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Author's Chapter Notes:
Previously: Buffy and Spike had a post-memory loss talk (and smoochies) while Hank went off to have a nooner with Ellen.

On a different, very selfish note, I'm doing my dissertation and I have this survey that I need people to fill out. It's super short and you don't even need to write anything in it. It will take you less than a minute and it would save my life. As I'm doing a cultural mag, it would be great if you refrained from 'liking' gossip mags. Wait... this isn't shameless manipulation, is it? *g* You can find it here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6N3T9KJ

Thank you All4Spike for being the best beta. :)
Chapter 26

Spike stuffed a few T-shirts carelessly into a duffle bag, knowing they’d look as if a cow had chewed them and not giving a damn. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling and he angrily tossed the half-packed bag on the bed and raked his fingers through his hair.

He should have told her he was leaving.

With a scoff, he yanked out the drawer from the bedside table to empty the fake IDs onto the mattress. What good would it have done if he had? Would she even care? She didn’t need him around to cock everything up for her, now did she? She had a whole life ahead of her. Perhaps not a house with a white picket fence and a golden retriever, but a decent one. A safe one. The spell plaguing her dreams had been severed and she’d be all right. She was the kind of girl who didn’t pull her punches, who knew to how to survive.

He had to leave, had to see Rupert about the book, had to face Angelus and make him pay. So why was he sinking to the bed, his hands clutching at the bedspread instead of finishing packing? God, he was selfish. A coward. Always had been. It hadn’t bothered him much before, but it did now.

Girls were dying and the world was on the brink of its final days and he couldn’t even move. Spike knew what Angelus was planning. The rituals he’d been performing for years to draw the power out of Potential slayers, leaving them dead after he did. Not that he’d ever given it too much thought. He’d sacrifice their life in a blink if it meant getting closer to offing Angelus. But all Spike could care about was how for the first time there was something that occupied his mind more often than revenge.

Buffy.

He imagined how she’d look at him if she knew he hadn’t given a toss for all those dead girls before he got to know her. Then he imagined finding her body stiff and twisted on the floor, empty eyes and bloodied skin, and he felt sick to his stomach. She almost had ended up that way all those years ago, and he wanted to believe he’d saved her that day, but somehow he knew she’d have made it. She had already been fleeing when he’d caught her.

At the time he’d believed Angelus was behind that ritual, but there had been no trace of him. Considering the ugly bugger liked to be in the charge of things, it must have been something else. LA was full of bloodthirsty demons ready to serve little girls on a silver platter. She’d been lucky. If it had been Angelus, even a whole pack of demon hunters wouldn’t have been able to help her.

It felt as if he was being yanked in too many directions all at once. He wanted to stay in SunnyD and pretend he could forget what had led him up to this point. The need for revenge though, that would always boil under the surface. Hiding from it would be futile. He couldn’t truly live unless he did what he’d sworn he’d do and turn the bastard into dust. Not to save the world, not to prevent more girls from being killed.

Because the world would be a safer place for Buffy to live in.

That thought shocked Spike into standing up and he exhaled past his shuddering lips. Since when did revenge turn into this? What had she done to him? How the fuck had she made him… care?

Right. Time to go. No need to lollygag around, dreaming of things that would never be. He hurried, almost frantically now, as though his worst nightmare was knocking on the door. He packed. He cursed. And he ran down the stairs, refusing to admit that a part of him would probably be tied to this damned place until he died.

Which might be sooner rather than later, probably no more than a few months, he thought with a grim smile. Still, he’d refuse to die easily. He’d fight as dirty as he knew how, go down swinging.

She’d forget about him eventually.

Spike opened the front door and slammed it behind him, trying not to let that thought bother him. He wouldn’t; let himself think that way. He’d do his best to survive the showdown. Come look her up and beg her to give him a chance. Let her kick him in the jewels for leaving without telling her.

His motorbike hidden in the scruffy shed off the side of the house was ready to be revved and get back on the road, and Spike was just about to cut the corner when a voice stopped him in his tracks. Swallowing hard, he dropped the duffle bag to the ground before turning around.

“Spike,” Buffy called out as she swept an unruly strand of hair off her face, cheeks flushed from the cold as she drew nearer. “I’ve been calling you. You didn’t hear me?”

Her mouth pursed in a pout and he had to drag his gaze away, choke the desire to taste her until it was nothing but a faint whisper in his head. “Sorry, was a bit lost in my thoughts. Was there something you wanted?”

Buffy tucked her hands into her coat pockets and frowned. His voice sounded so strange… impassive almost. A word she could hardly associate with the man who had kissed her in the grocery store with enough fire to melt steel. “Is this a bad time because I can—”

“I’m a bit busy,” he said, a muscle in his jaw ticking, the intensity of his gaze searing her own. “You should toddle off home. Get all nice and snuggly in front of the telly.”

“Rather than what? Come and see you? I didn’t know you minded.” What was his problem? He was starting to piss her off.

“I was just leaving,” he said, face turning into a stone mask. But his eyes… it hurt to look into them and she didn’t know why.

“So when are you going to be back? I just wanted to—”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter, does it? Whatever you wanted, we can hash out later, yeah?”

Why did she feel like there was something totally obvious glaring her in the face but she couldn’t see it? Why was he pushing her away? “Fine,” she said, her voice conveying the opposite. “If you’re going to act like a poophead, I’ll just go. But before I do, I wasn’t the one asking for forgiveness. That was you. You can’t just jerk me around. One day trying to… to kiss me! A-and then just poof, acting like I have cooties!”

She turned on her heel, cursing his name in her head. Cursing the way he got to her, wriggling under her skin and stirring her emotions. Stupid, mercurial guy.

A sigh and then firm fingers wrapped around her shoulder, forcing her to a stop. She shook him off and turned to face him despite her compulsion to keep walking. She had to see. Had to know if he hurt the way his indifference had hurt her.

“I don’t think you have cooties, all right?” He let out a tremulous breath and dropped his gaze to the ground. “I just don’t know what to say. Never could find the right words, even if my life depended on it.” He lifted his gaze. “I’m leaving.”

The way he said it. So final, a Damocles sword sweeping through the air. “But you’re coming back,” she said. To convince herself, to halt the sudden panic clogging up her throat.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t…” But he did. He had to. Any second now he’d smirk and say he was just going out to buy smokes so she should stop being a silly bint and acting like he was leaving forever.

“Buffy…” His fingers fluttered up to her elbow, falling back like wilting flowers before he could make contact. “I don’t… I might not come back.”

He gazed at her as if expecting something. Was she supposed to leap into his arms and beg him to stay? “You weren’t even going to tell me, were you?” Being stabbed in the gut would have hurt less.

His eyes flickered away.

“Oh,” was all she could say, her feet rooted to the ground. “Go then. Sorry I bothered you.”

“Buffy, stop it. Stop acting like...” He seized her shoulders, his fingers flexing as if he was talking himself out of touching her. “It’s not that I—”

“You don’t need to explain, or make excuses. We’re… we’re not anything.”

“Yes we are!” His grip tightened. “I… care. I tried not to—”

“You tried not to? Why? Is it so horrible to have feelings for me?”

“Don’t you get it?” His hands slid down her arms, bare skin of his hands grazing her knuckles before he stepped away. “Everyone I ever cared about is dead. Is that what you want to happen to you? To end up a worm meat buried six feet under? You’re not the one who’ll have to live with it!”

“You’re acting like I’m already dead. You’re being overdramatic!”

His cheeks flushed with anger as he stared her down, but she didn’t care.

“No. I’m being honest,” he said through clenched teeth. “But it’s not why I’m leaving. It’s not because of you. I got what I came for and I need to… there’s something I need to do.”

It wasn’t about her, but she wasn’t a good enough reason for him to stay. “You say you’re honest but you’re not. You’re hiding everything. You keep telling me that I should steer clear of you but you never say why. What could you possibly have done to—”

“Be careful what you’re asking for,” he said, their noses almost touching but the barrier between them transcended any distance.

“I can handle it.” She could and she could see he knew it as well, yet he seemed to be at war with himself. Perhaps he was the one who couldn’t handle her knowing.

“You want the truth then? Want to know why you should stay away?” His nostrils twitched as he drew in a harsh breath. “Should I give you my rap sheet? Tell you a vampire murdered my family, took my sister and turned her into one of them? How she later took the girl I loved? That girl is now undead because I gave up on her! That chasing after him is the reason I’m leaving? Or should I tell you how I killed, not feeling a twinge of guilt?” He stepped closer, his breath tickling the bridge of her nose. “Oh, and let’s not forget that I was the one who killed your mother.”

There was a part of her that had wondered. That part that she’d shut away and now it burst out, roaring to be heard. She wanted to recoil and couldn’t stop the flinch when he reached out to brush her cheek. He jerked his fingers away and gave her a forced tight-lipped snicker but all she could see was the self-disgust and regret culminating in his eyes.

“Still want me to stay?”

She wanted to yell that she’d never asked him to, but she knew he’d know she was lying. She should say something, anything to break the stifling silence but her mouth was dry, her tongue dipped in lead.

He gave her a sharp nod and she saw tears tremble on his dark lashes before he turned around and walked off. Somehow, seeing him like that, so human and vulnerable was worse than anything else. She wanted to hate him. Only she couldn’t. She had feelings for him, those gut wrenching feelings that had dug in deep and refused to let go.

He’d killed her mother.

Yet with every step away from her it felt as if he was ripping out a part of her heart she hadn’t known she’d put into his hands.

She was beyond screwed.

Still, she refused to watch him walk away, to feel as if she was the one being left. Let him go. See if she cared! She forced her feet to work and hurried away, faster and faster until she was running through the forest, angrily swiping at her eyes to stop the pressure of tears insistent to spill free.

He went off to chase a vampire, to get revenge for something he couldn’t change. How stupid was that? To risk his life for an idea of closure that he’d never get? How many had he killed in pursuit of an eased conscience? A handful? More?

Buffy staggered, images of slipping through the darkness with blood dripping down her fingernails flashing through her mind. Hands, pale, large calloused hands covered in crimson. Pounding heart, frustration mounting as he ransacked the room in the search of...

Clutching at her head, she pushed herself to walk again. The images, they kept popping up. Randomly triggered and she knew it was him she was seeing but she didn’t know why. It had to be related to the dreams and the only person capable of helping her was now gone.

All she wanted to do was sit down and cry, and that made her angry. She didn’t cry. She took matters into her own hands and dealt with things. She wasn’t a damsel in need of saving. There was always a way.

TBC


Chapter End Notes:
I love you, wonderful readers! Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate all of you. :)



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