YAY! Thank you so much to whoever nominated me!!
I thought I’d update this before my operation. I’m having surgery on Thursday—standard, gallbladder removal. But tied in with missing-of-school, the one day my doctor wants me to remain bed-ridden, and my other WIPs (check out for Dreamscape), I figured it might be a little longer than I’d like between updates. So here’s more Strawberry Fields. Hope you all enjoy.
Thank you all for your patience and support of this story. It means so much that you’re sticking it out with me.
Spike was dead.
Buffy stood frozen in the open doorway. She didn’t know how long she’d been there. Time had stopped ticking the second her shadow crossed the threshold. Nothing about the room seemed real. Not the turned-down bed. Not the bags of blood scattered across the window-table. Not the crucified vampire pinned to the far wall.
Spike was dead.
Oh my God.
It was the most horrifying thing she’d ever seen. Beyond every body she’d found drained. Every familiar face she’d had to bury. Spike was full of life—always full of life. He was someone she knew; someone who was not dead to her, and never had been. He was her enemy. He was her reluctant ally. He was someone she really enjoyed kissing. He was…
God, he was dead.
Buffy sniffed hard and wiped at her eyes. When had she started crying? She hadn’t been here long enough to cry. And yet, her cheeks were damp with cold tears. She wasn’t sobbing. She wasn’t whimpering. She just stood in the doorway and looked at him, crying silent tears.
Spike was dead.
It had happened hours ago—she was certain. He was pale. He was so pale. Paler than a vampire—paler than any corpse she’d ever seen. His white skin melted seamlessly into the white wall behind him. He looked like a snow angel—a snow angel splattered with blood.
He was naked. She wondered why he was naked. Perhaps he’d been here with someone. Perhaps they’d had fun. Perhaps…
No. She knew that wasn’t true. Fifteen years of living under her father’s roof had educated her childish eyes in the differences between recently-slept-in and recently-fucked-in beds. Spike had just awoken, most likely, when this happened to him. When he was nailed to the wall with a sword.
It had happened hours before. Hours before Kendra was murdered. Perhaps, even, hours before the fumbled confrontation with Angel in the graveyard. The confrontation that had turned out to be a diversion. A diversion planned and executed to render her completely and utterly alone.
God, she was so foolish. Of course Angel and Dru knew about Spike. Of course they did. Spike wasn’t staying at a motel because he wanted to. He’d told her as much when he’d scribbled the room number onto the sticky-note he found in her backpack. She was so stupid for thinking they would leave him be; that her friends would be the only ones they targeted.
How odd that her last memory of Spike would be his handing her a note. The note with his room number. How her eyes had watched his lips and wished they could go back to the part where they were making out. He’d handed her something that could have saved his life had she used her brain, and she’d forgotten it because of his mouth.
“Oh Spike…”
The second the words touched the air, everything became real. It was real. And that was all it took for Buffy to break. She couldn’t leave him like that. She couldn’t. He meant too much to her; he was her vampire, dammit, and she wouldn’t leave him crucified. Not when she was the reason he was gone. Not when his alliance with her had cost his life.
Not when she had feelings for him she hadn’t gotten a chance to explore. Feelings she was too terrified to give credence. Feelings that had allowed her to shake the shadow of her relationship with Angel off her heels, and given her the strength to acknowledge what she had to do.
She didn’t love Spike, but he was hers. He was completely hers. He was hers to fight. Hers to kill. Hers to kiss until she couldn’t feel her lips. It was his fault; he’d thrown it in with her, and she cared about him. She hadn’t wanted to, but he’d made it impossible to look the other way. He’d held her when she cried. He hadn’t mocked her weakness. He’d been there for her the way no one else had, or could have been.
And now he was gone, and it was her fault.
All her fault.
Choking back a sob, Buffy’s numb legs took tentative steps forward, her eyes never leaving his body. His throat had been slit, trailing rivers of blood down his chest. The handle of the sword had staunched the heaviest blood-flow, but a growing pool of red still soaked his lower body. He was so still. So still.
Vampires were never still. Vampires didn’t die and leave a body behind. Why hadn’t Giles told her that vampires could bleed to death?
An inhuman cry scratched at her throat. She needed to get him down.
“I’m so sorry, Spike,” she whispered, her vision blurring. Her fingers closed around the slippery handle.
God. His blood was on her skin.
Buffy shivered and shook the thought aside, instead throwing her weight behind her arm and tugging at the sword as hard as she could. A sickening sound spilled into the air, the movement reenergizing the blood flow. Her stomach turned and bile rose in her throat, but she wasn’t about to stop on account of squeamishness. She owed Spike more than that. So much more.
It took both hands—the sword was too-far buried in his stomach. She ignored the sound of metal sliding against organs and ripped flesh; she ignored the red river that waterfalled down his snow-white skin. She ignored everything until the sword was free; until Spike’s body collapsed in a lifeless heap to the floor.
“Oh God!” Buffy cried, blinking away another wave of tears. The sword tumbled from her hands as her knees crashed to the floor, taking him into her trembling arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…I just had to get it out. I didn’t mean to—”
And then something happened. Something that stopped her heart.
It was nearly inaudible, but it was there.
A moan.
The gasp that crushed her chest would have killed her if she’d been anything but a slayer. Buffy’s eyes widened, her shaking hands grasping Spike’s cold shoulders. “Spike?” she whispered. “Oh my God, are you…”
Another moan. Louder this time.
“Oh God. Oh my God. Oh God.”
Buffy was on her feet in a blink, Spike in her arms. She didn’t know, exactly, how to bring a vampire back from the edge of death, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try. Her feet carried her instinctively toward the bathroom where her trembling arms lowered him into the tub. She’d seen this in movies—people splashing water on the unconscious. Or dragging drunks into the shower because water had some sort of healing ailment that brought others from the brink of delirium. Was that even true? Her mom had never tried it with her father. She’d always just let him sleep it off. What if it worked on people but not vampires?
There were only so many options.
It was always cold water in the movies, but he was already so cold. He’d felt like ice against her fingers and she wasn’t about to make him colder. Instead, she turned the faucet on at full heat and stepped back, crossing her arms nervously. Trying hard to ignore the anxious shivers that clamored her insides and made it near impossible to stand still.
Her eyes were drawn irrevocably to the gaping hole in his stomach. How could anyone, human or not, walk away from that?
She didn’t know. She thought she’d known everything about vampires but she didn’t know this. If he was still alive, would he have that hole in his gut for the rest of forever? That permanent, ugly reminder of what his relationship with her had cost him? God, what if he woke up and wanted to tear her throat out? What if…
Spike moaned again.
Buffy’s wide eyes shot to his face. “Spike?” she ventured breathlessly. “Oh God, please.”
But that was all. That was all. Nothing happened after that.
Maybe she’d been wrong about the hot water. Maybe it was cold water that held the magical remedy. Buffy lurched forward, desperation charging her veins, and switched the faucet back to cold.
And waited.
And waited.
The tub was filling. The water was turning red. Spike didn’t moan again.
He needs blood.
Where the thought came from, she didn’t know. But it remained, niggling at her subconscious as her eyes soaked him in. Spike’s hauntingly pale body. Spike immersed in a bath of blood-water. Spike not moving.
Not moving.
It came from nowhere, but she suddenly knew what to do. There was blood in the motel. There was bagged blood on the front table. On that crappy table every motel on the planet offered its patrons. He had blood. He had bagged blood. He had blood.
She had to get him blood.
Buffy twisted on her heel. She was just a second too fast to witness Spike’s eyes pop open. To see them blaze with amber as his fangs descended.
But she did hear his growl, and her feet promptly turned to cement.
The next thing she knew, his hands were on her and she was in the tub with him. His eyes were yellow, his expression foregone. There was nothing hinting at recollection on his face—there was only a feral blaze of hunger.
She was too startled to think about kicking him away. Her mind was suddenly vacant; all she knew was his name.
“Spike?”
It was the last sound to touch the air before his fangs pierced her flesh.
TBC