Feedback: Is a good thing. Absolutely. ::nods emphatically::
Chapter Five
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Willow’s excitement practically vibrated through the phone line. “We found them, Buffy! They’re in a level four dimension!”
Fist tightening around the receiver, Buffy glanced at Giles and Xander hovering nearby and at Illyria lurking in the background. They were all gathered in the book-lined study that served as Giles’ private retreat. “That’s great, Will. But what does that mean – ‘level four’?”
Success made Willow extra perky. “It’s a trans-dimensional classification system developed by the Osara. They’re sort of…dimensional nomads, I guess you could say. They assign different levels based on all sorts of factors – environment, cultural and technological development, indigenous species…even odds of surviving if you go there. Well, especially odds of surviving, which is something you really, really need to have a good handle on when you’re popping back and forth between dimensions all the time. Do you know they go through dimensions just like we’d walk from one room to another? It’s pretty cool,” she enthused.
“Willow. Point?” Despite her worry, a faint smile tugged at Buffy’s lips. Willow might have changed a lot since their high school days, but some things invariably stayed the same.
“Oh. Sorry. Runaway train of thought. Um…basically, the level assigned tells you the degree of badness you can expect.”
“Pretty handy. So, a level four is…?” Buffy left the question hanging.
“In layman’s terms? Sort of halfway between Sesame Street and Day of the Dead.”
“Great. In a way that’s really not.” She sighed. “Especially since that covers a whole lot of territory. Why couldn’t we have Sesame Street? I like fuzzy blue things and big-but-cuddly yellow birds.”
“Sorry. It could be worse, though. It could have been a level nine. Only…um…we won’t talk about that right now, ’kay? ’Cause, one, we don’t have time, and two…you really don’t want to know.”
Somehow, Buffy didn’t doubt that. “So this dimension where Angel’s trapped…you can open a portal, right?”
“Right. It’ll take us a couple of days to make all the preparations and gather the energy we need, but we can definitely open it.” Willow’s voice was firm. Then she hesitated. “We just don’t know how long we can keep it open. Could be a day, could be a minute, which means you may not have enough time to find them and get out again. It mostly depends on how much juice it takes to open up the portal.”
Running through possible scenarios, Buffy frowned. “What if you opened it long enough for someone to go through, then closed it? Could you keep opening it every so often…like automatic redial?”
“Sure, but like this first time, we’d need at least a couple of days in between each opening. Maybe longer, since the more times we do it, the less energy we have to draw on. And…there’s another problem. Time passes differently in some dimensions. If we close the portal, you could wind up staying there longer than it would seem like on this side. A lot longer.”
Slowly, Buffy nodded, then remembered that Willow couldn’t see her. “Understood. I guess we’ll just have to deal with that if and when it happens. In the meantime, start doing whatever you have to do to get that portal open. Let us know when you’re almost ready.”
Willow agreed and she hung up, turning to Giles who was now seated behind his desk, watching her expectantly. “How soon can Faith get here?”
Giles stared. “Faith?”
“Willow said they’ll need a couple of days to get enough mojo flowing to open the portal, but when they do we need Faith here and ready to go. There’s no way of knowing how long they can keep it open, so every second counts.”
Xander frowned. “Okay. Wait. What am I missing? You’re sending Faith? You’re not going after Angel yourself?”
Buffy shifted, bracing against the bleak pang that knifed through her. It was superceded by a deeper ache that left no doubt where her priorities lay. “I can’t leave Spike.”
No one spoke. Then Xander coughed.
“Well, Houston, I’d say we have a problem. Faith and Wood have gone walkabout in Australia. No way we can reach them in time.”
“Unfortunately, Xander is correct.” Giles rose, moving from behind the desk. “Under different circumstances, Willow might be able to contact them, but from what you’ve told us, any such attempt on her part would most certainly delay the opening of the portal and could even hinder the efforts of the coven. It simply isn’t an option.”
Xander peered at her intently, seeming to choose his words with care. “I know you’re worried about Spike. I get that. But he’s…okay, so he’s not fine, but he’s here. And he’s alive, more or less, and getting better every day, right? Giles can look after him while we’re gone. It probably won’t take us any time at all. Much as it pains me to say it, Angel’s a smart guy. I’m sure he’s doing everything he can to stick close to where they landed. We’ll pop in and right back out. It’ll be like you’re taking a little dinner break.”
Giles was conspicuously silent. Buffy looked away, reluctant to meet his gaze. Unlike Xander, he knew what lay behind Spike’s sudden improvement, and he probably suspected the same thing Buffy feared – that without slayer’s blood to counteract it, Spike was dangerously vulnerable to the recurring fever.
Such was Buffy’s quandary, boiled down to its most basic level. If Spike died because she went after Angel, it would be her fault, and if Angel died because she didn’t – also her fault.
It didn’t matter that Angel was perfectly capable of saving himself. It didn’t matter that her blood was no more potent than donated blood from thirty-odd slayers less than five minutes away. If one or the other died, it would be because she had failed him.
Her emotions were bouncing back and forth faster than a Ping-Pong ball. A moment ago, she’d been certain of her choice. Now, doubt wormed its way in, turning her resolve into so much Swiss cheese. As her uncertainty grew, so did her anger at being expected to choose one over the other.
Buffy clenched her fists. That’s exactly what it felt like – a no-win choice, carefully engineered by the same powers that Giles had railed against. For what purpose, she had no idea, though it didn’t really matter.
Sending Faith after Angel had seemed an ideal solution. While there might be plenty of people who could rescue him, only Faith would fight as hard for it as Buffy herself. Normally jealous of the strange connection between Angel and Faith, she had abruptly found herself in the confusing position of counting on it. Now, she had to regroup.
If their positions were reversed, Angel would stop at nothing to get her back. Buffy knew that, and under normal circumstances she would do the same for him.
Only, these were hardly normal circumstances, and Angel wasn’t the only one in trouble.
Illyria stepped forward, eyes locked on Buffy’s face. “I will retrieve Angel…and Charles, if he lives.”
“No offense to anyone, but…shouldn’t we all go?” Xander glanced around. “Giles excluded, since somebody needs to stay with Spike and no one in their right mind would trust me with that assignment. We should probably draft a few of our friendly neighborhood slayers, too. I mean, who knows what we could run into there?”
“I have walked in worlds you could never imagine. I do not need assistance.”
Buffy finally spoke up. “We have two days to decide who’s going. Spike is getting stronger; he could wake up any time.” She looked at Giles. “I should check on him now.”
“There’s no need. Mrs. Hudson would have called us if his condition had changed. There are still things we must determine, arrangements to be made.”
“We’ll settle it all tomorrow.”
“Buffy…”
“Tomorrow, Giles.”
She left a reverberating silence in her wake.
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Spike felt as if he’d been walking for hours, though as far as he could tell time had little meaning anymore. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, had nothing to mark the passage of days, couldn’t even say if such a concept existed in that realm.
Frustrated, angry, and bored beyond sanity, he longed for something to kill or maim, a bottle to smash, or a wall to punch. Anything to dispel the massive amount of energy building to a Hiroshima-sized explosion. Stopping dead in his tracks, he threw back his head and howled with rage.
The sound was swallowed by the shifting mists almost as soon as it left his throat.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His chin dropped to his chest, shoulders slumping in momentary defeat. How many times had he been through this already? Caught in an endless cycle of buildup and release that jangled along his nerves like a metal spoon clanging against a tin cup. And in between the rounds of nettlesome nothingness lay vague recollections of something else – a sudden flush, an inexplicable weakness, a loss of consciousness, murky dreams that eluded his memory. And the sense, each time he came to, that something precious had slipped from his grasp.
Head lifting, Spike scanned the nebulous haze around him. Fists clenched and jaw squared, he resumed walking.
And the cycle began again.
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“He did not feel worthy.”
Buffy stopped, hand resting on the door to Spike’s room. Illyria emerged from the shadows of the hallway.
“What?”
“He did not seek you out when his body was restored to him. He did not feel worthy.”
“That’s crazy.” Bewildered, Buffy shook her head. “He sacrificed his life to save the world. How could he not feel…?” Trailing off, she frowned. “He actually told you that?”
“He spoke of it to the shell.” Illyria moved closer.
Okay. Confused now. “He went to the beach?”
Illyria halted, face reflecting a hint of uncertainty for the first time since Buffy had known her. “Perhaps. It has no relevance. He spoke to the shell…Fred.”
“Oh.” Buffy knew she had no right to resent Illyria for that, but she did. She hated that stinging reminder of how close Spike had been to someone who wasn’t her.
Even more, she resented having to stand there in the hallway listening to Illyria. Tomorrow she’d be forced to choose, to make a decision she didn’t want to contemplate right now. Tonight, she only wanted to be with Spike.
“You are torn.”
Surprised, she searched Illyria’s face. It hadn’t sounded like an accusation, but she felt oddly defensive. “You’re not?”
Illyria’s chin raised. “No. There is nothing I can do here.”
“Maybe not, but still—”
“Before the battle, each of us was charged with a task – one suited to our individual strengths. It is the same here. I do what I must, as do you.” Illyria paused, ice-blue gaze going first to the door then to Buffy’s arm, where it lingered a moment before locking with hers. “I will not fail. Nor must you.”
Buffy’s breath caught in her throat as the significance of Illyria’s words sank in. She knew. Somehow Illyria knew. Almost before she could process that thought, she heard the familiar cadence of Xander’s footsteps fast approaching down the corridor. Illyria turned at the same time she did, and Buffy wondered if the demon welcomed the interruption as much as she did.
“Sorry to interrupt the girl talk, but Giles wants you downstairs,” he told Illyria, then backtracked as her chin rose. “What I meant to say was, Giles humbly begs the honor of your presence to help with some questions that no one other than your exalted exaltedness could possibly be able to answer.”
Illyria’s head tilted and her eyes flashed. “Do not mock me, human. My tolerance is not without end.” Then, with a last long look at Buffy, she was gone, striding down the corridor.
Buffy waited until Illyria was out of sight before turning to Xander. “Those questions – do they have anything to do with Spike or Angel?”
“Yeeeah…about that. I lied.” At her raised brow, he shrugged. “It was that or tell her to go away. In which case, she’d snap me like a toothpick or grind me under her heel till I cried like a baby. Not a pretty picture.”
Buffy snorted softly. “So what happens when she finds out you sent her on a wild Giles chase?”
He shrugged, waving the question away. “I’m not worried. If Giles rats me out, I figure I have plausible deniability on my side.”
Buffy nodded absently, her mind already inside the room with Spike. She’d been gone a lot longer than intended and now she was antsy to get back to him. The phone call from Willow, her encounters with Illyria, the conflicting emotions stirred up by news of Angel’s whereabouts and worry over Spike – all of it pulled at her patience, twisting it taut. Reaching for the doorknob, she stopped when Xander’s hand touched her arm.
He took a deep breath. “Listen, Buffy…I know we’re not officially talking about this until tomorrow, but Giles thought we should call for backup, just in case. He contacted Vi, and she’s on her way.”
She frowned. “What about Cleveland?”
“Things are quiet enough right now. If anything comes up while she’s gone, Rona’s got the junior slayers to help out. We, uh, thought about calling Kennedy, too, but that’s a little dicey, what with the breakup and all. Willow’s adjusting okay, but Kennedy…not so much.”
“Right. Bad idea. Can we talk about this later?”
Buffy entered the room, trailed by Xander. Mrs. Hudson, who’d been with the Giles family for decades, was seated in a chair, quietly knitting away. Her plump face broke into a smile as Buffy approached the bed.
“I was beginning to think you’d taken up residence in the hallway, lamb.”
Buffy smiled. “No, too drafty. Thanks for sitting with him.”
“Don’t you go thankin’ me now. I’m happy to do it. Poor lad hasn’t stirred, though I do think he’s resting a bit easier since you came.” Regarding him fondly, she clucked sympathetically under her breath. “It’s a shame, it is. Such a handsome fellow. Who would have thought I’d be carin’ so about a fierce vampire? But he’s wormed his way into my heart, he has, with that fine face of his and that poor, lost soul.”
As she rose to greet them, she beamed kindly at Buffy. “Mr. Hudson would tell you I’ve a soft spot for strays and an even softer one for lost causes. But don’t you fret. Your man ended up here for a reason, and you’ll sort it out…you and Master Rupert. I’ve a good feeling about it.” Nodding to Xander, she gave Buffy’s arm a comforting squeeze. “I’ll just be on my way now. I’m sure he knows you’re back and is that much happier for it.” Suiting action to words, she promptly bustled out the door.
In her wake, Buffy suddenly felt drained and strangely lethargic. Worried about Spike, resentful of Illyria, uncertain about Angel’s fate and the choice she had to make – her thoughts seemed to flounder in that pit of quicksand she called a brain. Making it as far as the bed, she collapsed into the chair.
“I didn’t know.”
She blinked and looked up to find Xander watching her.
“How you felt,” he clarified, shrugging self-consciously. “I mean, I knew you cared about the guy. Never could understand why exactly, considering—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Erase that last bit, okay? It’s not what I came up here to say. The point is, I never realized until you got here how much he really meant to you. Still means.”
He knelt beside her, bringing them face-to-face. “I’m sorry we made you feel like you couldn’t tell us.” Stopping, he shook his head ruefully. “No. I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I swear I’d take it back, if I could.”
Buffy responded automatically. “Xander—”
“Don’t.” His voice was quiet. “You’re going to let me off the hook, and you shouldn’t. I was angry back when I found out, for a lot of reasons. Mostly because I wanted you to think and feel the same way I did. Scoobies good. Vampires bad. A chipped vampire who thinks he can be one of us? Not even in the realm of possibility. I was wrong, and I’m sorry for it.”
Buffy stared, searching his face. “So what changed?”
A self-deprecating smile curved his lips. “My perspective. Time has a funny way of doing that.” With his head turned toward Spike and only his eye patch visible to her,
Buffy couldn’t read his expression. “As long as I’m being honest…and please, god, somebody kill me before I say this…he really wasn’t that bad. If you don’t count the frequently-trying-to-kill-us part, the endless snide remarks about my manhood, the irritating smirk, and that whole…thing…at the Magic Box, that is. But, you know…after the soul…it was better.”
Buffy’s gaze dropped to her hands, carefully folded in her lap. “It was better before, too. It took me a long time to understand, but he was trying, Xander, he really was. None of us would see it. Instead of encouraging him, we just made it harder to keep going in the right direction.”
Suddenly Xander was facing her again. “Hey…back up there, bucko. Let’s not get carried away. I may be running along behind the Spike bandwagon, now, but you’re not going to convince me that if only we’d welcomed him into the fold with open arms, all those pesky ‘evil’ issues would’ve vanished into thin air. You can tame a tiger, Buffy, but at heart, he’s still a tiger. At least with the soul, Spike is more like a…cranky pussycat. A really dangerous cranky pussycat, but one that can be domesticated.
“And, yeah, I’ll grant you he was trying, and, in hindsight, we could have made it easier for him than we did. But, hey,” he countered, offering a lopsided smile, “if being good were easy, everyone would do it.”
Buffy glared. “Xander, I’m not stupid. I know it wouldn’t have solved everything. I’m just…we could have tried, okay? And we didn’t. We were awful to him, not because of what he did or anything he used to do, but because of what he was.” She bit her lip. “And because he stayed there and took it.”
Suddenly earnest, she caught his gaze with hers. “Why did we do those things?”
Xander’s face assumed a help-me expression. “Things in general, or particular things?”
“Stupid things. Hurtful things. Things that make you lie awake at night wishing you could take it all back, make it like it never happened.”
“Ah. Those things.” He shrugged, smiling sadly. “Why does anyone? For the same reason we keep doing them, I guess…because there never seems like another way. By the time we figure out there is, it’s too late. We’ve lost the chance and, for most of us, there’s no getting it back.” A soft huff of laughter escaped, tinged with a trace of bitterness. “You’d think we’d learn.”
Hesitating, he added so softly she could barely hear, “I hurt her, Buffy. I hurt her so bad. She never really got over it.”
The pain in his voice stunned her. “Xander…”
“I miss her, you know? Every day. I thought it would stop. Thought I could fill up that empty space with other things, other people. Didn’t work. It’s still there – part of me. Doesn’t hurt as much anymore, and it’s not like it’s all the time. But it’s there, and I wouldn’t want it gone because it would mean losing her all over again.”
Buffy felt her eyes fill with tears. What could she say – that she knew how he felt? That she had the same kind of regrets he did? It was pretty self-evident and the whole point of his confession to her. Speaking it aloud wouldn’t change anything for either of them; it would only serve to trivialize his pain. Just as any words of comfort or contradiction would make her a bigger hypocrite than she already was. All she could do was gaze wordlessly back at him.
As if he recognized her dilemma, Xander offered another sad smile, his hand resting briefly on her shoulder before he rose. At the doorway he paused. “I’ll never forget her, and I’ll sure as hell never stop loving her. I just wish…that she’d known.”
He stared at the floor, pent-up breath escaping in a deep, shuddering sigh. Then his gaze rose and locked with hers. “I’d give anything to tell her that to her face. Even if…” He trailed off, glancing at Spike. “Even if she couldn’t hear me.”
The door closed quietly behind him.
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TBC in Part 6
A/N: Okay, you guys have been reeeeally patient and just lovely all around, but I know you’re bound to be wondering if we’re ever going to get to the good stuff. ::cough::Buffy/Spike::cough:: And the answer is…in the next chappie. ::insert evil grin here::
To those of you who’ve left reviews, thank you so much. It was a hectic, crazy week, so I have a few comments I haven’t replied to yet. I’m off to do that now. If I can, I’ll post the next chapter tomorrow, if I can. Otherwise, it may be a few days.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This is currently a WIP written in response to a Spuffy Kinkathon challenge. The story requirements were as follows: The requested kink was hurt/comfort. Three other requests were to show Spike reluctantly biting Buffy, include Dawn and/or Xander in the story, and set it anywhere from Season 5 to Post-NFA.