Chapter III: But Then Again
"God and I in space alone . . .
and nobody else in view . . .
"And where are all the people,
Oh Lord" I said,
"the earth below
and the sky overhead
and the dead that I once knew?"
"That was a dream," God smiled
and said: "The dream that seemed to
be true; there were no people
living or dead; there was no earth,
and no sky overhead,
there was only myself in you."
"Why do I feel no fear?" I asked,
"meeting you here in this way?
For I have sinned, I know full well
and is there heaven and is there hell,
and is this Judgement Day?"
"Nay, those were but dreams"
the Great God said, "dreams that have ceased to
be.
There are no such things as fear and sin;
there is no you . . . you never have been.
There is nothing at all but me.""
- Ella Wheeler Whilcox
Buffy hung nearly completely limp as exhaustion overtook her. She had never felt so helpless in her life. Spike was going on and on about his feelings for her, and she couldn't understand why. The last time she had seen him he seemed fine, normal. He was her Spike, the Spike she had come know and respect. The Spike she had come to have feelings for. True feelings. This was not something he would do. Something had to he controlling him.
"Someone's stopped paying attention." Spike said in a creepy sing-songy kind of way, cutting off from his narrative abruptly. "What's so important in that wired little brain of yours that you can't focus on the only thing happening in the room?"
Buffy took a deep and shaking breath, and bit down hard on her teeth.
"So you were sad." She said, mustering up any defiance that she could. "Why are you telling me this now?" She rattled her chains. "Like this?"
Spike stood again from his chair, but this time he receded further in to the shadows behind him, not closer to her. She could barely discern his silhouette now. The situation was rapidly becoming dire. This new Spike was eerily similar to the old Spike, the one who tried to kill her on a weekly basis… but at least then she had always been able to fight back.
"Because there's no other way to make you listen." Spike answered her from within the darkness.
"If you feel like you have to almost kill me and then tie me down every time you need to talk to me, I think we're pretty much over."
Spike laughed deeply, and it scared Buffy almost as much as everything else did.
"We never really started, did we?"
"W… we had something."
"Something." Spike repeated, and the sound of it almost resembled a growl. "It was not something. It was you. Your terms. You said when and how."
"This isn't you." Buffy swallowed back tears. "This can't be you."
"If this isn't me…" He came forward from the shadows, and now Buffy could make out the sharp lines of his face. "Who am I?"
"Y-y-you're confused. Something happened to you. Tell me what happened to you… The Spike I know wouldn't do this."
Again, he laughed.
"The Spike you know?" He asked. "You never knew Spike. You never knew me." He shook his head. "No, what you got was a watered down version of what I could really be. Even at my worst with you, Buffy, you never had the opportunity to see how bad I could really be."
"You slaughtered thousands." Buffy said, a cold chill running through her. She wasn't sure if it was the fear, or if it was just the warmth leaving her body. Any other girl would be dead by now. "How much worse could it get?"
Spike tilted his head, and Buffy could just barely see the smile on his lips.
"Worse." Was all he said.
"God," Buffy said angrily. "And you wondered why I would never date you."
"What?" Spike asked, coming close to Buffy and tugging playfully at her chains. "This? This means nothing. It doesn't change how I feel about you."
"Chained to a wall in a hole in the ground?" She asked. "Yeah, I can feel the love."
"It's not like you were accepting the nice stuff when I was willing to give it."
"Where is this coming from?"
Spike put his hand over his heart.
"Where it all comes from."
Buffy closed her eyes and pushed the tears back. She wouldn't cry. Once again, Spike stepped back and took his seat in front of her.
"And you seem lucid enough now… what say you we pick up where I left off?"
That summer, the Buffy-less summer… Something changed in me. I hadn't had a soul for over a hundred years but I never felt empty until after you died. Fighting and killing didn't feel as good, blood didn't taste as sweet. If you had taken over my thoughts while you were still alive, you completely owned them dead. From the moment I saw your body cold and lifeless, that was the only image my brain could manage anymore. The idea of living forever seemed suddenly so… pointless.
But there was Dawn, wasn't there? My last – my only – promise to you. In a hundred plus years of living and killing, I never once stopped to think about God and his role in all this… but I began to think that if I existed, he must have. If evil existed, and it did in spades, there had to be something to balance it, right? Something on the opposite end of the bloody spectrum - forever tipping and re-tipping the scales. If that were true, then I wouldn't believe that you were really gone. I couldn't believe it. You were too good in life to not have been accepted in to that infinite pool of goodness that I expect awaits all people of your breed. I'd fooled myself in to thinking that you could see me. That you could see me keeping my promise.
They never really accepted me, your friends. I was always somewhat apart from them… never completely brought in to the fold. I resented it at the time, but I get it now. How could they have possibly trusted me back then? If I had gotten that chip out of my skull, I can say with complete confidence that Dawn would have been safe, but the rest of them? I'd made no promise to protect the rest of them. Fighting by their side was, well… why not, really? I was bored and had nothing but time on my hands – and I had to stay close for Dawn. I was stuck there fighting next to people I hated for a side I wasn't on in the name of my dead mortal enemy. I can't remember a worse time in my life, but it wasn't the fighting alongside your friends that was the worst of it.
The worst of it was when I was alone in my crypt, trying for hours to fall asleep… and when I finally did, I always dreamt of you.
We were engaged once, you and me. You remember. It was only for a few hours and it had only been a spell, but for those few hours, you loved me. You had said the words to me. You said them, and for a small while you meant them. I would never hear that from you again… for quite a few reasons, and not the least of which being that you were dead. The echo of those words from your mouth in to my ears, though… it was enough to taunt me. To torment me.
Somehow, in my dreams, I was never the villain of the piece. I was always the hero. Had I been so inclined as to analyze that at the time, I might have thought it was weird… but I don't think so now. It had nothing to do with my internal fight between good and evil and everything to do with mentally putting on a face that I thought you would have liked better. Like a vampire switching to it's human form to lure in a victim. Or a teenage girl wearing makeup to lure in… well, a victim. It was a costume I wore. So, in my dreams, it was always me who saved you. Sometimes the others weren't even there. Sometimes I would defeat Glory myself. Sometimes we'd work side by side to rescue Dawn. Sometimes I would beat the life out of that lizard poof with my bear hands… but every dream ended the same. I'd save you and Dawn, and you would swear your undying love to me. Since I'd heard it before, since you'd said it to me, it was easy to imagine.
But when I woke up, the reality was that you were gone. I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't clever enough. I wasn't a hero… and you had never loved me. Now, the pain from waking up from one of these dreams was always annoyingly epic and something that I blamed partly on your bestest red headed friend. If weren't for her, I'd never have known what it was like to actually hold you in my arms, the warmth of your skin… the feel of your heart beat against my chest. The sound of your voice telling me you loved me. These were all fantastically exploitable memories that my tortured subconscious never missed a chance to use against me.
Willow was lucky, love. If that chip hadn't been standing between us, witch or not – she'd have been the first to go.
I actually thought about that a lot – eating the scoobies. I wondered what they'd all taste like. You all taste different, you know. You humans. You all have… something like a signature in your blood. Willow would have tasted like magic and sunshine. I think her blood would have gone down the smoothest of all of them. Xander, I imagine, would have tasted something like pathetic mixed with pizza. I would never have eaten him except for the fact that he annoyed me. Giles? I never really went that old with my cuisine, so I didn't really have an idea of what he'd taste like… but I had always assumed it would be the blood drinking equivalent of cracking open an old book. Or maybe he'd taste like a good cup of tea.
And then there was Dawn. She'd spent enough time in my crypt and I had spent enough time watching over her to really get close to her. I had smelled what pumped under her neck. Her blood smelled like you. There were some days I wanted so badly to taste her it hurt… but the difference between her and the rest of them was that I never would have hurt her. Given the chance, I never would have laid a fang on her. I was sure about that.
And that was how I knew I'd really changed. Maybe I hadn't had a complete transformation. Maybe I wasn't good, but I was something different from what I'd used to be. The old me would have torn through your friends and family one by one until there was nothing left… But I couldn't hurt Dawn.
But then again, who knows?