He's been at this for nearly five minutes. Pace and rant, rant and pace.
"Of all the stupid, reckless - can't be certain - dangerous - bug-shaggin' crazy -"
Watching him stride back and forth, arms waving for emphasis as the mouth runs at top speed, might make her dizzy, but it's useful as a means of assessing his postoperative condition. Mobility, check. Balance, check. Speech, double check. Protective streak ten miles wide?
Check.
Yep. Spike's gonna be just fine. Buffy grins to herself and relaxes a little, smoothing the rumpled blanket on his cot.
"Are you even listening to me?" The blond vampire whirls on her, blue eyes sparking dangerously. She looks up at him and shrugs.
"Not really." Not precisely true - she's been listening for hints of slurring - but she can't resist.
He glares at her, taut jaw working as he struggles for articulacy. But he's too agitated, and so falls back on the tried and true: "Bloody hell, Slayer!"
"Spike," she sighs wearily, "we've been through this before."
Chains and fear. Blood, despair and a plea: Buffy, you've gotta kill me before I get out.
He'd been resigned to it, wanted it even. He'd begged her to do it. And she wouldn't.
Because he'd begged.
The rant is winding down, his fists unclenching. He splutters out a few last, half-hearted objections and falls abruptly silent, reclaiming his seat on the cot, though at a decorous distance from her. Again he reaches to the back of his head, to finger the neat line of staples with an expression of fascinated distaste. "Still think this might've been a mistake, luv." Spike sighs heavily, unnecessarily, and she reminds herself to be nice while a callous little voice in her mind whispers Drama queen.
"It's not a mistake," she insists. "I mean, I can't exactly say I'm sorry this was done to you, considering - uh, everything." I am NOT blushing. I am not blushing because I am NOT thinking about - about THAT! She catches his gaze and holds it. "What I said, before the Bringers took you. It's still true."
A smile starts to bloom, but fails as doubt again asserts dominance. "I still had the chip then, Slayer." Damn, he's like a dog with a bone. "You coulda had 'em fix it. Didn't have to take it out."
"Jeez, Spike!" She regrets her vehemence when he cringes slightly, and forces herself to settle down. A hint of irritation still edges her voice when she continues: "Listen to me. Putting that chip in your head was wrong." The scarred eyebrow climbs expressively and she hastens to explain: "If they wanted rid of you, they should've just staked you. The experiments, the chip - that was just cruel. Like pulling the wings off a fly and watching it walk around until it dies."
Something dark and haunted flashes across his face, and his lip curls in a fashion she does not like at all: he looks reckless and dangerous, the vampire of years ago who'd promised to kill her on Saturday. "Does that make me a fly, pet? Suppose that's proper."
"Huh?"
The fiendish pose withers instantly; whatever faculties made it possible and natural in him have atrophied beyond recovery. His head droops and he directs his answer not to her but rather the cement between his boots, so quiet she can barely hear it: "Nothing good or clean in them, either."
The unexpected echo of her own words hits her gut with the force of a pile driver, or one of Spike's better punches. She wishes he'd done that, instead.
When she can, she swallows hard around the lump in her throat and says shakily, "Maybe that was true, once. But it's not anymore."
"Since I got my soul, right." He snorts. "Maybe."
"No. Before that."
Cold and hard, his eyes flash to hers. "Before that, Buffy," he says tightly, "I tried to rape you. Don't tell me you've forgotten or forgiven that, because you haven't, and you shouldn't." That icy gaze scours her face and reads the truth, the remaining wariness, and he nods in grim satisfaction. "'Specially now the leash is off."
He stretches out a hand and she flinches, minutely, though she quickly realizes he's not reaching for her. Almost wistfully, he fingers the manacles still attached to the wall, then turns a wry grin on her, but he's not in the least bit amused. He's trying to annoy her, maybe even frighten her a little, because he's scared and, above all, he's angry.
Angry because, even without the chip, he's not entirely master of himself. The First had its claws in him deep, and no one, certainly not Spike, knows if or when It will try to use him again, or if It'll succeed. If there's one feeling Spike hates, it's helplessness.
She understands, completely. Because she remembers.
It's not a good memory; as much as possible, she keeps it locked tight in a dusty cobwebbed corner in the back of her mind.
But their current situation brings it back to her, like vile scent and taste, bitterness in the back of her throat, old bile and blood, the sickly-sweet salts of sweat and phlegm and unshed tears.
Hesitating, she considers the vampire's downcast face, the broad shoulders weighted with despair. She's never spoken of this to anyone, really; sharing isn't a Buffy thing under the best of circumstances, and none of her friends could have understood it, anyway. Not even to Giles had she unburdened herself, though her reticence to do so was understandable, considering.
She doesn't have to do this. She knows that. But this isn't about her anymore. He needs to believe in her decision, as she does.
She draws a deep, slow breath, and begins.
"I didn't have them replace it or fix it because I've been there. Sort of," she amends apologetically. Right, Buffy. Compare a hundred-meter dash to a marathon. "Just for a few days, but I've been where you were, with the chip."
He says nothing, just tilts his head as if he can see her more clearly from an angle, waiting with knitted brows.
"It was my eighteenth birthday. I lost my powers, my strength -" God. She really doesn't like this memory. She crosses her arms and her fingers dig into her biceps hard enough to bruise.
"How?"
"A test. The Cruciamentum. A reward for living to see eighteen." She tries to laugh, but her chest is suddenly tight, as if she's there again - or then again - running down the street with a psychotic vampire on her heels, panting and terrified, too weak to pull herself over a chain-link fence she'd cleared in a single jump not a week before. Just get home I'll be safe at home and then that fragile illusion smashes to pieces when she finds the Polaroid of her bound-and-gagged mother and there's no time to waste, she must find her mother before Kralik hurts her, and she sallies forth armed only with diminished human strength and a bewildered mind and a weapons bag almost too heavy for her to carry.
That night changed her, permanently. She'd been Slaying for nearly three years, but she hadn't been the Slayer. Hadn't internalized it. It had just been a job, a burden, a hated and dangerous barrier to the normalcy she so desperately craved, to be dodged around as often as she could so she could maintain the separation between Buffy and Slayer. Her Cruciamentum had shattered that illusion.
What had Kendra said? It's not a job. It's who you are.
For the first time, that night, she had understood that, and had learned. Learned to shut away all the big, messy, difficult emotions that got in the way of what she had to do. To turn a deaf ear to the clamor inside her, and focus on her purpose or her anger or sometimes - no, often - the dark joy of the hunt. To filter out horror and terror and loss and confusion and hurt. So much hurt, and betrayal, the worst pain of all.
She learned her lesson well. Now, her grip on her control is strong enough to strangle.
"Buffy?" His quiet voice brings her back to the present, and she shakes herself a little, releases her upper arms and blinks at her aching hands. She flexes and stretches unsteady fingers.
"I'm okay." The tremor belies her words; uneasy silence falls awkward and heavy between them. His hands twitch futilely and it's painfully obvious, how he wants to offer a comforting touch but knows he can't.
They sit, uncomfortably silent, until his curiosity finally overpowers his discretion. "Don't understand..." He pauses and she nods and raises her eyebrows encouragingly. "How you lost your powers, just for a few days. Bit wonky, that, and a good thing the demon world's never heard of it, 'cos they'd queue up at Slayer's house like -"
"I didn't just lose them," she says bitterly. "They were taken from me."
His jaw is suspiciously tight when he asks, "By -?"
"Giles." Her voice cracks on the one murmured syllable.
She doesn't have to look at him to know he's suddenly, overwhelmingly, furious: his rage is like a faint electrical hum she can almost hear, the kinetic energy of balled fists and clenched teeth vibrating just below audible range. Another deep, unnecessary breath shudders through him as she clears her throat and amends lamely:
"No, that's not really fair. Giles acted on the Council's orders -"
A low growl rumbles from somewhere deep in his chest.
" - and then he invalidated the test by telling me what was going on, but by that time Kralik had kidnapped Mom..."
"Kralik? Zachary Kralik?" Spike roars the name and she recoils, startled but not really frightened because his anger is not for her. It's too intense to be contained, however, and he's pacing again, swift and quick. "Crazy bastard, made Dahmer look like a choirboy before he was Turned, and afterwards - brutal, nasty piece o' work, that one, bad as Ang -" He bites off the name and scrambles to recover, "Well, no demons shed any tears for him when he went missing, I'll tell you that." Embarrassed by his slip, he pointedly avoids her gaze, turning away to pace more slowly, brow furrowed in thought. He suddenly stops short as if struck and his searching gaze slides to her, his nostrils flared wide. "You know why it's done on the eighteenth birthday, don't you?"
She shakes her head, momentarily puzzled, and then it hits her. The anger's hot and cold all at once, and her voice sounds flat and dull, disembodied. "Because then I was an adult." Oh. My. God.
"Right." He's like a caged lion again, prowling the length of her cellar and back. "Slayer can't be controlled anymore, not legally, and those berks liked their girls young and ignorant, easy to manipulate. So they invented this 'Cruciamentum' bollocks." His teeth flash in a grim death's-head smile. "But I'll bet not every Slayer had to take on the likes of Kralik. A sweet pliant thing, they'd prolly send 'er up against a stupid fledge, no danger there. But the ornery, independent types, the ones don't kowtow to Council's every whim? They get the psychos." The smile softens but retains an edge, a teasing one: "We all know which category you fit into, pet." When she doesn't return his smile he sighs and his voice goes quiet, gravelly as ten miles of bad road. "Council must've wanted rid of you bad, Slayer, to throw you to that wolf."
Her heart feels as if it's been frozen and is struggling to pump not warm Slayer blood but liquid nitrogen or something equally icy and viscous through her veins, as she tries to deny the possibility. No, no, no, no, NO! Slayer, Watchers, same team. The good guys, fighting the good fight. They couldn't - they wouldn't do that to me!
Of course they would. The Slayer in her is as a chorus of cool voices, in dispassionate contemplation. We are not people to them, just vessels for mystical power, tools in the war against evil. If they deem the vessel unsound or the tool damaged - Faith, for example. Did they try to help her?
She lifts bleak eyes to Spike, whose face shows no satisfaction in bringing home to her yet another hard truth, only futile anger and concern for her pain. If he's right, I was even more isolated than I thought I was.
But not nearly as isolated as he. Hot shame flash-melts the ice and the self-pity in a quick painful thaw, leaving a raw ache in their place. He'd endured years of this diminution, hated and ridiculed by his own kind, mistrusted and derided by humans. He fit in nowhere; she herself had taunted him about it: "Poor Spikey. Can't be human, can't be a vampire. All you can do is follow me around making moon-eyes." The nastiness of the remark makes her shudder.
All he wanted was to love me, and I treated him like garbage. Worse.
Tangentially, she wonders why he still does. By all rights, it should not be so. Human relationships - with each person presumably in full possession of a soul - end daily due to trivial annoyances. Yet he, while soulless, had withstood insults, scorn, and abuse, while receiving precious little (and mostly grudging, at that) appreciation for his efforts on her behalf - and his devotion had never wavered.
But then again, this is Spike, who's nothing if not a fool for love. "Love's bitch," he had proclaimed himself, with a certain perverse pride. And while it's true that love has taken and pummeled him and wrung him out to dry, he deserves better than such a shameful sobriquet. Love has also upraised him, made of him something that should have been impossible, that still leaves her as awestruck as she'd been in that dark, lonely church.
" -'s'murder by proxy, that's what it is!" He's still fuming, and she starts reflexively and resumes full attention. "Bleedin' hypocrites didn't want to dirty their lily-white hands, so they stripped away your powers and sicc'ed Kralik on you. Then the stupid buggers bollocksed it up good and proper - no surprise there - lost 'im, and he went after your mum." He shakes his head with a derisive snort. "Not sorry the Council's gone, pet, if they could do something like that...God, the thought of that - that animal, touching Joyce..." He ceases, swallows and blinks hard a few times; her eyes sting too at the memory of her brave if bewildered mother, who had tried so hard to understand and accept.
When he speaks again his voice is hushed. The rant is over; he can focus on other matters and, as a fellow warrior, he wants to know:
"How did you do it? Beat Kralik?"
She smiles faintly, not without pride. "His migraine medication. I grabbed it and kept it from him until he was really desperate for it, then gave it back to him so he could take it," her smile broadens, "with a glass of holy water."
A beat, then he releases a quiet chuckle and turns admiring eyes on her. His face is sweet and somehow very young, and the sight of it both warms and speeds her heart, as she remembers where and when she's seen that look, her senses stirring to the thought of what usually accompanied it: deep lavish kisses and knowing touches that she still yearns for in dark lonely hours. He won't do it, not unless he's invited; never again will he impose on her so, and she knows she shouldn't ask. But sometimes -
Sometimes, like now, keeping her distance from him feels like the hardest thing she's ever had to do.
"You're incredible, you know that?"
Her cheeks heat and a fond smile curls her lip as she rises, reaches out to lay a hand on his shoulder.
"You're pretty incredible too. My deal lasted just a few days. You had your chip for years."
Surprise flashes across his face and it's like a knife in her heart, that he's so astonished by the mildest compliment. His eyes deepen and soften further, mesmerizing her.
Warily, he raises his hand to hers; when she doesn't protest or pull away, he lifts it from his shoulder and loosely laces their fingers together. Even like this, light and respectful, his touch ignites wildfires, blazing up her arm, finding a new flashpoint in her belly as he murmurs, "Not anymore, thanks to you." He smiles thoughtfully at her, tightens his clasp momentarily. "No regrets, luv. Brought me here, didn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so." Wherever 'here' is.
He smiles again at her uncertainty, then unlaces his fingers from hers and carries her hand in both of his to his lips. She thinks he's going to kiss the back of it, a knight's salute to his lady; but at the last moment he turns it over, closes his eyes and softly kisses her palm and -
Everything. Just. Stops.
Spike...
Her body hasn't shut down at all, quite the opposite. It's all warm, dizzying waves and tingles in secret places, shortened breath and pounding pulse. Sense-memory fully awake, dancing a rumba across her nerve endings. And he's doing this to her with just a soft steady press of his cool lips on her palm, without so much as a brush of his talented tongue. Granted, he's taking his time about it, his mouth lingering as he delicately breathes in her fragrance, but it barely qualifies as sexual, except in her body's response. Every cell is flooded with wanting and she's sure he can scent it.
Such temptation. One step. Just one tiny step, and she'll be in that coolfirm clasp she hasn't forgotten, could never forget, and all she'll need to do is rise up on her toes and that wonderful lush mouth will descend on hers...
He releases her hand and his gaze drops, though not before she sees the minute yellow eyespark betraying his awareness of his effect on her. He's purring quietly too, and she 'hmphs' softly. Well, he'd be a poor excuse for a vampire if he didn't notice, and he wouldn't be Spike if he didn't enjoy it a little.
Silent and uncertain, she stares at him and he at the floor, pointedly sparing her the burden of his eyes.
She heaves a frustrated sigh and it morphs into a yawn so enormous her jaw nearly cracks with it, surprising her. When she recovers, Spike is watching her with nothing save mildly amused concern, eyes once again just a clear deep blue. "Tired, pet?" he asks unnecessarily, and relief rushes through her at his quirked eyebrow and light, teasing tone. The danger has passed.
For now.
"Yeah, a little," she admits, downplaying it. Actually, she's exhausted, from strain and worry and the big, messy difficult emotions of this encounter - discovery, pain, empathy and longing, pulled to the surface like blood under a cupping glass, to show raw and tender under the skin. "It's been quite a day."
"That it has, Slayer." As simply as that, he steers them fully back onto safe ground, into the comfortable, familiar roles of leader and lieutenant. Her pang of regret eases under a warm surge of gratitude. He steps to her side and turns, placing a light hand between her shoulder blades and guiding her gently toward the stairs. "Off with you, then."
She stifles another yawn and grins sheepishly at him. "Good night, Spike."
"'Night, Slayer."
She's at the top of the stairs when his voice halts her. "Buffy."
She turns. "Yeah?"
Hands curled around the railings, he's looking up at her, and she flashes to that other time, after her resurrection: in his face is the same sweet, joyful wonder, though quieter, less rampant. In serious accent, deep and smooth, he murmurs, "Thank you for trusting me."
Unspoken words seem to shimmer in the air between them.
She gazes fondly at him and his full meaning, her lips slightly curved. "Thank you for earning it."
He gives her one of his slow, substantive blinks, his head tipped to one side, then he nods and pushes away from the railings, melting back into the shadows. She opens the door to the kitchen, steps up and in, and quietly closes the door behind her, the smile lingering on her mouth.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Buffy and Spike, tiptoeing toward true intimacy...