[Reviews - 45]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story | ePub eBook Chapter or Story | Printer Chapter or Story

Has been viewed 2126 times

- Text Size +




Fifth: Uncover the Truth


He’s sleeping when I wake.


I know he doesn’t breathe, but it never fails to amaze me that his chest doesn’t rise and fall when he’s gone to the world. Still, when he sleeps, his face is as smooth and placid as the rest of the human race. . . and he occasionally mumbles in the midst of dreams. . . bits and pieces which I don’t often understand and am too afraid to ask him about when he wakes.


I’m too afraid because asking about something so intimate implies a closeness that I’m not ready to admit to myself. Sometimes I admit this to myself, and sometimes I don’t.


There are a lot of things between us that I’m afraid to mention in the daylight hours. That would make *us* too real for me. . . and perhaps even for him.


Before I can look away, his eyes are open and peering deep into mine.


I purposefully shift my eyes away before he can see what lies there. I’m not sure I want him to have access to my emotions before I’m even aware of them myself.


He caresses my cheek with the back of his hand. His skin is warm from being wedged against my back, and to my surprise, I can’t help but lean into his touch.


Maybe I’m more open to him because this is the first, and only, time we’ve shared my bed. And if I have my way, it’ll be the last time.


“You okay, pet?” he asks, shifting his head so that his arm curls beneath his head. His eyes are smiling at me, and heat spreads over my stomach and inner thighs.


Denial girl, that’s me. “What do you mean?”


I glimpse a trace of hurt in the clear blue depths of his eyes, and they strike me in a way they never have before. Blue is the color of the sky. . . water. . . purity. . . all of the things vampire’s aren’t.


Now that I think about it, I’ve never known any vampire with blue eyes. . . black, deep brown, hazel, green. . . but never blue.


I’m not sure what that means.


“You cried all night,” he whispers, studying my face.


I close my eyes, and memories of the previous night wash over me. My teeth find my lower lip, and I chomp down hard to blot out the images. Squeezing my eyes shut, I shake my head.


“Don’t shake your head like you’re okay,” he says.


“It’s *nothing,*” I hiss, tasting the tang of coppery blood on the tip of my tongue.


Spike sits up, disturbing the safe cocoon of sleep to which I’m still desperately clinging. I scramble to emulate his stance, not wanting him to get the upper hand on me. . . on my emotions. My knees are inches from his thigh, and I allow myself to watch him as he stares forward with his forearms perched atop his knees.


After a few seconds of contemplation, something unusual for Spike, he says, “No, pet. This time that. . . well, sod it, I’m really not going to let you get away with avoiding this.”


He punctuates his claim with direct eye contact.


I lift my chin in defiance and stare back.


He continues, “You think I haven’t seen others go through what you’re going through? It’s not exactly the same. . . it never is. . . but it’s similar enough.”


I glare at him, but inside I’m trembling like a mouse. . . hiding in a hole and being dug out by a very hungry cat. “Oh, yeah? When have you come across someone like me?”


His stern expression softens, and he chuckles, almost without humor, “No one’s ever been. . . ever affected me exactly like you.”


Although my heart is thumping and my mind is whirling with thoughts about what he’ll say next, I refuse to let him see. Instead, I roll my eyes and bring my arms across my chest. “Bet that’s what you tell all the girls. Really winning me over here, Spike.”


“I’m not trying to win you over, love. I’m trying to talk with you about what’s happening here. . . you know what I’m talking about.” That said, he lifts his eyebrows at me, and when I catch a glimpse of his sincerity, I fall into my regular routine.


I run.


“Wait!” He tries to grab the edge of my pajamas but fails, and I keep going.


I’m an expert at running. . . but usually, I’m running after the vampires with a pointy stake in my hand. . . not the other way around.


My bare feet thunder across the hardwood floors and down the stairs, down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door where I collapse just outside the back door with my back to the house. The normally bright morning sun is blotted out by a cluster of grey clouds that are heavy with potential rain. . . kind of like me.


I manage to hold back tears.


And I opt for heavy breathing. . . not sobbing. I make a short little jog down the stairs, and I’m out of breath. What kind of Slayer does that make me? It makes me a Slayer who’s out of step with her life. . . it makes me vulnerable.


Pesky thing. . . vulnerability.


When at last I begin intentionally inhaling one second and exhaling the next, I hear the still ajar door squeak open. “Buffy?”


I ignore him, raising my knees to my chest and tucking my chin in the resulting valley.


I sense him poking his head into the daylight, but I wait in several seconds of angry silence before I say, “Don’t do that, Spike. It’s morning.”


“I don’t see sunlight,” he replies with indifference.


I offer an olive branch with my tone of voice, “Still, any second now, Mr. Sunshine could pop a shiny beam from out behind one of those clouds, and poof! No more snarky Spikey.”


Spike snorts in vague amusement and slips out to sit beside me on the doorstep. “Don’t know if it would be exactly ‘poof.’”


Although he’s not touching me, the physical presence of his shoulder next to mine is a comfort, so I continue with teasing, “Don’t like to think of yourself as a mere vampire, huh?”


“I’m not a ‘mere vampire.”


I shrug, throwing off his claim of distinctiveness. Again, denial is easier than admitting what I’m beginning to believe about what exactly Spike is. In a psychology class, I once read that individuals are the sum total of what others believe them to be. . . that they are defined by spoken and unspoken interactions with others. If so, does that mean that Spike is defined by how other people talk about him? Am I?


(Who says Slayers are all brawn with no brain? I earned my high SAT scores, thank you very much.)


Spike is quiet again, and I wonder if I’ve hurt him. I decide to wait for him to speak. When at last he does, I listen. I have a sudden need to know if what I’m saying to others and myself about Spike is accurate.


“I understand why you run,” he says. When I lift my head in alarm, he adds, “At least, I partly understand. You’re going through a lot.”


I start to deny, but then, I whisper, “What have you seen before?”


He cocks his head to the side with genuine curiosity, “What do you mean?”


I struggle to say what I mean without actually saying anything about myself, “Before. . . when you said. . .”


“What did I say and when did I say it?”


I’m doing good to answer one of those. “This morning.” He waits for more. “That’s when you were talking about it.”


“It?”


I sigh heavily. Do I have to spell everything out? Isn’t he supposed to be so in tune with me that he can read my mind? “You know. . . the ‘similar’ things you’ve seen in other people.”


Recognition lights Spike’s eyes. “Oh. . . that.”


“When did you see it before?”


Spike leans his head back against the doorframe. “Long time ago before I even came here.”


“Here?”


“America, California, Sunnydale.”


“Oh.” I’m contradictorily impatient. Who says I’m predictable? “Who, what, where? Details please.”


“Oh, so now you want to talk.”


My heart sings. “Maybe. I’m confusing?”


“Bloody hell, woman. . . you’re more than confusing.”


“What does that make me?”


He regards me without lifting his head from the doorframe. “I’m not sure.”


“So?”


“So what?”


“Now *you’re* being all avoid-y,” I observe.


“Easier for me to talk inside with the cameras rolling.” Spike notes my expression. “Contradictory, I know. But I think that maybe you won’t be able to completely ignore me or run away if I have you where you’re under scrutiny by outsiders. . . outsiders who are evaluating you. . . or that you *perceive* are evaluating you.”


Several choice phrases rush through my mind before I choose, “I feel better talking out here.” I pause and then ask, “were you with Angel when you saw that ‘similar’ stuff?”


Spike has never been good with the poker face. He wears his emotion on his sleeve. . . either that or his emotions rule him. . . I’m not sure which saying fits him best. “Maybe.”


“You can tell me.”


Now he closes his eyes to me. “Not sure I want to bring your ‘soul mate’ into this thing we got going here between us, pet.”


“I *want* to know.” I find myself in possession of a desperate wish for understanding. . . understanding from Spike.


Some of the tension melts out of his shoulders, and I realize that he’s trying to find the best place to start his story. “Dru wasn’t the only vampire that Angelus created.”


He pauses here, letting his words penetrate my mind. His obvious uncertainty about telling me calms me.


Spike keeps speaking, “And he continued to like tormenting the ones he brought over. Before he ever actually laid a hand on them, he lined up horror upon horror for them to witness. . . things that would make even your Slayer blood go anemic.”


“Like what?” Do I really want to know the answer to that?


“You don’t want to know.”


That was easy. “Okay.” My hand finds its way to touch the top of his thigh.


“So, Dru and I were recruited to perform some of his more complex schemes. . . schemes that involved more than one vamp. I witnessed first hand what such events had on his victims. Never liked it much. To me, it took the fun out. . . drinking blood is no fun if you have to work so many weeks for just a sip. Me? I preferred taking on a tavern full of people, supping from all of them and then, setting the bloody place on fire. Now *that’s* f. . . ”


I hold a hand up and wave it in front of his face. “Way, way too much information.”


I don’t need to be reminded that my boyfr. . . the guy I’m sleeping with is a dangerous killer without that nifty little government chip in his noggin.


“The point is, that I saw what those people went through. I saw how it impacted them. Quite often, Dru and I were sent to watch these people for hours during the night. . . and during the day.”


“The day?” How the heck had they done that?


Spike stares into the vastness of the backyard. “We’d break into their homes or the hotels or wherever they were staying. And we’d just watch.”


“For hours?”


“Yep.”


“Can’t picture you doing that. You don’t have the patience.”


Angling his head slightly toward me, he arches an eyebrow. “Pot, kettle, black.”


“Whatever.” I can’t suppress my smile.


“And I *do* have patience. . . when the situation is important enough to me.”


“When the situation is a challenge. When you can’t get what you want when you want it,” I correct. I recall him standing outside my bedroom window, leaning against a tree, and staring.


A bit of hurt flashes across his features. “All a matter of semantics, pet.”


Guilt hits me. Here I am falling into the familiar routine of labeling Spike. I’m not exactly sure why I’m starting to care about that so much. “Right. You’re right.”


This time both eyebrows raise. “First time I’ve heard you admit that.”


I ignore him. “So, what’d you see?”


His voice softens, “Lots of things, pet. I saw them have nightmares all night and sometimes into the daylight hours. I saw them cry themselves to sleep, wake up in the middle of the night crying, and wake up in the morning crying. I saw them hallucinate and re-experience their experiences. I saw grown men. . . men others thought of as impenetrable huddled in the corners sobbing and hiding their heads. And nothing and no one was even there.”


I feel completely naked. . . as if my armor has been stripped away. My stomach hurts, and I bow my head to break the connection I have with him. Can’t afford to have him see too much. . . not my hiding has ever stopped him.


He lets me hide. “And I’ve seen them do all sorts of things to compensate and try to appear as if everything was unchanged. Sometimes they’d throw themselves into their work, sometimes they’d withdraw from their friends, and they’d always throw on a happy mask for the people in their lives. I’ve never seen more religious conversions and spiritual renewals than among those Angelus chose to have tortured.”


A mantra comes to life in my head. . . a mantra that I’ve had to repeat many times, especially over that summer I spent alone in L.A. after I killed Angel. Angelus is not Angel. Angel is not Angelus. Got to remind myself of that, or I find myself slipping into a vicious cycle of guilt and anger that leads me to tear myself down.


Spike tucks his hand against my inner thigh and brings me back to my reality and another source of guilt. . . guilt for what I’m doing with him. . . and he doesn’t even have a soul. “What do you think of what I’m telling you?”


I bite my lip. “What does what Angel did have to do with me?”


“What do you think?” Spike asks with more gentleness than I can stand.


“Buffy!” Dawn’s voice bounces from across the yard.


My head shoots up, I shake Spike’s hand off my leg, and I blink away the tears that have formed in my eyes. I was so caught up in my interactions with Spike that I didn’t even hear the car that was now pulling out of our driveway.


Dawn doesn’t wait for us to respond. “Spike! What are you doing outside? It’s daytime!”


“Clouds.” Spike’s response is short, which doesn’t allow me to determine if he’s angry at me for rejecting his touch in front of Dawn.


“Oh. Makes sense.” Dawn slings her overnight bag onto the porch next to my foot and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “What’s for breakfast, guys? I’m starved! It’s already ten, and I haven’t eaten yet!” She taps the front of her watch.


I can’t help but smile at Dawn’s enthusiasm.


And I can’t help but feel relieved that I’ve avoided Spike’s confrontation once again.


So why do I feel so guilty about it, and why do I feel like Spike might be getting too close? Does living with him mean that I can’t hide anything from him anymore?


More importantly, do I want to hide things from Spike?


I don’t think I have an answer for that one.


TBC...





You must login (register) to review.