Spike let out a soft, sort of sad laugh at Joyce’s question, before asking softly, “Where do you want me to start, love?”
He scooted back a bit on the floor, leaning back beside her against the counter, admittedly feeling much more relaxed than he had before her arrival. In all honesty, he did not know just how much Joyce would be able to do to actually keep her word to protect him from her daughter.
In fact, he was kind of afraid to see what might happen if -- *when* -- the need arose and she actually tried. It filled him an uncomfortable anxious feeling to think about it, knowing that with Buffy as out of control and unpredictable as she was at the moment, her mother stood a very real chance of being hurt in the attempt.
After all, Joyce was determined and definitely a force to be reckoned with when it came to her family – but she was no Slayer.
Still, her very presence made him feel secure and safe and so very relieved – at least, as much as was possible to feel while knowing that his unstable and unpredictably violent claimant was upstairs – away from him for the moment, but certainly not for good. What was even more unsettling was the fact that even now, he did not *want* her gone for good.
In spite of everything, a part of him wanted to leave Joyce here in the kitchen and seek out Buffy.
“How about the beginning?” Joyce suggested softly, her mild words and the gentle squeeze of her hand on his drawing his thoughts back to the conversation.
He took a deep, shaky breath, steeling himself to answer a single, simple question, for which he had no simple answer. There were parts of the story that he was desperately afraid to tell her, some because he knew they would shatter her image of her daughter – others, because he was afraid of how it would affect the way she saw him.
He felt a cold sense of fear clench around his stomach, not the physical fear he held of Buffy at the moment – this was something different. Having grasped at the slim piece of hope that Joyce had held out to him the moment she had walked through the door of her house and into the scene she had interrupted, he did not want to do anything to spoil it – and he was terribly afraid that some of the things she was asking about might make her give up her resolve to help him.
And if he lost *her* support now – well, he might as well just walk out into the sun, as he had threatened to do the morning before, in this very kitchen.
He almost wished he had.
“Well,” he forced himself to begin, his eyes focused on the floor in front of him and his voice lower than usual to disguise its shaking. “S’pose the whole thing began when her Watcher got it in his head that I needed controlling…”
“I said the beginning, Spike.” The quiet interruption, spoken in a voice that was patient, but unyielding, made his stomach do a funny little flip, as he realized that he was not going to get anything past Joyce Summers – might as well not even try. “As in, when you pulled your amazing disappearing act and scared me and Dawn half out of our minds worrying about you.”
Spike grimaced slightly at those words, feeling a pang of guilt at the pain his denial had caused them. “I’m sorry, Joyce,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to…I just…” He wanted to be completely honest with her, but he simply could not bring himself to explain why he had suddenly avoided her and Dawn.
She seemed to understand, nodded and prompting gently, “What happened while you were gone? Buffy told us something about some…secret, government…commando types or something?” A frown of confusion marked her awkward, vague remembrance of Buffys’ equally vague explanation.
Relieved to be granted a bit of a reprieve on the part of the conversation where he explained how he had stopped seeing them because he was secretly in love with Buffy and trying to work up the nerve to kill her to get over it, Spike took another deep breath and launched into his explanation.
“Bloody army blokes. Captured me, and – and – I really don’t remember much of – of what happened – while I was there,” he said quietly, avoiding her eyes. Her silence indicated that if she did not believe him, she was not going to push it, so he went on. “Got away…but found out…um, right away…they done something to me while I was in there. I – I couldn’t – couldn’t feed, or – well, couldn’t hurt a human at all, or I got this…this pain in my head…”
He deliberately skipped over the explanation of exactly how he had found that out, his voice softening with the pain of remembering the suddenly helpless situation he had found himself in. In a quiet, halting voice, he explained to Joyce how confused and frightened he had been – how terrifying the feeling of being unable to even defend himself, even to feed to survive…
Joyce slipped her arm around his shoulder, swallowing back a hard knot that had arisen in her throat at his words, her eyes troubled and dark with anger at the strangers who had damaged one of her own. It did not seem to register with her that that “one of her own” was a vampire, and that the damage had been to prevent him from killing humans.
They had made him helpless, and afraid – and to her, that was unforgivable.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” she asked quietly, a gentle reproof in her words. “You know I would have helped you, Spike.”
“I – I didn’t want – after I’d just – just taken off like that,” he tried to explain weakly, his eyes welling with tears at the affection in her voice and her mothering hands. “I – I did,” he told her suddenly, as if in defense of his actions, meeting her eyes for a moment before looking down again. “But – but you and the bit weren’t home, and – I guess you were out of town or something…”
Joyce frowned, then nodded slowly, remembering. With Buffy away at college, she had taken Dawn with her to an art showing in L.A. She felt a brief, unreasonable pang of guilt that she had not been here for Spike, realizing that in a way, that was what had led to his current situation.
“So you went to Buffy, instead,” she surmised.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Thought – thought at least she’d be fair about it. Knew she wouldn’t stake me – not if she knew how bloody pathetic I’d become…”
His voice carefully calm as he fought against the pain of his memories and the Joyce’s gentle affection, not to give in to his emotions again, Spike explained to her about the couple of weeks he had spent as a captive in the Watcher’s home. He avoided saying too much about that time, but she could hear it in his tone, and the words he did not say – the fear, the helplessness, the indignity and shame of being treated like less than human.
Joyce’s eyes narrowed with anger, her jaw setting in a firm line, though she did not say a word, as she took in what her daughter and her friends – and even the Watcher for whom she had held a certain amount of respect – had done to Spike.
*Oh, no, couldn’t stake him if he’s helpless!* she thought darkly. *But holding him prisoner – slapping him around – treating him like nothing but garbage – all that’s okay in my daughter’s moral code. Buffy and I are going to have quite the little talk later,* she resolved as Spike went on with his story.
“So – let me get this straight,” she broke in with restrained anger a few minutes later. “For some reason, Buffy and her friends felt like even though you couldn’t hurt humans at all any more, couldn’t even *defend* yourself – they still had to come up with some other way to control you?”
Spike shrugged slightly, with a dejected little nod. “Didn’t make any bloody sense to me, either,” he muttered shakily.
His story slowed down a bit, and he struggled over the words, as he tried to be as honest as he could while explaining to Joyce about the ritual and what it had entailed. She was silent, not interrupting, as he spoke, and he could not meet her eyes, so he had no idea just exactly how she was reacting to the information of what her daughter had planned to do.
“The claiming,” he said softly, his voice barely over a whisper. “That – that was my fault, Joyce. I – Buffy just thought she was – just doing what the ritual said…I – I was trying to get the better of her…and – and I made her think I had already lost, and then – then I – bit her – tried to claim her. I – didn’t think – I – I just didn’t think,” he admitted in a trembling, fearful voice. “I’m sorry…” he whispered.
“Why should you be sorry?” Joyce interrupted suddenly, and he swallowed hard, fighting back tears when he heard the fury in her tone.
Was that sarcasm in her voice? Oh, bloody hell – he’d done it…he’d said too much, he’d crossed a line with what he had done – or tried to do – to Buffy, and he’d lost her support, her friendship…
He flinched slightly as her gentle hand turned his face up to meet hers suddenly, his eyes averted. He could not stand to see the anger, the accusation that had to be in her eyes at that moment.
“Look at me,” she said softly.
He swallowed hard, fighting his instinct to bolt – to flee from the rejection that would simply be too much for him to bear. But he knew that it would do no good – he was irrevocably bound to at least one Summers woman – and would always end up back here, no matter how hard he tried to get away.
He looked up at her through desperate, pleading eyes – and was stunned by the tears, the sorrow he saw in hers. Yes, there was anger there too, and plenty of it – but it was not directed at him.
“Why should you be sorry, Spike?” she asked him, holding his gaze firmly. “She tried to make you – a – a slave, basically. She tried to take away your very free will – and on top of all that, she was willing to – to *force* you into a sexual act against your will to do it.”
The harsh reality of her words was stunning to him, and he looked away for a moment, his eyes wide as he took it in.
Her voice drew his eyes back up to hers as she went on. “Why should you be sorry for doing *whatever you could* to keep her from doing that?” She paused, shaking her head slightly as she continued, “No, it wasn’t the wisest choice, all things considered. But at the time, you probably felt like it was all you could do. And you knew what you were doing…didn’t you?”
He frowned, confused by the question.
“You knew it was a *mating* claim you were initiating – not a dominance claim – didn’t you?”
He was stunned, not expecting her to have called him on his true intentions so openly, and he looked away again. He nodded slowly, unsure of what her reaction would be to those words.
Her voice softened as she stated calmly, “You could have kept fighting her. And you probably could have won. You could have made my daughter *your* slave – and she would have deserved it after what she did to you. But – instead, you tried to make her something else entirely.” She paused, before going on, “You tried to end the dominance ritual by making her your eternal mate.”
He was silent, not denying the words, waiting for her point – which was not long in coming, and struck him with a powerful impact.
“You love her – don’t you?”
Spike was silent for a long moment, in useless debate over how to respond – because the woman knew the bloody truth already…there was no point in denying it. He lowered his head, closing his eyes against fresh tears.
“Yes,” he whispered, his pain clear in his trembling voice. “I – I love her. I have – for a long time now…”
“That’s why you left – isn’t it?”
Bloody hell, but the woman was just too sharp! He grimaced slightly, then nodded his admission.
“I couldn’t – just couldn’t take – every day, seeing – and not…”
Joyce put her arms around him again, allowing him to cease his achingly desperate, confused rambling attempt at explaining what he could not put into words. She just held him for a long moment, as his cautious hands clung to her waist, his head buried in her shoulder again.
When he had regained some semblance of control, Joyce pulled back, a puzzled frown on her face. “So,” she asked softly. “Why doesn’t Buffy – have…I mean, if you bit her first…”
Understanding dawned in the vampire’s eyes – with fresh pain at the answer. “You’ve got to accept the claim for it to be permanent – got to say that you accept it. She,” he began softly, struggling over the words. “She – didn’t accept my claim. She said – no, she didn’t want to be mine. And then she said that – that I was hers, still – and bit me…and…and…”
“And you accepted hers,” Joyce concluded, anger building again in her voice and eyes.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I – I wanted – so bad…to…to be…”
He could not finish, but Joyce understood. Spike had genuinely loved her daughter, even then, though he had tried to conceal it. For him, the chance to be hers, to belong to her and be with her forever – well, as much as forever as the Slayer would have – had been worth the risk.
She wondered if he still thought it worth it.
Buffy had callously run over his feelings, using them against him to make him a virtual slave to her whims, with no compassion or concern for his feelings – even going so far as to extend to the physical abuse that Joyce had witnessed earlier.
“And she’s been – treating you like this – ever since?” she asked, her voice cool with a dark note to it that drew his eyes up to hers sharply, alarmed.
He knew exactly what she meant, and answered cautiously, “Not – all the time. She can’t control it, Joyce. It’s not her fault.”
Her eyes softened with compassion, as she raised a gentle hand to touch his cheek, and smiled sadly. “That’s what they all say, Sweetie.”
Her soft, clear words were simple, but impactful. He knew there was more to it than Joyce realized – but still, he could not help but think that she had a point. Even before all of this had taken place, Buffy had had a tendency toward violence with him. This whole ritual had intensified it, yeah – but he still felt that in a way, even in the worst of it, when something else seemed to have taken her over, it was still somehow -- *Buffy*.
“But it stops, Spike,” Joyce said firmly. “It stops tonight.”
She stood up, and he looked up at her for a moment, before accepting her extended hand to help him to his feet. He studied her face uncertainly for a moment, unsure what she intended to do – unsure what she *could* do.
“Me and the *Slayer* are going to have a little talk,” she declared, and the caustic tone with which she spoke her daughter’s title spoke of her current disgust for its violent implications. “I want you to wait down here, Spike. I’ll be back in a little while.”
He nodded, uncertain, but obedient, as she headed toward the stairs, stopping at the base to look back at him with determined fire in her eyes, taking in the fading bruise on his cheek, the fear that should not have been in his eyes.
“She will *not* do this to you again.”
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