Chapter 11
“You know you guys can go home,” Buffy told Anya and Xander who were both looking exhausted—and rightly, so, it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. They’d moved to the waiting area on another floor but the room was much the same—same chairs, same paint, same smell.
“No, we’re good,” Xander answered, fighting back a yawn.
“I’ll go get everyone coffee,” it was the first thing Anya had said since Xander’s earlier rebuke.
Giles and Willow both looked thankful.
“You sure I don’t need to—“ Xander started to question.
“Willow and I will go,” Anya interrupted him and again Buffy wondered if Xander noticed her hurt—this time so clearly evident in her voice.
“That sounds good,” Willow agreed and got up quickly to follow Anya who was already half way down the hall.
“Would you wish me to take her home?” Giles asked Buffy, indicating her sister who had—against her very noble efforts—fallen asleep about an hour earlier.
“No, she’ll wake up at some point and I know she wants to stay, so…”
“I understand.”
“But if you need to go, Giles, really…”
“No, no, I’m perfectly alright; I think I’ll just go for a bit of a walk around though, stretch my legs.”
Buffy smiled gently at him as he got up and headed the opposite direction of Anya and Willow.
After five minutes of silence with just Buffy and a sleeping Dawn for company, Xander was getting restless.
“You know, I think I should go make sure those two aren’t….killing each other or something. They can really get going and when Ahn’s tired, she…I should go find them.”
“Of course. They probably need help carrying all the coffee,” Buffy offered him more of a reason.
“Yeah, that too. You know, five cups, four hands…problems.”
As soon as Xander had rounded the corner at the end of the hall and she had made sure Giles was not coming back, Buffy leaned over to kiss her sister, who was sleeping in the chair next to hers, on the forehead.
“I’ll be back soon, Dawnie. I promise.”
Dawn had woken up just as Xander made up a reason to go looking for Anya and Willow, but chose to keep her eyes shut. She wasn’t quite ready to deal with everyone yet; to deal with the world at all, really.
When she heard Buffy’s promise she wasn’t worried about her sister leaving, quite the contrary, she was glad Buffy was finally able to get out. She could tell from the moment Buffy had tried to leave hours earlier that her sister needed to get out of the hospital, if only for a little while.
She made it a point to stay awake until the first person came back, so she could tell them not to go off in some frantic search for Buffy.
It took Buffy a while to realize that she was headed in the direction of Spike’s crypt, but not much longer than that to realize she was going there because she was mad at the damned vampire. More than mad really, furious might have been a better word.
And being kept cooped up in that hospital for hours on end with her feeling just under the surface, certainly hadn’t helped matters any.
When Spike’s crypt finally came into view, Buffy took the opportunity to rest back against another mausoleum to catch her breath. She was using much more energy today than she had in her and she knew she’d be paying for it tomorrow—or rather later today.
The walk from the hospital here wasn’t long and the hours of sitting had done Buffy some good, but it was still a push for her to make it. After a few minutes of resting and some deep, calming breaths, Buffy felt ready again.
Ignoring the ache that was growing in her head she headed for Spike’s crypt.
Spike wondered why he was even surprised when Buffy banged into his crypt at what had to be at least three in the morning, without knocking of course. But he was surprised. Especially given the fact that he’d hardly seen her out of bed the past several weeks.
“Something I can do for you, Slayer?” The snark returned full force when he sensed her anger.
“You’re an idiot, you know that Spike?” Buffy shut a punch at his face and he was too stunned to stop her.
Not that it mattered; the hit held barely enough power to hurt a human, let alone a vampire like himself.
“What’d I do now, luv?” he was truly curious since the last time he’d actually seen her was to give her the bear. The bear she’d seemed to like and appreciate at the time.
“You know what you did, Spike,” he hadn’t heard her spit his name out like that since…since he’d chained her up that night. This time he was able to stop her from hitting him, but he had to loosen his grip when he saw her flinch involuntarily in pain and the chip let him know that just that simple action was hurting her.
What the hell was she doing all the way out here, in the middle of the night, when she was weak enough that just him grabbing her fist mid swing literally hurt her?
“Honest, Slayer, I’ve got no clue.”
“No, you wouldn’t would you?” His statement seemed to have only fueled her anger. “God, you’re such a fucking hypocrite!”
Okay, girl was swearing now…something was up.
“Buffy?” he hoped using her name would catch her attention but apparently she was too far-gone to notice—or to care if she did.
“You act like you care, like you actually like my mother….then you say…about me and you let Dawn hang around here….And you gave me the bear….But then……Was all that just a joke, Spike? Some new way you and Dru cooked up for you to get your third Slayer?”
“What in the bleedin’ hell are you on about?” he was too confused to be properly angry at her suggestion.
“And then,” she went on like she hadn’t heard him—which maybe she hadn’t, “then you spend all this time telling me how good you are at observing people…that bit about Angel and I never being friends…you spend all this time telling me you can…sense stuff. That you can figure things out. And now I find out it’s all been a fucking lie! The whole damn thing! You…you’ve been nothing more than a lie!”
He guessed she realized she couldn’t harm him—physically—because she started to leave, started to walk back out of his crypt into the night.
“Not so fast, luv,” he made sure to only grab her arm with enough pressure to stop her exit, nothing more. “You don’t get to leave until you tell what the bloody hell you’re talking about because I haven’t got a fucking clue.”
“Fine,” she huffed, “which part do you want to know about? You being a hypocrite for acting like you cared about my mom and my sister? Or is it that you want to know why I think you’ve been lying about your oh so keen powers of observation?”
“One, I care about your mum and the bit, but I love you, Buffy. Don’t fucking interrupt me; I let you prattle on about what a wanker I supposedly am, don’t interrupt me. And I want to know why you think both of those things.”
“They have the same answer so it doesn’t really matter,” she said almost flippantly before looking him in the eye, her expression suddenly deadly serious. “You weren’t there!”
Spike tried to ignore the pain and fear he heard in her voice, ignore the fact that she now seemed almost…disappointed in him as opposed to angry. Tried to ignore all of that and find out what she was talking about, but this was Buffy….His Buffy.
He tried to hug her to him and for a moment, he thought she was going to let him but then she pulled back and glared at him. “And see, you don’t even want to know now!” She couldn’t believe him. God, he really didn’t care.
“Of course I want to know!” he didn’t mean to shout at her but she’d been yelling at him for ten minutes, it was kind of hard not to do the same. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay first you stupid bint.”
“Yeah, so let’s insult me know so I forget that you’re the one that’s a fucking ass!”
“Well maybe it’d help if you’d just tell me what the bleedin’ fuck it is I didn’t do already!”
“My mom had a seizure. She had a seizure because she has a brain tumor and now she’s in the hospital and I don’t know if she’s going to die! You should have known she had it, you should have told me! God you should at least have a fucking phone so I could have had Dawn call you when she called Giles and 911!
“You weren’t there! That’s what you didn’t do!”
Buffy left his crypt then but Spike just stood staring, for several minutes, at the spot where she had been standing, too shocked too know what to do.
Joyce was…And the niblet and Buffy had…
She was right, Buffy was, he was an absolute arse.
He should have known she was sick, should have sensed it somehow. After al he did—
And then…by the fact that Dawn had been the one to call the Watcher and 911 he figured that Buffy had stayed with her mother while…Buffy, his lovely Buffy who was growing weaker each day with no help from the Scoobies—or anyone—as to why, had had to stay with her mother while she had a seizure…while she sent her sister off to call for help.
Help that didn’t include him.
He should have…and how long ago had this been anyway? For all he knew it could have happened the day before or…Bloody hell, he told the girl he loved her and then left her to deal with this?
With her possibly dying mother all while she was trying to get herself well…and she had Dawn, too…Buffy was, no matter what the Watcher might try, the one who would have to hold it all together; she couldn’t let Dawn down by not taking care of their mother properly and she couldn’t let her mother down by not taking care of Dawn properly.
She had all of that on her shoulders and they were soldiers that might very well crumble under the weight if someone couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. And soon.
He really was a right wanker for not at least checking in on them. Maybe then he would have known, maybe then…
TBC...........please review :)
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