Chapter 4: Hiding
Buffy crashes into the ground with a thump landing hard on her back. Dirt flies up around her body like a mushroom cloud as she squeezes her eyes shut. Then after a moment she lets out a deep breath. Real or not she still feels the aches and pains through her body from falling and landing on her back. As she looks up from where she fell she can no longer tell how she came to be here. Slowly she pushes herself to her feet and rolls out the cracks in her neck.
"Ow… okay, I am so done with the whole laws of physics and… geography, don't apply in Spike's brain thing," Buffy says as she dusts the dirt off her clothes and once again looks around at her new surroundings. She's back in the cave again. There's dirt at her feet and rock all around, but in the ceiling of the cave there is a hole; a perfectly round hole which through warm sunlight shines. Brilliant yellow rays of sunlight.
Ten feet from her boot clad feet there is a perfect circle of sunlight on the floor of the cave created by the beam of light shining through the hole in ceiling. Once again the time of day has changed in an instant, but Buffy knows that here in the catacombs of Spike's mind time has no meaning. She takes a step toward the light watching as particles of dust float around and dance within it. Then she hears it, footsteps. Buffy spins around to face the reverberating sound and when she sees him she has to take a step back. A deep sigh escapes her lips as she looks on at the man before her and takes in his appearance.
Spike stands before her, his hair in a mess of platinum curls with dark roots, his face long, bluish circles are beneath his eyes, and his shirtless chest is covered with deep cuts carved into scarred skin. This Spike Buffy remembers well, it was only a few weeks ago that she saw him like this in the school basement. This Spike is crazy with guilt and Buffy is starting to truly understand that.
"Burns so bad love," Spike says and Buffy finds herself speechless. "Can't keep it, can't cut it out… what's a man to do." His voice is somber.
"Spike," Buffy says in a small frail voice. "We have to go… we can't stay here." He reaches to her then and brings his hand under her chin to caress the side of her face. She had planned to have convincing things to say to drag him out of his nightmare, but now all words escape her.
"Can't go… don't belong, don't deserve, had it all written down, but I dropped my board and the chalk all ran." A crease forms between the vampire's eyes and his gaze shifts away from Buffy's face.
"What? Spike…"
"Shh, can't you see, I got the spark and God it burns Buffy, but it didn't make it better, doesn't make me a better man…" Spike stops for a moment and drops his hand as his face falls, "just burns, and I've got to burn it out… I've been a bad boy, an' now I know it, now I feel it… got to burn it out." He takes his eyes off her then and sets his gaze on a point beyond her. Spike steps around the Slayer and walks farther into the cave. She spins and watches as he comes closer and closer to the beam of light, then he stops just before its deadly rays.
"Spike, don't!" Buffy shouts and he turns to her looking over his shoulder. Those blue eyes pierce through her.
"This is what I deserve," he says and then without further hesitation takes one final step into the light.
Buffy rushes forward with her arm outreached but it's too late. The sun engulfs him in its warm rays and the fire that erupts swallows him whole. A pained expression crosses her face as she watches his skin burn and blister. Tears well in her eyes as his muscles and bone disintegrate and disappear leaving behind a pile of dust that floats in the warm rays of the sun. It's all happened so fast. He's gone and for a moment Buffy forgets that it's not real, she forgets that it's just a figment of Spike's imagination. For a moment Buffy can feel a dreadful sinking in her stomach, it churns and flips her belly giving her a sick feeling. Her outstretched arm falls slack and returns to her side, but then she wipes the tears from her eyes and remembers that it's not over yet.
Buffy
Buffy shakes herself out of her imaginary grief. Her friendly little whisperer is back and she sees him now on the other side of the cave another dark tunnel spirals on with endless depths behind him, young William stands there with his blue eyes reaching out through the darkness. She walks past the beam of light where Spike's ashes float and makes her way to William. Then she stops, William turns his head over his shoulder and looks back into the darkness behind him. Thud. William turns back to Buffy. Thud, thud, thud. Buffy rushes to get to him.
"It's coming," William says just as Buffy reaches him.
"What's coming William, you have to tell me," Buffy says as she kneels down to him.
"Can't," he replies as he looks over his shoulder again. Thud. "We have to go," William grabs Buffy by the wrist and drags her down another tunnel of the cave. They run side by side down the rocky passageway.
"William, you have to tell me what's after us so I can fight it," Buffy pleads with the small child as they run.
"Can't tell, never tell… it said not to, said if I did it'd make me do more bad things."
"I won't let it, I promise."
"Too scared… it wants to eat our bottoms," he replies saying the word bottoms utterly cute in his tiny English accent, but at the same time the phrase is frightening as well.
--
If all roads lead to Rome, in Spike's mind all roads lead to William's bedroom. Buffy finds herself here again sitting on his four poster bed while he plays with marbles on the floor. This is his safe place, and yet Buffy knows that even here the thing looks for him. She remembers him pushing her out of his wardrobe the first time he brought her here; and for the first time Buffy understands that there is nowhere in his mind where Spike is safe. The thing, from beneath them, it devours and it is everywhere.
"William," Buffy asks and he looks up at her diverting his gaze from the shiny marbles on the floor. "The thing, the one that's after you… you said it makes you do bad things." William nods. "Did it make you…" Buffy pauses for a moment trying to think of how to approach the subject of killing with a six year old. "Did it make you bite those people?" William nods again, and Buffy nods as well.
At least now she knows that she was right in thinking that something else had been controlling Spike when he killed those people, when he turned them and sent them after her. Spike has just been this thing's puppet, and Buffy needs to defeat his puppet master. She needs to know who's been pulling his strings for his sake as well as her own. Buffy lays back on William's bed to think, her head rests on the thin down pillow and she stares up at the ceiling. She can hear the young boy knocking marbles together on the floor and she smiles at his innocence, an innocence that he carried into his adulthood Buffy thinks as she remembers an older William sitting on a stone bench in the garden. She had lost that innocence much sooner than he. She had grown up and faced a life filled with death much sooner.
"Always crawling into my bed," A voice calls and Buffy quickly turns her head to the left to see that Spike now lies beside her. She pushes herself up on to her arms and looks over at Spike who lies on his back in his dark jeans and a black tee sans his leather jacket, the leather jacket that still sits in her closet from when he left it at her house last year. His arms are folded behind his platinum head and he's turned to her. This Spike Buffy's glad to see, he's not crazy with guilt, or looking at her with bloodthirsty eyes. This is just Spike, her Spike.
"Spike," Buffy says with shock evident in her voice. "I've been looking for you."
"Been hiding, thought I'd of scared you off by now."
"Why would you want to do that?"
"You shouldn't be here… you should have killed me, course it's not too late for that now is it?"
"You came here to tell me to kill you?"
"That would be the jist of it, yeah."
"No, Spike, what's been happening isn't your fault; something's been playing with you…"
"Blood's still on my hands love."
"Spike, listen to me… from beneath us, this thing, it's made you do stuff and I need to know what it is, I need to know how it's been controlling you." Spike sighs. A moment of silence passes between them, William's marbles cracking together on the floor is the only sound to be heard.
"Only reason I came back was to help you take… this thing, whatever it is, out… after… after what I did, last year… I don't deserve to be around you and yours, but if you think I know something about the bottom-eater I'll help you figure out what you need to know."
Buffy nods, that was after all the reason for trying to drag him out of his mind. She needs to know what he knows about this thing. She needs to know how it's been messing with all of them and how she can defeat it. Her purpose here is to find out about the thing beneath, but some part of Buffy doesn't feel right with that thought. Could she leave his mind with the information she needs only to kill him when she gets back to reality? That is what he seems to want, but something about that doesn't seem right.
For a moment Buffy's mind flickers back to the crazy shirtless version of Spike throwing himself into the light of day and dissolving into flames before her eyes. That upsetting thought nearly brings tears to her eyes once again. Despite how things ended with them last year Buffy feels like she could never feel the disgust toward Spike needed to kill him. He's hurt her in the past, but he was also at one point the only person she could talk to, the only person she could stand to be around. She had confided in him and she had cared about him. Something about him asking her to kill him feels wrong, especially now that he has a soul; but for now she'll take things step by step.
"Tell me what you know then," Buffy says and Spike looks at her with a smile.
"I'm not sure I know what I know," Spike says and Buffy's face crunches in confusion. "Best to show you," he says.
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