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Beta: dusty 273
Warnings (This Chapter): Contains Adult Language, Angst, Self-mutilation
Warnings (This Chapter): Contains Adult Language, Angst, Self-mutilation
Spike stared at the cell phone in his hand, taking a moment to marvel at it. His first time around, telephones had been a new technology, not in every household, and heavy enough to be more suitable as a bludgeon than an instrument of communication. To have a phone that he could take everywhere in his pocket, well, that was just... neat. He ran one calloused thumb over the metal and plastic, reveling in its smooth newness, when suddenly the blasted thing lit up and started making an electronic noise that sounded suspiciously like the refrain from "Baby One More Time."
Knew I shouldn't have let the Bit program the damned thing. Spike flipped it open and pressed it to his ear, not bothering to check the Caller ID. There were only a limited number of people who had this number, and out of those, fewer still would deign to call him.
An out-of-breath girly teenage voice asked him, "Spike, is she with you?"
"No, luv, she's not here. What's wrong? What's up?" Spike tried to keep the rising notes of panic out of his voice in order not to alarm Dawn. "Bit, what happened?"
The tiny voice from the phone's small speaker sounded slightly calmer. "Nothing happened. I mean… It's probably nothing..."
"But...?"
“I came home not too long ago, and... when I was brushing my teeth, I saw some bandages in the bathroom... they had some blood on them... I thought she’d hurt herself patrolling..." Dawn had calmed even more by then; as if hearing the words come out of her own mouth had convinced her that she was probably overreacting. Spike was not as confident about that. “It’s probably nothing…” she repeated, trailing off.
“I’m sure big sis is fine,” he said, lying through his fangs. “You know she occasionally gets a little banged up on patrol. She probably just got scraped up and stopped home to change clothes.” He had already turned back towards the cemetery section of town to look for the Slayer.
Dawn agreed. “I guess… hey, when you find her, cuz I know you’re going to look, can you tell her I’m gonna stay at Janice’s again tonight? Her parents just got this huge new TV and…” Her voice faded out to white noise in Spike’s ear as he walked; he tuned back in only when she asked him The Question.
“Spike… do you think she’s going to be okay?” Her small voice broke his heart.
“This is a big change, being… back like this, Bit. She just needs time.” God, he really hoped that wasn’t a lie too.
“But you’ll check on her?”
"Dawn," he spoke slowly, enunciating carefully, "do you have any idea which cemeteries she was doing tonight?"
"I dunno, you'd probably know better than I would. Out of the two of us, you're the only one who's allowed on patrol." She didn't bother trying to keep the sour note out of her voice.
That was another battle for another night, though. "Bit, I'm over a hundred years older than you. And plus, hello, vampire here. So when you're at least a century old, and gain some sort of supernatural powers, we can discuss this again. Figure it'll be around the same time you'll be old enough to start dating."
He snapped the phone shut on the teenager's indignant squawk, and headed across town. If Buffy was hurt, and still stubbornly insisted on patrolling, he had to find her before her recent--and unattractive—death wish led her to a sticky end. Going on instinct alone, he headed back towards Restfield at a fast clip. The Slayer's scent got stronger as he neared the front gates, and he knew he had guessed correctly.
Weaving between headstones, the faint Slayer scent of vanilla, jasmine, and power intensified. But it was also joined by two other interlopers. Salt and copper.
Spike quickened his pace until he was almost at a dead run, vaulting over tombstones and dodging low-hanging branches as he followed the scent of blood and tears. As he rounded into a clearing where he himself had spent several quieter nights, he pulled up short so quickly that he almost went sprawling with the diverted momentum.
Buffy was lying sprawled across the base of one of the cemetery's larger statues. It was a six-foot high marble angel, weeping stone tears, and its arms were raised high into the sky. With the huddled blonde lying curled at its base, sobbing, it appeared as if the angel was praying for Buffy's deliverance.
The angel itself--Spike called him Chip--stood beseeching the heavens over the prostrate Slayer, as Spike stared for a moment before approaching. He carefully wound his way around Joyce’s grave. It was the only one in the cemetery that he steadfastly refused to tread over. It just seemed wrong.
"Sla--Buffy, luv, are you hurt?" No response.
"Buffy?" He knelt before the sobbing figure and placed his hand on her arm, trying to get her to look up at him.
When she finally raised her tearstained face to look up, he almost wished she hadn't. Her face was a masque of misery and pain, and huge tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she looked dully at him from behind a curtain of disheveled blond hair. Still she said nothing.
“Buffy. Are. You. Hurt?” he asked her, voice low, enunciating every word with care.
She shook her head, causing the mass of hair to fall further over her eyes. Spike reached out one arm to help her into a seated position, watching thoughtfully as she shrank away, wrapping her arms tighter around her torso.
“Luv, I just want to help,” he pulled her by the shoulders. “I won’t tell your mates you got hurt if you don’t want me to.” She allowed him to sit her up, but quickly drew her arms back to her body. He let her, and they sat in silence for a moment.
“The smell of your blood is making me dizzy, Slayer. Want to tell me what you did?”
Vampiric hearing did not miss the Slayer’s sharp intake of breath, and the tears started fresh. She slumped against Spike’s shoulder and started sobbing.
Surprised and unsure of what to do, he tentatively wrapped one arm around her, drawing her close to his chest. She allowed him, burying her face into his black t-shirt until he could feel her cool tears dampening it to his skin. She shivered, and he pulled her in tighter, wishing he had some body warmth he could share with her, but he had to play the hand he had been dealt.
After a moment or two, the tears seemed to abate, but Buffy didn’t pull back. If ever there was a sign that she had reached her breaking point… Spike was reminded of the night he had shown up to kill her the year before, and found her silently crying on her back porch. She had allowed the vampire to comfort her then, too, by merely not shrinking away from his touch, even though he had started that particular encounter by pointing a loaded shotgun at her head. That had been uncharacteristic, but tonight’s level of trust was just… unprecedented.
He noticed the blonde was shivering, and reticent as he was to pull away from her, he was just about to shuck his leather duster and wrap her in it when he felt the tingling he associated with another vamp. No, not one other vamp, several other. Bollocks.
He tapped her on her shoulder. “Luv, we need to move. We’ve got several vamps incoming and seeing as you’re smelling all plasmically delicious and are in no state to fight, we have to go… now!”
Still Buffy didn’t react, so when the tingles grew stronger, he scooped her up and took off in the opposite direction.
* * *
Tara had become used to odd things happening in Sunnydale. It was kind of par for the course. Demon of the week, spells gone awry, impending apocalypses. Apocalii? She had become fairly good at not reacting overtly. Still, when she had set about cleaning up the living room at 1630 Revello Drive while Willow finished up at the Magic Box, the last thing she’d expected was for the front door to come slamming open, courtesy of one vampire bearing an armload full of slightly soggy slayer. Kind of a fangy version of An Officer and a Gentleman.
The expression on Spike’s face, however, made any amusement in her heart short circuit.
“Spike? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Gonna need your help with this one, luv.” He carefully maneuvered up the Summers’ narrow staircase, trying not to bang the Slayer’s head or feet into the walls. Tara followed silently, a sense of foreboding creeping slowly up her spine. When they reached Buffy’s bedroom, he dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, and it wasn’t until he started tugging her jacket and wrestling her sweater off that Tara found her voice.
“Spike? What’s—"
“DAMMIT!” He gave up trying to be gentle and tore the emerald green knit off over the Slayer’s head. Buffy didn’t react at all, just sat with her head and arms hanging limply. “Get over here, Glinda,” he started trying to peel the thermal shirt off one arm, “Gonna need you to work the other side.”
Tara stepped forward to ask what he was talking about, but the words died on her lips as she saw what Spike’s actions were revealing. A ladder-like pattern of narrow, even cuts ran up the inside of both of Buffy’s arms. They were no longer bleeding, but the dried blood had crusted and started adhering the sleeves of Buffy’s shirt to her arms. Spike was trying to avoid pulling at the scabs by peeling the shirt up slowly, but several of the cuts had already reopened.
The brunette stared, aghast. “What happened? Who did that to her?”
You did, Spike had to bite his lip to keep from bursting. You and your blind, selfish Scooby friends. But he knew that the resurrection spell had not been the gentle Wiccan’s idea. She didn’t have the blind arrogance and disregard for the natural order such a spell required, she had only followed her redheaded lover’s lead. And he knew she was badly shaken by what she was seeing now, and just starting to cotton onto what their magic had actually wrought. So he chose to say nothing, an option he did not often exercise.
By each taking an arm, they had worked Buffy down to her bra and jeans. Spike paused, suddenly realizing that he had Partially Naked Slayer in front of him, and unsure of how to proceed. He went for the button on her jeans, then stopped uncertainly. Buffy didn’t react, just kept gazing at the floor with that eerie, faraway look.
Tara took over, gently moving Spike aside as she made quick work of Buffy’s shoes and socks. “Spike?”
“Yeah?” He awkwardly averted his eyes as more flesh was revealed.
“Go run a tub. I need to wash these out to make sure they don’t get infected.” The sound of denim hitting the floor made Spike head out to his task.
“I got the tub, pet, and then I have to make a phone call or two, make some arrangements,” he hollered from the bathroom, testing the water to make sure the temperature was warm enough, but not scalding. “Can you get her into the tub by yourself?”
Tara already had the underwear-clad Slayer on her feet, and was leading a silent Buffy down the hall. She kept one arm around Buffy’s shoulders and shooed Spike away with a wave of her hand. “Go, do what you have to. It’s gonna take me a few to clean her up.” She parked the mute blonde on the toilet and when she reached for the slighter woman’s bra strap, Spike took that as his cue and skedaddled.
“Gauze in the cabinet. Peroxide under the sink. Be back in a bit, Glinda!”
“Spike?” The witch’s soft voice barely reached the vampire’s ears as he headed for the stairs. He paused, listening. “Oh God, Spike, they’re on her legs too…”
The vampire closed his eyes for a second, trying to rein his emotions in. The gentle sound of female tears followed him to the door.
* * *
When he returned twenty minutes later, Tara had already cleaned Buffy up, and gotten her partially redressed. The Slayer sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in track pants under a short robe.
Spike strode over to the closet, grabbed a gym bag and started grabbing clothes from Buffy’s dresser. Few shirts. Few pants, shorts. Workout clothes? What the hell else do blasted women wear? It’d been so long since he'd had to dress Dru, and Buffy didn’t really favor those easier-to-work Victorian dresses anyway.
As he stood befuddled by the large array of pajamas, Tara had managed to get Buffy out of the robe, and she was just finishing up wrestling the unresisting blonde into a bra when Spike turned back around.
“Apparently it’s far easier to get someone out of these things than into them…” She muttered, then blushed furiously when she realized what she’d said aloud. Spike managed to curtail a surprised chuckle, but could not stop the corner of his mouth from quirking.
The witch turned her still-red face to the task of sliding Buffy into a t-shirt. “Spike?”
“Yah, love?”
“What are you packing for? I mean, where are you taking her?”
The vampire grabbed handful of socks, stuffed them into the already-packed gym bag, and turned back to face the two women on the bed. Buffy had let her head drop onto Tara’s shoulder, and the Wiccan was gently stroking her hair, trying to soothe her.
“Need to get her away from here. This place… it’s not good for her right now.” He walked over to the women and knelt in front of them, brushing the Slayer’s hair out of her face. “How about it, Buffy? Want to get away from here for a bit?”
Hazel eyes studied Spike for a while before the blonde head bobbed once, coming to rest on Tara’s shoulder again.
So tired. Just so tired.
Spike’s gaze shifted to Tara as he examined the inside of Buffy’s arms. Tara had done a good, albeit slightly clumsy job of doctoring the Slayer’s wounds with bandages and tape. “I’m kind of out of practice… I usually do the patching up stuff with herbs and poultices, but…” The witch looked worriedly at the smaller blonde on her shoulder, “it just seemed wrong to do it with any kind of magic…”
Spike felt a little more of his respect for her return. “’Preciate that, luv. ‘M gonna start getting us out of here; I’d like to be long gone before the others get back.”
Tara nodded as she hefted Buffy’s freshly packed bag onto one shoulder, leaving the vampire to maneuver the Slayer back downstairs and outside.
Spike’s DeSoto sat in the driveway, freshly gassed, and still covered in a fine layer of dust from the abandoned garage where he’d been keeping it. The motorcycle could have sufficed for the trip there, but once they arrived, he didn’t want to be limited to solely moonlight travel under fear of flaming death. Besides, it felt good to have the old behemoth back on the road, blacked-out windows and all.
He managed to get Buffy belted in nice and tight on the passenger side, and then took the proffered bag from Tara and tossed it to join his own hastily packed rucksack in the backseat. Tara shut the passenger side door, and touched Buffy’s hair sadly through the open window.
“Spike? What do you think you’re going to do for her?” That was what he always respected about the Wiccan; it was a simple question, not a challenge or a rebuke. There was no emphasis on the ‘you’re.’
He was silent for a moment, then sighed, turning the keys in the ignition. The DeSoto’s powerful engine roared to life, and he thought about the question while waiting for the noise to even out. “Don’t rightly know, luv, but I have to try something.”
She nodded in agreement. “I hate to, ah, bring this up, but once word gets out that the Slayer’s away…”
Spike sighed and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke out his open window. The cherry tip glowed red in the dark interior of the car, illuminating the sharp angles of his cheekbones and lips. “Have your woman fix the ‘Bot. And don’t tell me she can’t do it. If she can bring a bloody person back from beyond, she can damn well fix a bunch of wires and circuits. Don’t care if she uses magic or technology. Enough people have seen her since the ‘Bot was destroyed to know the Slayer’s legitimately around.” He fixed his gaze back on the woman beside him.
“Why do you think this is happening?”
Buffy appeared not to have heard Tara’s question, and Spike bit his lip. Some secrets are so big they belong only to those they happen to. It wasn’t the vampire’s truth to tell. “Hopefully she’ll be able to tell everyone someday.”
Tara raised a brow slightly at the implication that the vampire already knew what was eating the Slayer up inside, but she merely nodded. “Where are you taking her?”
“I know a bloke… he’s got a place a bit away from here where we can hole up for a bit. Said I can use it while he and his family are abroad.”
“Where is—“
Spike cut her off. “Witch, you have to ask yourself at this point, do you trust me? You’ve known me for two years; you’ve fought beside me all summer. I need you to look into your heart, and ask yourself if anything about what happened tonight makes you think I’d harm one hair on her infuriating little head. And whatever you decide, just know I’m leaving here with the Slayer in two minutes.”
He met her gaze steadily over Buffy, who was gazing out through the painted-over windshield. Tara studied the planes of his face for a minute until her bluish-green eyes met his azure gaze. Wordlessly, she kissed Buffy on the cheek and straightened, stepping away from the side of the car. “Take good care of her, Spike.”
“You know I will. Just tell the others—“
“Let me handle the others.” There was quiet strength and resolve behind the words. Spike nodded, glad he wasn’t going to be around when the shit hit the fan tonight. Wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall though.
“Right then,” he turned to Buffy, “you ready, ducks?”
Still no response. “Call my cell if you need anything, Glinda.” He shifted the car into reverse and backed out into Revello Drive, the car’s powerful engine the only thing breaking the still of night as he headed east, out towards the desert.
* * *
They drove for hours in silence, and as they hit the California state line the sun started to bleed over the edge of the horizon. Spike was careful to stay out of the way of the few scattered beams that permeated the scratched-out view through the windshield.
Buffy remained quiet but awake. She neither spoke nor slept, just sat like a forlorn statue in the passenger seat. It reminded Spike of the awful days before her death when Glory had finally gotten her hands on Dawn, just after things had gone completely pear-shaped. That Buffy had just sat and stared also, but it was the shock that had made her go catatonic. This Buffy scared him more.
To see the Slayer with no fight left in her small but powerful body broke Spike’s heart more than her occasionally cruel treatment of him ever had. Usually she radiated power and fire, but both had ebbed to the point that they felt like distant memories of the girl she once was.
Spike drove and smoked, deep in thought. He knew where they were going, but that was all he knew. How he was going to remotely fix the girl, he had no idea.
TBC
A/N: Thank you for all your kind reviews. They’re like caffeine for my muse!