Chapter 11
The night held its silence like an alcoholic held his liquor. Buffy sat on the grass, her eyes breaking from her friend, and tried to keep from shaking. Her fingers had seemingly lost all feeling and she heard, rather than felt, the pick up of wind as it swept through the cemetery around them, fluffing her hair but not cooling her fear.
“He raped you?” The words sounded old, as if Willow had had them rolling around in her head for the whole of her life. She was incredulous, and obviously frustrated, so instead of continuing this conversation with the back of Buffy’s head, she chose to remove her butt from the headstone and force herself into Buffy’s field of vision on the ground.
The Slayer’s face was like an emotionless mask, and it added to Willow’s worry. She had so little experience with anything like this; how on earth was she supposed to react?
“I’m not sure I’d call it…rape, exactly.” Buffy spoke slowly, her thought processes obviously unsure and Willow squawked like a bird caught in a tangled and bushy tree branch.
“Well, what on earth would you call it? He…he forced you into sex after torturing and nearly draining you, and then again later after he pretty much killed you. Buffy, you do understand that...this thing between the two of you…it’s not healthy?” She paused, turning over various phrases and words in her head at lightening speed and discarding every single one of them. “It’s really not.”
“I know,” Buffy admitted, and the diminutive slayer seemed to shrink even further into herself. “But neither is going out to slay vampires and demons every night, Will. Nothing about my life is healthy…or normal. I know I can’t make you understand this—I’m kind of struggling to understand it myself. But as brutal as this thing is between me and Spike…there’s something else I’m just not explaining right. Some kind of…connection.”
Willow fell back, her arms bracing her against the hard ground. That was one thing Buffy had absolutely right. She wasn’t explaining this in any way that Willow could accept without wanting to set Spike on fire and throw holy water onto the blaze. Except she was kind of getting the feeling that if she attempted anything harmful to the vampire Buffy might take her own revenge—on Willow.
More scared than she’d ever felt before, Willow looked hard at her friend. She took in the pale skin, the expressionless eyes, the twisting fingers and the small—very small—animation that came upon Buffy whenever the Slayer mentioned Spike’s name. Suddenly she had no doubt that Buffy was right, and that maybe this situation defied proper explanation. Maybe the life Buffy was destined to lead was going to be filled with such tremendous complications that none of them had the vocabulary to describe it.
“Are you saying…” Willow stopped, twisting her own hands now, terrified of Buffy’s answer to the question she had to ask. “Are you in love with him?”
The pain in Buffy’s eyes stripped the redhead of breath.
“I don’t think so,” she all but whispered in reply and huge tears finally started to trail down her cheeks. “I know I feel hate, but then I feel this need to be with him too. Like he’s ripped out a part of me by leaving. Like he took all I had to offer and it wasn’t enough.”
Willow swallowed hard. “He’s an evil vampire, Buffy. He’s lived over a hundred years killing people—probably children—and he’s done it with a twisted freak at his side. Okay, so the freak obviously had had enough of that kind of life for her to take herself out on your stake, but you aren’t responsible for that. You have to know that.” She paused to drag in breath. “You don’t owe him anything.”
Seeing Buffy cry was unbelievably difficult, and Willow felt her own tears choke her.
“I know.” The blonde covered her face with her hands, appearing to anyone who passed to be a pathetic teenager with dramatic love problems. “I still need him, though.”
Willow understood, then. She understood more than she ever would have if she’d lived to reach a hundred. Buffy didn’t need words anymore. All Willow had that Buffy might need was a shoulder to cry on and a willingness to listen whenever she might require it. So as angry and confused as she felt, Willow threw all possible censure out the window and hugged her friend. Who was she to give advice anyway? She wasn’t a counsellor, or a slayer. She had no idea what kind of trauma Buffy had experienced at the hands of an infuriated and grieving master vampire.
There was one other part of this story that was confusing.
“Buffy, what about Angel?”
“He tried to kill me, Will,” she spat with venom that seemingly came from nowhere. “What about him?”
Willow just squeezed harder. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to know about Angel anyway.
“Are…are you gonna tell Giles?”
Buffy looked up from the comforting embrace, a very clear ‘are you kidding me?’ expression on her face. Willow giggled. As serious as the situation was, she couldn’t imagine Giles handling all the nudity and sexual segments of Buffy’s tale.
“So what are you going to do?” If it were up to her, Willow would run screaming for the hills, or at least leave Sunnydale. But it wasn’t her and Buffy didn’t have that luxury of burying her head like Willow was so apt to do.
The Slayer shrugged, pulled away and wiped her wet face on her sleeve.
“Slay?”
And just like that, Buffy leapt to her feet, clutching the stake that had lain idle on the ground beside her, and attacked a wandering vamp.
Willow nodded to herself. Yeah. What other choice was there?
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
He had always loved L.A. The sounds and smells of a frenetic city, the exotic blood to be tasted, and the bars run by bewildering demons. He hadn’t been here for a few years but despite that, Spike hadn’t expected anything to change. And it hadn’t. From a vamp’s point of view, everyone looked as succulent and deserving of death as ever they had. From Spike’s point of view, however, it seemed to be another story all together. So far he’d drunk more than his fill—of bourbon. Copious amounts of that had flowed to his gullet without any grief at all—but then he didn’t need it to do anything but try and crush his grief with something resembling oblivion.
He’d tried to feed since he’d been in the big city. Several times, point of fact. So far his belly had rumbled sickeningly every time he’d come within striking range of blood, so in the end he’d given up and dedicated himself to getting highly sauced. He figured he’d had such a rich diet of slayer blood recently that it’d tide him over for a while anyway.
He sat in a bar now—one run apparently by a human, and one that was most likely a drug runner or a mob boss. Whichever, the human surrounded himself with scantily clad women and too many blokes with serious tattoo issues and guns at their hips.
He caressed his current drink and stared into the mirror behind the bar. All he could see was the colour of L.A. nightlife, and all it did was turn his stomach. Spike realised finally that he shouldn’t be here. He’d run from Sunnydale with a monkey on his back, fear breathing down his neck. He’d wanted somewhere neutral to grieve his dark princess, somewhere where the slayer wasn’t, and so he’d come to this place, renowned for its ability to allow a body to become lost. And all it did now was feed his fury.
A seductive hand settled at his shoulder and Spike jumped. He hadn’t seen her in the mirror and so knew immediately. He barely twisted to the side, seeing little else but long raven-coloured hair and gritted his teeth in agony. Before her bum had fully positioned itself on the stool beside him, he’d turned to her and snarled. “Fuck off.” She flashed yellow eyes back at him, but he was imposing enough that she backed away, leaving him once again in his chair, contemplating his life and how alone he was.
Profound frustration ripped through him and Spike roared. He glared at every patron that surrounded him, wanting to wreak havoc but not having the will to do it. At last he settled on the barkeep, the guy’s eyes round and terrified as Spike’s imbalance registered with everyone around him. “What the fuck are you all looking at?”
He stood, and with a calmness he didn’t expect, he picked up his bottle of bourbon—unpaid for—and hurled it at the back of the bar, relishing the scream of security alarms and the shattering of glass as bottles of booze and the mirror exploded. He laughed hysterically, turned and found one of the drug guy’s goons holding a revolver to his nose. Spike vamped out and snapped the weapon from the git’s hands, registering the wanker’s fear and feeding himself with it. With a flick of his wrist he turned the gun to the beefy bloke’s forehead, his finger liking the unfamiliar metal in his hand as he positioned it just right between the nit’s protruding brows.
“Let you in on a little secret.” He smirked, feeling the impending carnage ignite his blood like the old days. “Shouldn’a looked.”
The trigger released easily, and Spike laughed again as brain matter blew out the back of his victim’s head and splattered over the patrons behind him.
The screams of hysteria were music to his ears. With a parting ‘bird’ at the owner’s furious expression and a meaningful flash of fangs, Spike swaggered from the bar, black coat swaying around his boots.
The cool night air was a welcome relief. Within seconds the mindless violence fled his mind and Spike found himself returning to the Hotel. Wasn’t that destroying people wasn’t fun, because it was, but he found that he just wasn’t in the mood. He was never in the mood, he realised. Not since Dru had sacrificed herself for him to find the Slayer. Barmy bitch. It still made fuck all sense to him.
Walking into the building, Spike ignored the nervous looks from the patrons and staff and made his way to the elevator. He punched the number five button and then shoved his hands in his pockets. He rode in the box alone and for that he was grateful. Hated the things—always had since he’d been caught in a burning building way back in the day. Five floors gave him a quick out if he had to smash a window to jump or race down to the basement if a fire broke out in the daytime.
The bell pinged and the doors slid open, Spike strutting toward his room with the key in his hand. He swiped it and kicked the door as it clicked open, slamming it shut once he was inside. And once there, he had no clue what to do. No need for room service, and watching the telly or soaping his day from his back held just as little appeal. What he wanted was…with a moan of uselessness he realised that what he really wanted was Buffy.
The fucking Slayer.
She was in his head, thrumming through his body like a flash flood of irritation. He’d left that town of Hell because he’d vowed not to hurt her anymore—not when his natural bent was to fuck her stupid and half kill her for making him want her. Half kill her for making him care that he was hurting her.
Feeling thoroughly defeated, Spike stripped and headed to the shower. He turned on the faucet, hot as he could take it without his flesh boiling from his bones, and tried to shut down his thoughts for just one minute.
He remembered her eyes the most. And her shining hair. He probably should have admired her athletic physique or the way she fought, but it was how haunted she’d looked throughout their time together that had struck him. When he’d first set eyes on her she’d been nothing more to him than his next slayer kill—until Dru had proclaimed her to be much more than that and pinioned herself on the stake. He knew the Slayer hadn’t intended to kill his sire. That she’d been just as shocked and scared when her only chance of surviving the swarm of Spike’s minions crowding for her blood had committed suicide unexpectedly.
Dru said she’d led him to the one where he belonged, making Buffy out to be some kind of grace. As much as he despised her for making the decision without him, he could kind of see her point. If it was grace he was wanting, Buffy would be a start. But it wasn’t what he wanted and he was fed up with every Tom, Dick and Harry trying to turn him into something he wasn’t and had no intention of ever being.
Well, Dru was dead. There was fuck all could be done about that. He’d taken the Slayer with the intention of torturing her to death, making her pay the ultimate price for being in the right place at the wrong time, but instead he’d fucked her, taken her innocence and positioned her in his clan. He’d made her his, whether he’d meant to or not. Which brought him right back to Angel.
Peaches had had no business interfering. He’d out stepped his ranking, his bounds and Spike knew that it was his right to make his elder pay—and pay dearly. Eventually, he would. Right now, he just didn’t have the energy. Right now Spike had to find where he’d left himself and where he fit into the world now that his dark princess was gone.
He’d barely begun to grieve—for Dru or Buffy. Barely begun to work out why he’d run and what he was going to do next.
The next minute Spike almost wept as the relentless thoughts stopped torturing him and fell blessedly silent. He was swamped by exhaustion, and his throat hurt. Turning off the spray, he towelled himself dry, relocated his bed and fell face first into the plush pillows.
Maybe the sense of it all would come to him tomorrow.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I wish to thank the ongoing support of all my readers, and especially Holly and dawnofme for betaing this chapter for me. I appreciate the support to keep it going.
Chapter End Notes:
And so...the pressure is on to write another. All comments are greatly appreciated.