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Author's Chapter Notes:
Spike, Buffy and company aren’t mine. I just like to play with other people’s toys. I promise to return them happier than they were when I borrowed them. No copyright infringement is intended.
I’m sorry for the delay in updating. I’ve been ill this past month.
Chapter 4 - Soul Mate

With Spike’s “Yours,” a shock wave rolled through them. Suddenly their world was compressed into tiny points, then exploded back out to normal size and shape, but denser somehow, as if they had greater mass. Throughout it all, images flashed through their minds.

Realization of what had just happened swept over Spike and he cried out in exhilaration, “My God! We mated, we’re soul mates!” He gave her a quick hard buss and hug before jumping up from the bed and grabbing her. He flung her around in a circle a couple of times before planting the astonished slayer back into the middle of the bed. Then he started picking up everything in site, whooping and laughing as he went, bouncing manically around the room. He grabbed a huge boulder in the corner, lifted it like it was a ball of Styrofoam, and threw it against a far wall. It smashed into gravel and he laughed, “It was too big, couldn’t get it out of the door before. Now that problem’s fixed!” Next he lifted the bed by one leg, Buffy still in it, and raised and lowered it a few times like a dumb bell.

“What the hell?” she cried. Buffy scrambled down and as soon as he returned the bed to the ground, grabbed Spike and pushed him up against a wall, intending to hold him there long enough to quiet him down and get some sense from him. She meant to demand why he was suddenly so strong; why she could see so much better in the dim room all of a sudden; why she had just started hearing water dripping in the distance; why she was catching a delectable whiff of “Spike” that she’d only smelt before when right up against him. Instead he crashed through the wall and into the next chamber.

She gaped at him as he chuckled again, exclaiming, “New door! Good job, Pet. Now we have an extra room.”

Buffy stared down at her hands, then back up at him in confusion, and could only repeat, “What the hell?”

Spike looked at Buffy’s bewildered face and his excitement dimmed. He said flatly, “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

“No. Why did you crash through the wall? All I did was push you up against it! And not only are you suddenly well and whole again, why is your strength super sized? ”

“Do those watchers teach you slayers nothing, nowadays?” he demanded in exasperation.

Picking up her blouse and noting its shredded condition, she dropped it and demanded shakily, “Forget the Watchers. You tell me. Now. And find me something to wear.” She felt like her world was going to fly apart. Buffy wrapped her arms around her body as if to hold herself together. Something was very different, something basic and vital had changed. She shivered with budding alarm.

“Here,” Spike said. “These shouldn’t be too huge on you. They shrank in a hot wash.” He handed her a pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt. She put them on and was relieved to see that they fit fairly well. The jeans clung to her hips as if meant to be there, and by rolling the bottoms up a couple of times, the length was fine. She knotted the T-shirt under her breasts to make it feel not quite so dowdy, and examined herself in the mirror above his antique armoire. Seeing a silver handled brush there, she picked it up and smoothed the wild tangles from her hair.

In the meantime, Spike had dressed in black jeans and T-shirt as well. Settling back on the bed, he watched as she pulled the brush through her long hair. The feminine movements triggered a heavy pooling in his lower body. Knowing that now was not the time to have her heels over head again, he smirked and taunted her, hoping to irritate her enough to stop her from tempting him. “Finished with your haute couture yet, my little clothes horse, and ready for Vampire Relations 101?”

Buffy studiously ignored his ribbing about fussing over her outfit. She felt the need to put off his explanation for a few more seconds, and wondered if she really wanted to hear what he had to say after all. “Why do you have a mirror down here, when you don’t have a reflection?” she hedged.

Spike studied her in the looking glass, considering her evasion, and wondered whether or not to tell her that he’d gotten the mirror when his first human darling had complained about the lack of one. Nope, better not. Sidetracked, Spike considered his preferred word, darling, to the more common term of cow, that referred to a living human used for blood. Cow had such an uncomplimentary connotation, and his little darlings had after all been just that. Darling. He shifted his attention back to the slayer, his magnificent new darling, and was interested to remember that even back when he’d first hung the mirror, he’d had a vision of Buffy in the back of his mind; of lying on the bed and watching as she brushed her beautiful locks. Today, that vision had come true. Finally he gave a seemingly careless shrug and said simply, “Women like to primp. I like to watch.”

She frowned at herself in the mirror and turned towards him. “You got it for me, then? What made you think I’d ever be here to use it?”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” He didn’t disabuse her of the notion that it was there for her. It probably always had been.

That got her back up. He was so arrogant! He’d been confident enough of her eventually being down here and needing a mirror, that he’d gotten her one. Why did he have to be so knowing? It was infuriating. “Pretty ballsy of you,” she said coldly.

He stared at her indulgently, a soft look stealing into his icy blue eyes. She was going to be difficult. He smiled inwardly, she wouldn’t be his slayer if she wasn’t complex and thorny. “Life is what it is.”

“And you always get what you want out of life, don’t you?” She remembered with a chill that Angel had told them when Spike first came to town that he never gave up, he might end up killing everything in his path to do it, but he always got what he wanted in the end.

“I do my best.”

“And you wanted me. So now you’ve taken me, haven’t you?”

“You have things turned around there, Slayer. I may have claimed you, but YOU took me.” She might be the love of his life, but he wasn’t going to put up with her blaming him for what had happened. Her days of self-delusion were over.

Buffy got snagged on the claiming part. She vaguely remembered Giles warning her once about claims during early vampire lore lessons. She hadn’t paid enough attention, as usual. “You claimed me? What an idiotic thing to do! Claim a slayer?! What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking at all! Don’t be stupid, Buffy! I warned you beforehand how dangerous it is to give yourself to a vampire. You bit and drank me! And not only did you do it while I was drinking you but while we were shagging! If you did that to ANY other vampire, and if your well being wasn’t more important to me than my own is, you’d not only be dead right now, you’d be preparing to rise again!”

They glared at each other. Buffy wasn’t about to admit that he was right, though she knew he was. Even with Angel, she had a feeling that could have happened.

Clenching his jaw in an effort to keep his temper, Spike continued angrily, “But even as a claim, that’s all it was. Claims can be broken. Hell, as my grandsire, even Angel could have broken it. But you accepted the claim, you said, “Yours”, making it immune to outside interference. And then you compounded it by making it a double claim. You claimed me back!”

Buffy dropped her eyes, bottom lip protruding stubbornly. Yes, she had. Why had she done that? All she knew was that she had wanted it, wanted him desperately, wanted to keep him, and wanted to be on an equal footing with him. From deep within her had come the counter claim. It had felt right. Actually, it still did. That didn’t mean she could accept what she’d done. There were too many outside forces against it...and he was a soulless vampire.

“Look at me, Buffy. You have to understand, a double claim is a marriage. Whether you knew it consciously or not, your Slayer did, or you wouldn’t have known the right words to repeat. You married me. To top that off, if Soul Mates claim each other while making love, and while drinking from each other, they mate. That’s the pressure wave that swamped us. There’s no divorce from a mating, love, no turning back; it’s forever.”

Buffy looked at him bleakly, her life flashing before her eyes. “Nothing lasts forever, Spike. Everything falls apart eventually. Sooner or later, everyone leaves.”

Spike’s heart broke for her, and he pulled her into his arms. She stood rigidly, but let him hold her. “I’ll dust before I leave you.” When she would have protested, he put a finger to her lips and said, “Please, Slayer, for once just shut up and listen. During a mating, souls mingle. Part of you lives inside of me now, and part of me lives inside of you.” She stirred, trying to interrupt, “Shh, I know, you think I don’t have a soul. You’re wrong about that. A vampire demon is a soul, it’s just different than a human soul. But more about that later.

“For now you need to know that with the mingling of our souls, we gain each other’s characteristics. We were both strong beforehand, so when we got each other’s strength, it doubled what we had before. Same thing goes for our speed, reflexes and healing. I can see, smell and hear better than a human; so now you can too, yeah?” He raised an eyebrow and peered at her shrewdly. She nodded back mutely. “The sun’ll be no problem for me now; and holy water’s just water, like it is for you; I won’t dust with a stake to the heart; stuff like that. Priorities shift, things that are important to you now matter to me. What’s important to me matters to you.”

Buffy had stiffened further at his claim that part of his ‘demon soul’ was now inside of her. The idea of healing super fast, and being even stronger and faster than before was intriguing, but she rejected having his priorities. “Are you saying that I’m evil now? That I want to go around killing and eating people, destroying the world? You’re crazy! I so do not!”

Spike laughed. “When have I ever wanted to destroy the world? You know I like it the way it is. Evil for evil’s sake has never been a big deal to me. Angelus always called me a piss poor excuse for a vampire. Most of my famous reign of terror was just to placate him and Drusilla.” Taking her by the shoulders, he looked into her eyes. “Killing people has always just been about eating.” Noting her disbelieving look, Spike conceded, “OK, fine. Sometimes I kicked it up out of boredom, but it takes a whole mob of people to make it really fun. What I like is action, excitement, violence.

“Of course you already liked that stuff too. Come on, admit it,” he coaxed when she shook her head emphatically. “You just prettied it up in the guise of ‘world save-age’, to coin a phrase from the Niblet. Now you’ll be able to accept that part of yourself. As for me,” He snorted and flashed her a snarky grin, “I already feel the need to channel all that lovely violence into taking out bad guys and....talk about wussy,” he chuckled in astonishment at himself and placed his right hand dramatically over his heart, “saving the world by your side! From a vampire’s point of view, you’ve ruined me, you know.”

Without thinking of anything but wiping that wise ass grin off his face for laughing at saving the world, she popped him on the nose, sending him flying.

He jumped up in full vamp face, eyes burning gold with a fanged grin, and bashed her back in the face. She fell against the area near where she’d sent Spike through the wall earlier, breaking the opening into an arch size hole, and landing against the far wall in the adjacent chamber. She stood up and stared at him in astonishment and fear. Spike was waiting for her on the other side of the arch, blood thirsty smirk in place, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and beckoning to her with his hands. There was no sign that he was in any pain from hitting her.

‘Apparently since I have no chip, neither does he now.’ He hadn’t even realized it, was just jonesing for a good fight. ‘What have I done?’ Buffy cried silently, panicking. ‘The chip isn’t working...It’s gone! I’ve done it again! This is “Buffy screws the soul out of her man, Version 2!” I can’t do it; I just can’t kill the man I love again! Oh no...Oh My God, No...I love him!’ Buffy shook and screamed in denial and grief, then dropped to her knees sobbing wildly. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth as she wept...

...Spike was scared to death. He couldn’t get her calmed down, she kept sobbing and muttering, “I can’t do it again, I just can’t.” He rocked her in his arms, crooning to her, singing old lullabies from his human days, whispering that everything would be all right... she needn’t worry...she wouldn’t have to do it again, he’d take care of everything...” Buffy laughed hysterically at that before lapsing back into tears. Finally, exhausted, she fell asleep in his arms, and he spent the next few hours holding her and worrying about what could have happened.

As time passed and she didn’t wake up, Spike admitted to himself that she looked more unconscious than asleep, and he finally decided that he needed to take her to her Watcher. Perhaps it was a slayer thing, and Giles could figure out what was wrong. He carried her through the late afternoon sunshine, barely registering the beauty of the slanting light through the trees. During his life, William had written odes to “The Golden Time of Day”. He was seeing it for the first time in well over a century, and he couldn’t admire it. Something was wrong with his mate. He had to make it right.

tbc...





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