Chapter 21
Buffy tossed around in the unfamiliar bed for the hundredth time, failing to find a comfortable spot. Somewhere within the house, pipes whined and she wondered whether Spike could hear it as well or if he had already gone to sleep.
She’d bet he had, probably sprawled across the mattress like a starfish too. And to her annoyance, her every sense was focused on the connecting door.
As she forced herself to roll onto her back, she stared up at the ceiling through the darkness. It wasn’t long before she felt sleep stealing over her.
A haunted face stared back at her from a mirror.
A light bulb hanging on a rusty chain swung back and forth in a miniscule bathroom as William gripped the sides of the sink and stared at himself with an intensity that slightly unnerved her. But what unnerved her even more were those eyes. The icy blue eyes, the fringe of charcoal lashes dipping to shield them, the very familiar shape of those lips and the curve of his sharp cheekbones even if they were less prominent now. The hair was a bit different; messier, darker and a bit longer, but it was undeniable.
It was Spike.
William was Spike.
In that second, every single image she’d dreamt bombarded her mind with such force she could hardly see him punch the mirror and push himself away.
God, all those things… they couldn’t have actually happened. Monsters weren’t real. This wasn’t real. It was all just in her head. A truly elaborate, detailed, violent nightmare that she was sure had nothing in common with Spike’s real life.
So what if he’d told her just a few hours earlier that he had run away from a foster home, that his mother and sister got killed? It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t.
Time seemed to have stretched into a long blur as William walked down the streets. He didn’t run or cry. He never faltered. The rage, the pain, the helplessness were all contained within a dam he’d constructed out of self-preservation. All he could feel was numbness and Buffy was glad. Because if he could feel the grief, she feared it would rip him apart and nobody would ever glue the pieces back together.
A mockery of a human voice drawled past the buzz in his ears but he didn’t stop. When a hand closed around his shoulder and spun him around, William wasn’t afraid.
“Give me your money,” the man said, a knife’s sharp blade tickling William’s abdomen.
When he refused to answer, the mugger sneered and backed William into a wall. “Give me your money!”
But he didn’t have any. Couldn’t anyone tell that he’d lost everything there was to lose?
The moment the mugger’s hand started to search his pockets and seized the velvet case within—the present he’d meant to give Dru—something inside William roared to life. It spilled into every cell of his body, destructive and out of control. He barely felt the bite of the blade against his skin before he pushed himself off the wall with enough strength to send them both tumbling to the littered ground. The knife skidded out of his reach, but William didn’t need it. A red haze fell over his eyes, his knuckles bruising with every flesh-jarring impact of his fists with the mugger’s face. He was barely aware of the scream tearing out of his throat. The thirst to kill, to carve his rage into this stranger’s body overpowered anything else.
In this dirty alley, he was reborn. Everything he had been all his life, the weak, sentimental fool was gone. In that moment, William shed that identity like a skin that didn’t fit anymore. He’d reshape himself into someone who didn’t care or hesitate to kill, who didn’t love anything or anyone other than the feel of blood sluicing down his hands.
The mugger finally stopped struggling, his breath fogging in the cold air. It would take so little to off him and William feared he wouldn’t feel a thing. But as the adrenaline wore off, pain sliced through his abdomen.
He crawled off the unconscious man and managed to drag himself to the mouth of the alley, his hand pressed to the wound. Blood spilled out, staining his hand. For a moment he contemplated doing nothing, just sitting there waiting for death to claim him, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Death was easy; it was living that took strength.
Getting up onto his bare feet was excruciating and the movement made the world darken at the edges. He’d forgotten to put his shoes on and he was only wearing a plain cotton T-shirt, trousers and socks. The cold bit his skin as he made his way down an empty street.
The next few minutes passed in a spinning haze. Someone was striding towards him, gripped his shoulders. William nearly collapsed against the body holding him still and the man was saying something but he couldn’t focus. He found himself dragged off and loaded into a car, concerned blue eyes staring back at him from behind spectacles.
“Stop moving about. Unless you want to bleed to death,” the stranger said. “What’s your name, lad?”
“William,” he rasped and wondered what the man wanted, and whether he hadn’t jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
“Nice to meet you, William. I’m Rupert Giles.”
Buffy’s vision swam in and out of focus before she plunged into darkness, the world around her quaking.
*******
Her eyes snapped open and for a moment she couldn’t move. Hands were clutching her shoulders, shaking her awake.
A face stared down at her, brows drawn together in a concerned frown.
“Buffy?”
“Spike? W-what are you doing here?” What was he doing in her room? How did he get inside her house? She usually locked her window.
She tried to sit up and winced in pain. Why did she feel as if a truck had run her over?
“I heard you scream. Nearly fell out of bed, I did. Are you all right?”
Nearly fell out of… Oh. She was staying over at his house. Buffy shook her head and whipped off the duvet, touched her aching abdomen. The damp spot on her shirt stuck to her skin and she stared at her hand.
Even in the room’s darkness she could see it. The blood.
“Spike?” She hated the fear in her voice. “I think I’m bleeding.”
He pushed her back against the mattress and the light came on. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to burst into hysterics.
“Bloody hell, what did you do?” His large palm covered her hand to pull it away before he rolled up her shirt to expose her midriff. “I don’t see any cut,” he said with confusion.
“It hurts.”
“Give me a sec,” he said and hurried out.
She fought down nausea as she glanced down. Spike soon returned with a first aid kit and a large ceramic bowl.
“I’m going to clean you up, yeah? Don’t move.”
Don’t move? She could barely breathe.
He pulled a soaked rag out of the bowl, drops of water twinkling on the surface as he wrung it out and swiftly cleaned her skin. It hurt but there was only a faint line that seemed to be fading rather quickly. It looked more like a scratch.
“Do you remember anything?” he asked, his hand resting on her abdomen lightly.
“I… there’s something. I dreamt and…” A headache pulsed behind her eyes as she looked at him. For a second she saw him with darker, messier hair, his face paler and constricted in pain. She blinked and the image was gone. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
His lips tightened. “This isn’t normal. Something’s wrong.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
His touch vanished. “No need to get smart. I’m just trying to help.”
She was too upset to apologise or to take into consideration the hurt his voice. “What if you’re not real?”
He sat back on his haunches and watched her warily. “Come again?”
Buffy knew he thought she was crazy, but what if she was right? “These things that keep happening to me… the strange injuries that appear while I’m asleep. It doesn’t make any sense! I don’t sleepwalk because I’ve been pouring flour all over my floor every night and not once have I found footprints. How can I just wake up and be covered in blood?” Hysteria crept into her voice but she couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to. Not when puzzle pieces fell into place in a way that made her clutch at the duvet, made her consider she was going insane. “And you!”
“Wha—”
“You’re not real. I made you up, don’t you see? A hero that saved me and miraculously popped back into my life years later. If this was real, you’d never have given me a second thought. I’m not sweet or funny or beautiful. I’m just… me. This all just makes horrible sense,” she whispered, forgetting he was even there. “What if I’m in coma after my mother… what if I never woke up?”
He moved so fast words stuck in her throat and he gripped her arms with bruising force. “You’re being ridiculous.”
She swallowed heavily and refused to look into his eyes. He was just a figment of her imagination. Nothing more.
“Buffy, look at me,” he said in a commanding voice then gripped her chin when she refused. “I am real. If I wasn’t, could you feel this?” He planted her palm above his pounding heart and narrowed his eyes.
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
His lips tightened. “If it’s true and if you’re dreaming all of this, how old would you be then? Eight or so? So tell me, how would an eight-year-old know what this would feel like?”
Spike sat on the bed, tangled his fingers in her hair and dragged her closer to cover her lips with his. It was hunger and she was being consumed. Driven. His grip on her hair bordered on pain and it sent tingles racing over her scalp as he nipped at her lips and parted them with his tongue to slip inside. The faint taste of toothpaste, the feel of his bare chest under her palms, the growling noise he made in the back of his throat, all of it sent Buffy into a tailspin of so many sensations she could barely stay upright.
But then he leaned away with a final chaste peck on her still parted lips and he said in a deep gritty voice, “I’m not a hero, love. And if I was a figment of your imagination, I’d have to be angry you gave me so much baggage.”
The urge to laugh startled her. “But—”
“Look, we could argue our points until one of us starved to death, but the point is… none of us can tell if this is real. Reality is what we choose to believe, isn’t it?”
“But how do you explain what happened?”
“I might have a theory,” Spike said, avoiding her eyes now. “Do you trust me?”
Did she?
*******
There were many things Angelus enjoyed in this world. Luxury and refined clothes ranked in the top five. But what he loved the most was the scent of fear. Just like the scent that filled his every pore as he approached the girl chained to the ceiling. Her big round eyes tracked his every move like the terrified animal that she was. Uncertain. Scared. Hanging on to what he’d do next. Her every thought revolving around him as the Earth rotated around the Sun.
Her arms hung from the ceiling, her knees trembling with the effort to hold up her naked body. She looked like a true form of art in the small, blindingly white room, her blood splattering the ground like a modern painting.
Angelus slipped behind her, close enough to let her sense his presence, to wrap her up in the horror of expectation but not quite close enough to touch.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked, his fingertips hovering above the canvas of her back streaked with blood and sweat and dirt.
“You’re the devil,” she whimpered as he stroked the length of her tangled red hair.
“Not quite. Not yet,” he said and inhaled the scent of her misery. “You’re here because you’re special. God hates you and he sent me to punish you.”
“N-no.”
Angelus licked his lips. So faithful. So righteous. He’d been enjoying breaking her faith, showing her the true face of God.
“You’re one of many He chose. Why do you think He’d let me catch you, to let me do all those things to you? Wouldn’t He save you if you deserved to be saved?”
He rounded her body to see the look on her face. Tears rolled down those cute freckled cheeks as she fought to cling to her beliefs. To deny the truth that God didn’t exist. It made him hard.
“What if I could let you go?”
The hope awakened in those deep green eyes for just a second. One second enough for him to pounce on the weakness.
“You could see your family again, your cute little sister. How old is she?” Angelus tapped his chin. “Five?” He closed his eyes and deeply inhaled. “Hmm… Maybe I should go say hello? Introduce myself. What do you think?”
The girl’s face paled even further, barely audible pleas falling from her lips.
“But you could save her. You could be free. All you have to do to save yourself and your family is…” He stepped away and sauntered towards a door where he hid things he didn’t want Drusilla to eat. Punching in a quick code, the door opened with a snick. “All you have to do is kill.”
He came out with his arms full of a five-year-old little boy and tapped the tip of his nose. “So, who is going to live? This little guy here or your sister?”
She shook her head in refusal, her eyes wide. Ah, people. They thought they were so noble and deserving. In the end, he knew she’d do it. And that moment when he’d let her go, let her think she was free, he’d strike.
Because after all, he wasn’t stupid enough to release a Potential. Not when he only needed fifteen more to gain true invincibility.
The lovely red headed teenager would become his 86th. Just fifteen more rituals to draw Potentials’ energy into his body and he’d become the most powerful entity in the world. He’d become God.
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Previously: Buffy stayed at Spike's house because he kicked her jeans into fireplace. Accidentally, of course. ;) Also, you'll probably need to know that last flashback of Spike's early memories: Eline kidnapped Dru and she was later turned by Angelus.
Beta'd by super awesome All4Spike.
Beta'd by super awesome All4Spike.