“Oh, please! Like I’ve got so many issues that you can’t even name them all!” Buffy scoffed, trying to sound dismissive and incredulous – though his words really did bother her. Then with a frown, as something else occurred to her, she added, “And like you’d know all about them if I did!”
“You forget, pet,” Spike smiled softly, tapping a finger against his temple and nodding toward her. “I saw a lot up there when you were quite literally in my head.” He hesitated for a moment before admitting quietly, “Still do.”
Buffy’s frown deepened, her lips parting slightly in surprise. “Now that’s just not fair! How come I can’t see inside *your* head?”
Spike’s smile faded, his expression becoming slightly uncertain, as he replied, “Because – because I haven’t wanted you to. Not – not just yet.”
“So – we can see each other's thoughts now, because of the claim – but – you’re shutting me out?” Buffy could not keep the edge of hurt from her voice.
Spike was quiet for a long moment before replying matter-of-factly, without a trace of apology in his tone.
“That’s – basically it.”
“Oh.” Buffy was silent for a long moment before she said softly, “I guess I deserve that.”
Spike neither denied or agreed with her words.
“Can – I shut *you* out?” she asked tentatively after a moment, her voice tinged with insecurity, mingled with curiosity.
A slightly sad smile passed over the vampire’s lips, as he replied, “You will be able to – once you get used to the claim, and how it works. Not that I can say it’d be a good idea,” he pointed out, mild self-derision in his voice. “After all – if *both* of us turn into paranoid, stubborn, scared-to-death morons – we’ll *never* get anything accomplished.”
Buffy’s expression softened at the sheepish duck of his head that accompanied his honest acknowledgement of the fear and insecurity that was causing him to hold her at arm’s length. She knew that it would be a lot easier for them to work through this if he would actually open up to her – but she could hardly blame him for not wanting to just yet.
“You’re not a moron,” she informed him gently, reaching a hand out toward his face – then hesitating, and laying it instead on his arm.
Spike did not pull away from her, and after a moment, he laughed softly, as the implications of her statement hit him – the parts of his self-description that she had *not* denied to be true.
And then, in spite of her fears and troubled state of mind – Buffy laughed, too.
“I didn’t quite mean it like…”
“I know, pet…”
“Look at us,” Buffy pointed out, glancing down at her own hand on his arm, before smiling hopefully into his eyes. “This is progress, anyway – isn’t it?”
“Well – you’re not shoving me around and yelling in my face – and I’m not shying away from you like a scared rabbit and refusing to speak your name,” Spike noted with a little sideways tilt of his head and a half-smirk. “So – yeah. I’d say – it’s progress.”
“So – while in in not-yelling mode,” Buffy began slowly, caution in her tone. “How about you tell me all about all these ‘issues’ I supposedly have, *Doctor* Spike?”
The vampire’s smile faded as he looked down, taking a deep breath before asking, “You’re sure you wanna hear this?”
“*Spike*…”
“Right – okay, then,” he relented, taking a moment to prepare his thoughts before looking up again to meet her eyes.
“Your problem – the one that really worries me,” he explained slowly, “has more to do with Buffy the *girl* than Buffy the Slayer. You think you’ve gotta control everything and everyone…because if you don’t…”
“…because if I don’t,” Buffy cut in, a bit defensively, “the *world* could end! They’ll all end up hurt, or dead, or – or…”
“Or just *gone*,” Spike finished for her, piercing blue eyes searching hers for the truth she was trying to avoid.
The slight flinch garnered by his words told him that his theory held more truth to it than Buffy wanted to admit.
“But – you don’t think that’s the Slayer in me? Wanting control? You know – I *do* have a calling to save the world!” She seemed surprised by his assessment of her motivations; and yet – not.
“Could be a bit of both,” he conceded with a little half shrug. “But it seems to me you’re as much worried about you losing them – as you are about saving the world. Sure – if you lose control in the wrong situation, the whole world and everyone in it – including the ones you hold dear – could quite literally all go to hell,” he went on, his solemn eyes searching hers for her reaciton, as he concluded.
“But you’re more afraid of the love – the people – that you’d lose – than anything else.” His voice lowered as he asked softly, barely over a whisper, “Am I getting warm, love?”
Tears streaked Buffy’s face, and she bit her lower lip, reluctant to admit what she was increasingly sure of – that Spike was right about her, completely. Yes, Buffy the Slayer seemed to have some control issues – and that seemed only natural, she thought, all things considered. Having the weight of the fate of the world on her shoulders all the time could do that to a person.
But Buffy knew that her own control issues were deeply rooted in things that had happened in her life long before she had become the Slayer.
As a young girl, in that awkward, painful period between when her parents realized that they no longer loved each other, and when they actually got up the nerve to do something about it, Buffy had always secretly believed that if she could have done something better – been smarter, prettier, more agreeable – her parents might have been able to find a way to stay together.
The young woman she had become had come to know better – to realize that nothing she could have done could have made her parents be happy together when they simply *weren’t* -- but a part of her had still carried that nagging sense of guilt and failure around with her, everywhere she went from that point on.
And every relationship in her life since then had both been affected by it – and contributed to it.
Her failure to save her friends from the terror of Angelus, and to save Angel from hell – her failure to hold onto Angel the next year, when he had left her – her friends, constantly looking to *her* for leadership, guidance, protection – it had all left her with the sense that her life and death, daily decisions were on what rested the fate of the entire world…
And her own heart, as well.
The consequences of making the wrong decision could be the end of the world – or the loss of *her* world.
So she frantically tried to make the right decision – and if by some quirk of fate the decision happened to rest with someone else for a change – she simply did whatever she had to do to ensure that they made the *right* one – in *her* opinion.
“And – and that’s the problem, Buffy,” Spike went on, breaking into her thoughts with his soft, honest voice – and she was startled, but strangely not bothered, to know that he had taken that little trip down memory lane with her, in her mind. “It’s not all up to you. You can’t just – just force someone to do something – even for the greater good – even for *their* own good – and expect it to come out right, love.”
The dubious look in her eyes told him that she was still having a hard time with the concept of surrendering control, *ever*, when so much rested on her power and her calling.
Spike looked down at his lap, taking in a deep breath as he prepared himself to speak again.
“Buffy,” he whispered finally, with more vulnerability than before in his still certain voice. “I – I won’t be a slave – at *anybody's* bloody beck and call, no control over my own life – again. I – I *can’t*.”
Buffy’s eyes widened in alarm, and she shook her head rapidly, beginning in a troubled voice, “Spike – I would never…”
“Just – just let me say this – okay, Buffy?” he said softly, holding up a hand to silence her anxious protests, though he kept his eyes downcast.
It was obvious to Buffy that whatever he was about to say was very difficult for him to express – and suddenly, she felt a surge of grateful relief that, after all that had happened, he was actually willing to open up to her at all.
“What happened between us – the original claim – well, a one-sided mating claim might as well be a dominance claim. You had the power to make me do anything you wanted – to do anything you wanted to me – and there was nothing I could do about it.”
He was silent for a moment, before going on, “I – I’ve been under a dominance claim before, Buffy. It – it wasn’t bloody fun either, pet. It was just exactly like this claim was before we made it mutual, really -- *without* the lovely side order of orgasmic pleasure. At least – at least for the one being dominated. For – for the recipient of the claim, it’s mostly – well – agony – and humiliation. You’re – nothing but a plaything, at their disposal – at least…if your claimant is anything like mine was…”
The stark pain in her mate’s voice, the unmistakable insinuations of his words, began to build into a slowly boiling rage, rising up within the Slayer. Her eyes narrowed, her jaw set in anger and outrage, that such indignities had been inflicted on her mate – even before he *was* her mate. Mingled with it was the guilt, the regret, that he had felt those same things again, at the hands of her alter ego.
But it could not compare with the rage he felt radiating off of her – a blind fury at whatever vampire had dared to so violate Spike.
“I – I wanted to die,” he went on softly, his eyes wide and focused on their joined hands, seemingly unaware of her rising anger. “I would have done -- *anything* to escape him – but – but I wasn’t even *permitted* to off myself. So – I had to put up with the torture, the beatings – the – the violations – again and again – with no possible escape…”
He paused, his tone becoming thoughtful, even through the pain, as he amended, “But then…I’m not so sure I *would* have killed myself – even if I could have – if he’d have let me – because then…”
“Who was it?” Buffy interrupted, her voice dark and intense with her need to avenge her mate.
At the same moment, Spike finished his statement. “…Dru would have been alone with him – and she would have had to take it all…”
And in that instant, it dawned on Buffy with a shock, just who Spike’s former claimant had been.
Spike looked up at her with surprise, as if he had been sure that she would have already known that much. “Angelus,” he replied in a whisper.
“Angel,” Buffy whispered at the same moment, her eyes wide with realization, even before Spike had spoken his answer.
“When he got his soul, and ran off and left us – he let the claim lapse. Dominance claims aren’t like mating claims. Any one-sided claim, given enough time, will wear off – and his did,” Spike went on, his words clear and even, cautious, as if struggling to maintain his balance, not to topple over the edge into the dark abyss of painful emotions swirling and seething beneath the tightrope of his words.
His expression darkened as he added, “But he wasted no time in renewing it – when you – when he came back. Of course, he thought I was crippled the whole time – would have probably gotten well a bloody lot sooner, too, if not for his -- *attentions*…” The bitter anger and shame in his voice was painful – and enraging – to Buffy’s ears.
She wanted to *kill* Angel.
“Then, when he got shipped off to hell – his just reward if you ask me – and came back all soulful again, well – he never wanted to face up to what he’d done again, I suppose. Wanted nothing to do with me, of course. So he let the claim lapse again,” Spike went on, his voice stronger now that he had passed the hardest part of the story. A bittersweet smile rose to his lips as he continued.
“And then -- *you* claimed me – and it doesn’t matter now. He couldn’t do it again if he wanted to, because…”
“The mating claim is more binding than any other claim,” Buffy finished for him, remembering what he had told her before – the fact that had been the key to their victory over the Slayer.
“Now that it’s mutual,” Spike clarified, his eyes becoming seirous as they met hers again. “But -- *before* -- these past few days…” He paused, swallowing hard as he looked away again, his voice lowered to a near whisper when he went on, “I – I felt that way again, Buffy. That – helplessness, that – that pure terror – with no hope of escape…”
When he managed to look up at her again, his eyes were glistening with tears.
“I *can’t* go back there again, Buffy. I can’t,” he whispered, searching her eyes for understanding.
“You *won’t*!” Buffy insisted, momentarily pushing aside her fury at the vampire she had once thought was the love of her life, to focus on Spike’s need. She leaned forward slightly, gently, cautiously reaching out to take his trembling hands in hers again. “You won’t…I won’t – won’t ever try to control you again, Spike – I promise!”
Spike smiled through his tears, but there was a certain seriousness even in the smile. “Don’t make a promise that you can’t keep, love,” he warned her softly, looking away, though he did not pull away from her – and that was something, at least, wasn’t it?
“You’ll always have the – the tendency – to want to be in control, Buffy,” Spike reminded her. “It’s – it’s in your nature – and in your personality – a part of who you are, Buffy…”
“I can control it, Spike,” Buffy insisted, her voice trembling but determined as she leaned in toward him, trying to catch his eye again. “I can – can learn to – to not have to be in control all the time. I can.”
Spike was quiet for a long moment, and she could feel it, could see it in his expression, that he desperately *wanted* to believe it. Finally he replied in a soft, achingly vulnerable whisper.
“I – I love you, Buffy. And now – you’re my mate. And I *want* you to be. I want to spend the rest of my existence with you. But – but I can’t be your – your pet, or your – slave to order about and keep on a bloody leash. For this to work, you’re going to have to accept that not all the decisions are yours to make – and you’re going to have to trust me to make the decisions that are right for me – for us – sometimes.”
He looked up at her, his eyes open and searching.
“I won’t do anything to make you regret it, Buffy, I promise – but you can’t keep me under your thumb, for fear of what I might do someday. You have to treat me – as your equal…”
The Slayer studied his expression for a long moment, her eyes soft and glistening with tears of affection, remorse – hope.
“I can do that, Spike. You *are* my equal.” Her smile faded as she looked down, and went on softly, “When she was – in my body – doing those things – it was – it was hard for me, too, Spike. You have no idea what it’s like to feel – so out of control, like a prisoner in your own body…and – and to have to just sit by and *watch* the things she did to you…”
Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head, composing herself before going on, “I hated it, but there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. And – it was like – I got a – a *glimpse* -- of what I could be like – if I didn’t have a conscious, or a sense of right and wrong, or…”
“If you were a vampire,” Spike concluded quietly, his eyebrows raised as he considered that interesting scenario.
Buffy met his eyes again, startled by the comparison – but it was an accurate one. “Yes,” she nodded. “If I was a vampire, I’d be given over to that side of me completely. I realized that – that darkness – that violence – is a part of me.”
She was silent for a moment, before she added, “And it scares me.”
“Rightly so,” Spike said, without anger or judgment – simply an honest observation.
“But – I can change, Spike. If *you* can, *I* can. I know that. We’ve both – made some terrible mistakes in our lives – but – I think if we work at this – if we try – we can make this work, Spike. We can.”
He was quiet, nodding slowly. He knew she was right – felt that they were on the edge of an important breakthrough – and yet – a part of him was still afraid.
Buffy’s solemn eyes studied his expression with compassion and understanding; she understood his hesitance. The way things stood between them at the moment, actually, was much better than she had even hoped for at this point. She could not blame him for his lingering fears and uncertainties.
“I can’t ask you to place your trust in me, Spike,” she admitted softly. “Not yet. I know that. But – but you *can* trust me.” She reached a tender hand up to cautiously rest against his cheek, feeling a wave of sorrow as he visibly resisted the urge to pull away from her touch.
But he *did* resist it.
As her thumb gently caressed his cheek, he closed his eyes, swallowing hard, before deliberately leaning into her touch – and Buffy realized in an instant that he had decided to open himself up to her again.
In the next instant, she felt a powerful wave of emotion engulf her – a deep yearning for connection, for the closeness that she now realized that Spike had longer for all his life, even before his turning – but never had fulfilled.
Until now.
Then, she felt the anguish, the sorrow, fear, and humilation that still filled his heart from the last few days. He longed to get past it, to move on, forgive and forget – but she could feel his frustration as well, because he just could not seem to do it – not yet.
Buffy allowed the tumult of intense feeling from her mate to wash over her, flowing around her, and finally ebbing away, before she closed her eyes, and focused on returning the sensation.
She allowed her own emotions – the confusion, the anger and frustration and utter violation of having her very body stolen from her control, to be revealed to her mate – showed him the depth of love she felt for him, her sorrow and remorse for what had happened between them, and her desire and commitment to do whatever it would take to help him find healing for the pain.
Finally, they each slowly opened their eyes, staring at the other with tears soaking their faces – and a new understanding in their eyes.
A slow, tender smile rose to Buffy’s lips as she gazed into the vulnerable, expressive eyes of her mate.
“I love you, Spike,” she whispered. “Thank you – for trusting me. I promise you – I’m never going to make you regret it.”
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