Chapter 32
All it took was one day.
Within one day, her entire life had twisted around and upside down until she had no idea where the right direction pointed anymore.
“So, where are we going?” Buffy gave Spike a sidelong glance, lulled by the hum of the motor under the hood of his black DeSoto. Her eyes wouldn’t close. Too tired to sleep. Too wired to sleep.
“Someplace safe. Cleveland.”
Safe.
Once, she’d thought Sunnydale was safe. Looks like she’d been proven wrong.
*******
Six Hours Earlier
Spike was exhausted. The headache brewing behind his eyes as a result of a two-hour meeting with Rupert’s friend didn’t help much either. As he passed the sign informing he had just exited Barstow and urging him to ‘come back’, he lifted two of his fingers in a backward peace sign.
Come back, my arse.
With the way he sped down the highway, it didn’t take him too long to find a motel for a bit of shuteye. The parking lot looked fairly empty as he steered his car to the spot nearest to the entrance and turned off the ignition.
For a moment he leaned his head against the window and rubbed his aching forehead. Witches, he thought with disdain, letting the thought of a nap lure him out of the car and get a key from an overly perky middle aged woman at the reception desk.
Buffy’s locket was a constant weight resting comfortably in the inner lining of his coat. Not cursed, the survey said. The only thing the witch could tell him was that it had repellent qualities on magic. Good to know the botched up spell that had caused him and Buffy to lose their memory hadn’t entirely been his fault.
His duster fell on the bed with a soft whoosh. Buttons on his shirt slipped through the holes one by one. He tossed the crimson shirt and the black T-shirt he’d pulled over his head on top of the coat, rolling his head on his shoulders to work out the kinks.
It was when he unbuckled his belt that trepidation started to settle in his stomach. It was still there as he kicked off his boots, rolled down the socks and yanked the jeans down his legs and off before wandering into the bathroom with a knife in his hand. It felt as if someone had poured glue straight down his gullet.
Putting the knife within easy reach just to be on the safe side, Spike stepped into the shower stall, fiddled with the knobs to achieve the right temperature and let the water massage his tense muscles. It would work too, if he could get his mind to shut the hell up.
Snick.
Spike sniffed the shower gel. Not bad. He wondered what gel Buffy used to make her smell so… He shook his head like a drenched dog to lose that thought, rubbing the lather down his torso.
There was a sense of urgency he couldn’t explain. Better call Rupert to make sure everything was all right. Spike was never one to deny his gut instinct. Though come to think of it, he probably shouldn’t be thinking of Rupert while he was soaping up his goods.
He washed his hair quickly, rinsed off and shut off the water. The stray droplets splattered inaudibly against the tiled floor when he climbed out and toweled off.
With a towel around his hips and the sheathed knife hidden underneath the spare pillow, Spike fell into a restless sleep.
He was drowning in darkness again. Or was he in a room flooded with light with a blindfold over his eyes?
A hand caressed his cheek, cool breath tickling the curve of his throat.
“My sweet William. Why must you be so stubborn?”
He blinked though it had no effect on his vision. “Dru?”
“Mmm… silly boy. Not listening. Your ears clamped shut.” Fingers tapped a quick rhythm over his temples.
“Am I dreaming?”
“Are you?” She giggled, a wicked sound filled with vague sense of danger.
“Well… seeing as I parked at a motel, I’d say yes.”
“Perhaps you’ve dreamt that and this is where the truth lies.” Her fingers combed through his damp hair. “There is a time for everything. You must wait your turn to roll the dice.”
He reached out to touch her but only found empty air. “I don’t want to play.”
“I told you.” She hummed a tune he didn’t recognise under her breath. “The king cannot move until the sun reigns in the sky the longest.”
He frowned.
“You need to wake up now. Your queen is in danger.” Her cool, quivering lips brushed his, right before he woke up.
*******
Spike’s knee bobbed up and down rapidly as he stared down at his phone. He felt unsettled. As though someone had pumped his stomach full of acid. It was worse now than it had been before he’d gone to bed.
Your queen is in danger. Why couldn’t he get that out of his head? It couldn’t have been about Buffy. She wasn’t his anything.
All right, just press that button. Where had his rocks gone all of a sudden? Afraid of talking to a bird. Laugh and a half, that was.
You’re not William anymore.
He drew in a shaky breath and pressed ‘call’.
The panic coiled in his gut tightened more and more with each passing ring.
“Come on, come on, pick it up.”
His teeth hurt from all the grinding he’d done in the past five minutes.
“Hello?”
For one cowardly moment, he almost hung up. Funny how he’d never actually expected her to reply. “Uh…”
This was brilliant. You don’t see the girl for over two months and ‘uh’ is all you can come up with? Smooth, Spike. Very smooth. Sure she’ll be charme—
“Look, if you don’t tell me who you are, I’m hanging up.”
“Wait!”
Silence. Suspicious and thick.
“It’s me. Err… I was just—”
“Spike?” Less suspicious but no less confused now.
“Yeah, ‘s me.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Why… why are you calling me?”
Wouldn’t she think he’d gone off his rocker if she knew? “How are you? Are you all right?”
There was a tense silence before she laughed. The sound didn’t give him much comfort. It was the kind of laugh that made it clear she wasn’t feeling all that charitable towards him.
“Am I ‘all right’? Are you serious?”
“I just had this—”
“I don’t care what you had. You left. You just… you didn’t say... But you know what? I don’t care. You cut your losses, so now I’m cutting mine.”
“I’m sorry,” he said before she could hang up, the words feeling less foreign and rough than they had the last time.
“Me too,” she whispered so quietly he almost missed it.
He already felt like a right tosser, but he needed her to know, “I never meant to hurt you.”
“You could never hurt me, Spike.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, resisting the urge to yell at her to drop the charade. To stop hiding behind that cold indifference she wasn’t fooling him with. But wouldn’t that be like throwing stones in a glass house? He wanted to tell her he missed her like he hadn’t missed anyone in years, yet the words were stuck in his throat.
“I should go,” she said.
Wait. No. Don’t go. Need to talk to you. Need to hear you, know you’re fine, even if you’re telling me what a useless excuse of a human being I am. “Buffy…”
“Yes?” There was a shuffling sound.
“I…”
Voices. Thud. Then some sort of clanking sound. Then a scream that had the blood in his veins run cold.
“Buffy? Buffy!”
No response.
Her phone went dead.
*******
Ellen had lured Buffy into her house with the promise of freshly cooked lasagna, requesting her help with Hank’s birthday present. Spending time with the woman she’d accidentally seen naked was the last thing Buffy wanted but it would make her dad happy. So here she was, sitting idly by in Ellen’s study, perusing the view of the backyard through the long bay windows.
Light steps roused Buffy from the vigorous zoning out. She twisted around in the armchair to see Ellen hop around as she slid on her heels.
“Oh, Buffy. I’m so sorry! I ran out of mozzarella. I thought for sure I had some left in the fridge. Turns out I don’t. Do you mind if I quickly run to the store to buy some?”
Buffy gave a small shrug. “Nope. I’ll brainstorm the birthday present ideas. Maybe you could go for a big gold necklace to fit the whole middle age crisis.”
Ellen snorted and walked into the study to grab her purse. “Somehow, I don’t see your father wearing douchebag jewelry.”
She would not grin. Nope. “Oh, he has his moments.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Ellen’s red lips stretched in a smile. “I’ll be back in a moment. Do you…” She glanced around as if in search of something then her gaze snapped back to Buffy with a wicked glint. “If you get too bored, you could take a look at my husband’s weapon collection.”
Buffy’s eyes lit up. “Really?” Tone down the enthusiasm, Summers, she berated herself but couldn’t quite follow through.
“Sure.” Ellen rounded the big cherry desk, rummaged through the drawers and fished out a key. “Just promise me you won’t tell Hank.”
“I definitely won’t. He freaks out over everything.” Buffy jumped to her feet, trying hard not to look like a dog that scented its favourite treat. “So where is it?”
Ellen led her out of the study, hips sashaying in the pencil skirt. Buffy imagined herself wearing that outfit and had to stifle a giggle. Wouldn’t that look utterly ridiculous?
They stopped. The key turned in a lock and the door opened to dazzle Buffy with the splendid glory that had been hidden inside.
“So, you’ll be okay here by yourself?”
Had Buffy been in possession of all her faculties at the moment, she’d have scoffed. She was a mature eighteen-year-old. Surely she could handle house sitting for half an hour or so. Instead she nodded, her feet leading her deeper into the room with the walls lined with all kinds of ancient weaponry that had drool collecting in the corner of her mouth. “Uh-huh.”
She shook herself out of the daze and glanced over her shoulder only to find herself alone.
“Okay, talk about zoning out,” she mumbled and spun on her heel again. Slowly this time, drinking everything in. Savoring.
A particular blade caught her eye. There was something about the way sunlight broke off the tiny crimson jewels spiraling across the handle and branching out into the sleek, shimmering double blade. It reminded her of a snake’s tongue. The way two blades branched off the handle, the upper one thicker and longer, the edges jagged and designed to rip apart. A shiver tickled her spine and her fingers stretched out to make contact before she could temper the impulse.
“Oh.” Breath shuddered in her throat as her fingertips grazed the steel that felt almost warm to the touch. Alive. It was like being shaken by an electrical current, only without the pain. It was… power. Energising, crackling-over-her-skin power.
Ring. Ring.
The outside world rushed back in and it took her a while to pull her phone out of her pocket and hit ‘answer’.
Spike.
Her hand dropped from the blade as she tried to gather her thoughts, to still the rioting emotions.
He was the last person she expected to be on the other end. She didn’t think she’d ever see or hear him again. Now that she did, it was like edges of a distant dream turned sharp again. As though he’d never left at all. The bitterness hadn’t dissolved completely, and it transferred into her words. She wondered whether her pretense of indifference was convincing enough, whether it made him feel anything.
He said ‘sorry’. She told herself it held no meaning, told him, “You could never hurt me, Spike.”
No response. Nothing but his breaths whispering into her ear.
“I should go,” she said, secretly wishing things were different. That he would… that he’d just tell her something. Anything to break the tension. How pathetic was it that hearing him again made her realise she’d missed his voice?
“Buffy…”
God, the sound of her name whispered in that voice still had the same quivering effect on her. Her eyes fluttered shut. She dragged in a breath. What was it about him that held so much power over her? That drove a wedge into her composure and shattered it to pieces with a well-chosen word?
“Yes?” Tell me, tell me…
Something behind her shuffled. Probably Ellen coming back from the grocery store. She didn’t want to turn around yet, didn’t want Ellen to glimpse the turmoil written across her face in bold letters. And it would be, because she never quite learned how to hide her emotions so well when it came to him.
“I…”
Steps approached her and Buffy turned around just in time to have the phone knocked out of her hand. A brunette with curly hair and a killer’s smile blinked at her right before she dealt a powerful punch to the side of Buffy’s head.
“So, you’re her.”
“Her?” Buffy repeated, scrambling to her feet only to have the woman kick her in the ribs.
“Anya told me what a special girl you are. She was sent here to kill you, did you know that?”
“Anya? No, Anya would nev—”
The woman’s heel ground into Buffy’s hand as she reached out towards her fallen phone. She screamed in pain and flopped like a fish thrown on the ground.
The woman laughed, bent down to grip Buffy’s hair. “You may ask why I’m here instead of her.” She shrugged. “She had better things to do, and I volunteered.”
No. No. Anya would never betray her. Not the only friend Buffy had ever had. “She’d have done it herself. Go bullshit someone else,” Buffy hissed through her teeth, struggling to get free.
“You think you know her. But you don’t,” the woman mocked. “Anya would never betray her calling. Her kind. Not for a worthless human like you.”
Buffy felt a good chunk of her hair tear out when she jerked her head back to roll away from the woman. It hurt. A lot. But the curved knife the brunette pulled out would hurt much, much more.
Buffy launched herself back as the sharp blade slashed right in front of her face, narrowly escaping gaining more scars. Her fingers curled around the crimson blade mounted on the wall behind her back and the energy of it flooded her being, connected to the root of her to the point where she didn’t know where she began and the blade ended.
“Oh, are you going to fight me now?” The woman tilted her head. “How cute.”
Buffy rose to her feet. “Not as cute as seeing you eat it, Poodle Hair.”
The next seconds passed in a blur, suspended in time where nothing but survival held any meaning. Her muscles stretched, the blood rose to a crescendo in her veins, thumping out a primal rhythm in her ears.
Pain flared up. Fleeting and distant. Not fatal. Just a surface wound, the blood on her forearm welling up lazily to soak into the flannel sleeve. Breathe. In. Out. Kick. Dodge. Slash.
Surging forward, Buffy dropped to the ground and kicked at the brunette’s knees. She buckled, crumpling to the ground like a broken marionette. The knife clattered to the ground and Buffy pounced.
With one hand clamping around the other woman’s wrists to hold her immobile, she held the blade over the brunette’s throat.
“It doesn’t matter if you kill me. Someone else will step up to the plate.”
Buffy pressed the blade down, the red haze ebbing gently away. “Why me?”
“You’re a Potential. We can’t afford to let you live.”
“Tell me why,” Buffy said with a threat in her voice, but it all it did was draw an indulgent look from the woman. As though she was the one holding the upper hand. It pissed Buffy off.
“If Angelus gets to you before we do, he’ll use the power to feed his own, to become indestructible. And if he does… the world’s going to sink into hell. Literally. Humans will die out. The balance will be destroyed. But he won’t stop with that, he’ll want to rule the adjoining dimensions as well and we’re next in line. We can’t let it happen.”
Buffy had never realised that while the immobile woman was talking, she ceased struggling. That Buffy’s own grip had loosened just the slightest bit. But Hallie noticed and she knew just the thing to stun Buffy into letting her go. “I have one more thing to tell you.”
“What is that?”
“It’s your fault Anya is dead. She tried to protect your identity. Now she’s dead like a worthless human.”
Dead. Dead. Dead. Buffy couldn’t shake the words. Couldn’t quiet her scattered thoughts and fervent denial. No, they were lies. All lies. Anya wasn’t—
By the time she registered the demonic smile, it was too late. She was thrown off, her back impacting hard with the floor, stealing her breath. Her fingers clenched around empty air. She’d lost her weapon.
Crawling away, her fingers closed around the bejeweled handle just as the brunette lunged at her. She twisted around quickly, felt the weight crashing on top of her. The brown eyes widened, stunned. Blood rushed down Buffy’s hands.
*******
She didn’t know how long she sat there, staring at the bleeding body. She felt drained. As though someone had pulled the plug inside her. Her muscles wouldn’t work and her eyes refused to stay open. Had she drifted off?
Suddenly someone was shaking her shoulder and she looked up to see Ellen. It all passed far too quickly yet not quickly enough as Ellen tore the necklace from the dead demon’s chest, explaining it was a vengeance demon’s power source. Not Buffy’s fault. It was self-defense. Still it felt wrong to feel the blood dry on her hands, but she stayed silent and helped Ellen clean up the mess even though she felt weak. They buried the body in the backyard.
“How did this happen?” Ellen asked.
“I don’t know. I just… she was just there and…”
“I found the back door open, she must have snuck in. But why?”
Ellen led Buffy into the bathroom, urged her to wash her hands. Buffy watched the water turn pink, swirling down the drain.
“I’m a… Potential.”
Ellen stilled next to her. “Potential slayer?”
Buffy’s gaze whipped to hers. “H-how do you know about slayers?”
“My ex was a watcher. They… train them. It’s a long story.” Her hand squeezed Buffy’s shoulder. “If you’re right, then you’re in danger.”
“You think?” She snorted and felt the sudden urge to cry but swallowed it back. She turned off the water and busied herself with the mechanical task of drying her hands.
“Hank should know about this.”
“No!” She had to leave. Had to put distance between herself and Sunnydale. Couldn’t endanger her dad. Had to find out if Anya… “You can’t tell him. Ever. I’ll take care of this. It’s my mess and I’ll deal with it.”
Ellen’s forehead wrinkled. “Buffy, I’m not sure—”
“You have to promise me!” She clutched at Ellen’s silk sleeve. “You know he’ll want to protect me. He’ll be in danger if I stay and I know that you… love him. You have to help me protect him from getting himself killed because of me. I’d never forgive myself. And I know you wouldn’t either.”
Ellen’s facial expressions changed far too quickly for Buffy to make sense of, but the moment their eyes locked she knew that Ellen would say yes in the end.
Ellen nodded, worry etched into the lines around her mouth.
“What do you want to tell him?”
Buffy steeled her resolve and relayed her plan.
*******
He drove to Sunnydale as if the devil was chasing after him. Breaking speed limits, ignoring stop signs. He cut the driving time in half and still it felt as though that one hour had been the longest in his life.
By the time he parked near Buffy’s house, the panic in his gut had grown into a sticky black hole sucking in reason and rational thinking. He was about to barge in to her house when his cell phone rang. He almost dropped it in his haste to answer, almost sank to the ground in relief when he spotted the caller ID.
“Buffy? Buffy, God, I was scared out of my mind. Wh—”
“Spike,” interrupted a shaky voice, stirring his fears anew. It was by the sheer will that he kept silent long enough to wait for her to continue. “I need your help.”
That was all he needed to hear and five minutes later he parked at the address she gave him, in front of a house he didn’t recognise. He wished he hadn’t chain-smoked all the way here since he’d smell like an ashtray. All those thoughts disappeared the moment she ran up to the car with her shirt covered in blood, an empty looking duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
He’d imagined what it would be like when they met again. He’d imagined her slamming the door in his face or standing there, her arms crossed over her chest, lips thin in her anger. She did neither. She looked up at him, pale and shivering, her eyes trying to convey something her lips wouldn’t form.
“Could you stop by my house? I need a few things.”
“Sure.” He scanned her face, worried. “Then what?”
“Take me somewhere. Anywhere. Just… far away from here.”
He wanted to hug her but didn’t have the courage. Instead he caressed the side of her face quickly, before she could shake off his touch and said, “Hop in then. I know just the place.”
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
How about we start 2012 with a longer chapter? ;) This way I really what to thank all of you for being so amazing and motivating me to write more. You are made of win. :)
Big thank you goes to All4Spike for her awesome editing skills!
Big thank you goes to All4Spike for her awesome editing skills!
Chapter End Notes:
Hope you liked the Spuffy reunion! Feel free to let me know what you think of the chapter. :)