Buffy asks, but William doesn't answer. He pushes Buffy into the armoire with more strength then a six year old boy should possess. She stumbles and falls back as the doors slam shut.
--
Buffy staggers and falls onto her back her head crashing against the ground with a crack. She lands on the cold stony floor of the cave with William's yellow marble still held tightly in her hand. Buffy groans and brings her hand up to the back of her head. Slowly she lifts herself up and stands to find that the bedroom is gone. Like some twisted version of Narnia she's fallen through the wardrobe and into a world of nightmares. Buffy looks down at the glass orb in her hand and buries it in her back pocket.
"Great… now what," she muses as she spins around realizing that she's alone in the cave with no sense of what direction to move in once again. Buffy starts walking deeper into Spike's thoughts. As she walks she wonders if Spike is as lost as she is. She wonders if he knows his way around this maze of tormented rock or if he keeps changing the pattern to prevent his own escape.
Buffy remembers that when she was locked in her own mind that she had a few very specific moments which she kept replaying over and over. She anguished over certain memories and specific fears. She felt guilty because she thought she had gotten Dawn killed. She was lost in her mind over the guilt of one life, one life that wasn't even really lost. Spike has taken thousands upon thousands of lives. The memories he could be replaying are countless, the guilt beyond overwhelming, and Buffy knows that this cavern in which she walks is made from the endless remorse he feels over the blood he has spilt.
It doesn't take long for the Slayer to find something of interest. To the left of the cavern ahead of her there is a break in the wall, a break through which a cool light shines. It's not bright, but strong enough to make Buffy realize just how dark her surroundings are. She moves toward the light watching as particles of dust dance within its cool rays and as she reaches it she rounds the corner of the cave into a large open space. There is no ceiling to the cave here and a full moon can be seen in the starry sky above. Rock walls surround a vast open area, in the center of which is a glimmering pool; however, there is no water present here. Before Buffy is a deep gleaming pool of blood and standing in the center of the thick red fluid is a woman. Her naked form faces away from Buffy wading in the red up to her hips. She has skin as pale as the moon above and smooth as silk, her hair is as black as the night, and she sways slightly sending ripples through the crimson pond.
Buffy looks on at the woman with an odd sense of fascination then watches as if in slow motion the raven haired female turns her head. After a moment she is looking over her shoulder with jet black eyes that stare with intensity straight at the Slayer. Immediately Buffy recognizes Drusilla and her eyes go wide as she's stared down by the vampire. Then just as slowly Dru turns her face away from Buffy and dives into the pool. Buffy watches for a moment expecting the vampire to reappear, but all she sees are the ripples moving through the blood in her wake.
Flash, black leather brushes by in the corner of Buffy's eye. Her head snaps to the left to catch a glimpse of platinum blonde hair. Buffy rushes off toward Spike as he disappears around a rocky corner. The pool of blood becomes completely insignificant as she chases after him. Rounding the same corner Buffy finds that the scenery has changed once again. The cold stone floor is replaced by pavement, the rocky cave has transformed into a thin alleyway between two brick buildings, and Spike stands facing toward her but is not looking at her.
Buffy is frozen as she looks on at the scene before her. Spike wears his vampire mask and in his arms is a dead and bleeding woman. Her limbs hang limply, dead weight in his grasp. Blood darkens her blonde hair as it clumps around her neck where she was bitten. A snarl escapes Spike's throat as he licks the blood from his lips and Buffy realizes that she has never seen him look so evil before. Even when they had been true enemies, even in battle, there had always been something soft about Spike, something that made him seem human; their banter, his laugh, always something. This Spike has no human in him, no softness, just dark, black evil.
Buffy watches in horror as he drops the woman to the ground, she lands on the glossy black pavement with a muffled thud, her body laying in an unnatural pose. It's in that moment that Buffy notices for the first time that scattered before her are over a dozen dead bodies; men, woman, some young girls; all of them suffering neck wounds, all of them killed by Spike. Blood smears their skin and pools on the pavement. Buffy looks down at her feet and takes a step back as the pooling blood from Spike's victims trickles across the pavement in tiny streams toward her feet. She looks back up then to see the blonde vampire turn from her and walk out of the alley. He moves without ever looking at Buffy, as if he were unaware of her very presence.
For a moment Buffy is too mortified to move. The reality of the things Spike has done has never been as clearly set before her as it is now. She's always known he was a killer, she'd even recently been attacked by those who he'd sired; but now there are dozens of dead bodies before her, only a fraction of the evil he has done, and the sight chills her to the core. Then Buffy snaps out of her fear. This is only a vision in Spike's mind, she reminds herself and rushes after him leaping over the corpses as she does. She understands now what Willow meant about getting lost, and something tells Buffy that this won't be the worst thing she sees here.
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