Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from Btvs.

A/N:  Look.  How many times does Spike have to say it?  He’s a vampire, dammit!

Thanks so much to ObscureBookWyrm for her wonderful editing skills.  All mistakes are due to my tweaking.

Spoilers:  I Only Have Eyes For You

Remember When

Chapter Thirteen

That bastard, Angelus, didn’t believe in love.  He thought it was an infection, a disease, an infestation to be scoured away.  Why complete arseholes like him managed to have so many women pining after them was a mystery that Spike had been trying to answer since before his turning.  It seemed the worse you treated a woman, the more she adored you.  Perhaps he should take a page from Angelus’ playbook and start treating Dru like dirt.  She clearly preferred it to his loving caresses, and who was he to say no to his dark princess?

He had long since begun to suspect that his touches only reminded Drusilla of what she lost in her turning.  A small part of her, the fragile, damaged girl cowering deep inside, craved the humanity he displayed towards her, but a larger part resented it.  He loved her, but she was incapable of reciprocating finer emotion, so she lashed out with unstable bouts of cruelty interspersed with cold affection. 

The Judge said she had remnants of humanity, but those tattered shreds couldn’t form something as lasting and pure as love.  Love was supposed to be forever.  It was something to strive for, something to cherish and protect.  It was worth fighting for, and should never be given up on.  But Gods, he was so tired of fighting for something he would never have.  Here they were, all eternal and what not, but not eternally in love.  It just wasn’t right.  This wasn’t what he imagined when he said yes to Dru all those decades ago.

So, what exactly was he living his unlife for, if not for love?  Was he supposed to spend the next hundred, two hundred, five hundred years serving a loveless mistress?  Could he do that?  Could he continue such an existence?  And what would happen to him if he did?  Would a loveless unlife eventually crush the humanity from him, until he was the proper vampire his family expected him to be?

He rolled his head against the rough brick, his throat long and exposed as he squinted at the orange sky.  The sun was slung low on the horizon, and he estimated there was only a half hour of light before dusk, leaving him just enough time to feed and return to the mansion before his sires awoke from their deep, violence-sated sleep.  Angelus and Dru returned after their ‘vile kill’ and had fallen onto each like sharks in a feeding frenzy.  He hoped their stupor would prevent them from realizing he was sneaking out on shaky, barely healed legs to feed from his first living person in months.  He had traversed the sewers leading to the alleyways in downtown Sunnydale, desperately searching for a homeless person sleeping it off in the shadows, but no such luck.  Sunnydale had an unsurprising lack of homelessness.  Vagabonds avoided the town where they were sure to become two-legged meals in their first night.  The alleys were empty of everything except overflowing trash bins.  This last alley was ripe with rotten food from the deli next door.

He braced his back on the sooty brick, his toe tracing the clear-cut line between shadow and sunlight.  The west wall of the building cast a deep pool of darkness, allowing him to edge close to the lip of the alley where it emptied out onto the sidewalk.  If he was very lucky, and very fast, he could snare his prey before his hands burned too badly in the sunlight.

He heard the quick skip of footsteps, along with the steady beat of a healthy heart.  This was it – a proper meal.  He braced his feet slightly apart, bending his knees.  He closed his eyes, using his predator senses to hone in on his prey.  The heartbeat drew even with the alleyway and with vampiric sped, Spike struck.  He grabbed the tasty morsel by the arm, swinging her out of the sunlight in a wide arc, and cracking her temple hard on the bricks beside him.  He was on her in less than a full beat of her heart, sinking his fangs into the curve between her neck and shoulder.

Her scent hit him before her taste.  He almost recoiled before his fangs were fully embedded, but then liquid bliss shot into his mouth and the entirety of his heavy masculine weight fell on her, pinning her beneath him.

*~*~*

Buffy was trapped in the hell of her own thoughts as she hurried towards the ice-cream shop to pick up Dawn before the sun set.  She didn’t want her sister wandering alone around downtown at night, especially with the threat of Angelus lingering overhead.  She glanced at the heavy, sinking sun and quickened her steps.

The confrontation with Angel last night had been simultaneously traumatic and cathartic.  After all these months she still couldn’t understand how it was possible for Angel to just wake up one day and be utterly devoid of love for her.  Logically, she understood the absence of his soul stole away all his ability to love, but emotionally she couldn’t comprehend it.  Love was forever.  It was eternal.  It shouldn’t be regulated by something as transparent and unassuming as a soul, but it was.   Angel lost his soul and magically he no longer loved her.  He hadn’t the ability, the capacity, or the emotional wherewithal to do so.  Logically, it all seemed so simple.  No soul, no love.

Except…

There was Spike to consider: soulless, evil, bloodsucking, baby sister saving Spike.  The man who gave up bagging his third Slayer to keep Drusilla, his queen, his goddess, his reason for unliving, safe.  The demon who gave morally skewed advice to her little sister on how to deal with school bullies.  The vampire who controlled his hunger and sacrificed a minion to keep Dawn safe.

He was the source of her turmoil.  If it wasn’t for his actions she could easily acknowledge the Council’s view that vampires were incapable of love.  That knowledge would allow her to forgive Angel, and accept that Angelus was an irredeemable demon.  It would soothe the silent scream of agony that rent her soul every second of the day, because it would mean that Angel’s inability to love her wasn’t a choice, it was simply a symptom of soullessness.

So how was it that Spike could love and not Angelus?  Was it possible for the power of love to breach the barriers of soullessness?  And if so, why couldn’t Angel love her enough to tame the beast inside?  Was it because she wasn’t special enough?  Wasn’t she worth loving?

It was the same series of maddening questions that had spiraled around in her mind for months.  Giles’ reassurances that soulless vampires were incapable of loving had nearly soothed them into submission, and then Spike had done the unimaginable.  He had reined in his starving demon, practically had tea with Dawn to hear her tell it, and then saved her life by sacrificing his own minion.

It was inconceivable and something that even Giles in all his seeming omniscience couldn’t answer.

She was deep in her thoughts, unprepared when the assault came.  She was never attacked in the daylight.  The day was her time to be ‘just Buffy’, a normal girl who attended high school, suffered through torturously boring classes about economics, and giggled with her friends at lunch.  This is supposed to be my off time, she thought as she was swung out of the sunlight into the shadows, right before her temple cracked on the brick wall.

She almost didn’t feel the fangs pierce her neck.

She blinked away stars as her heels were kicked apart to keep her off balance and a heavy weight pinned her from behind.  She braced her palms, her bare flesh abrading on the brick, and tried to push herself off the wall.  Large, masculine hands covered hers, and strong arms forced pressure on the bends of her elbows, breaking her resistance.  She found herself focusing inanely on the chipped black paint on a flat, male thumbnail.

*~*~*

It had been a month since he scented her, since he smelled Kent in the summertime – a month of hating her while agonizingly training his legs to hold his weight.  A month of planning her bloody, painful demise.  He bit down hard, her blood flooding his mouth and going straight to his cock.  He hadn’t had sex in months, and hardly a proper wank.  His eyes rolled up at the thought of Buffy’s blood flooding his mouth while her tight heat strangled his cock.

Growling, Spike pressed his chest into her shoulders and canted his hips away from hers.  There was no way he was going to rub his cock against the ass of a little girl!  A little girl who is woman enough to yank the soul right out of a man.

He jerked and his fangs tore at her flesh.

“Ow.  Spike.”  Her voice was watery with tears.  She struggled against him, and he shifted his hips forward to pin her.  Fire erupted across his skin where their bodies met.  He adjusted his grip on her arm, his fingers dragging against something on her wrist.  His larger hand covered her smaller fist at the level of their eyes.  Their wrists lined up side-by-side and her slightly dingy, woven band of ivory with a zig zag of emerald shot through the center brushed against his nearly identical black and red band.  The bracelet he had yet to remove even though it had been weeks since it was wrapped around his wrist.  Even though it was a meaningless token from an irrelevant human child who should mean nothing more to him than a source of food. 

Dawn’s tear-stained face flashed before his eyes.

He yanked his fangs out of Buffy’s throat, pressing his ridged forehead to the hollow where her neck and shoulder met.  He panted hard, displacing her hair.

“You bit me.”  Her voice was sad and accusatory.  He swore he heard betrayal.

“I didn’t mean to.  I didn’t know it was you,” he defended stupidly before he could rein in his loose tongue.  He tightened his grip on her wrists, keeping his weight pressed evenly to pin her to the wall.  He didn’t want her to get away, but he wasn’t eating her either.  His rock-hard erection brushed against her heart-shaped arse.  What exactly was he supposed to be doing with her?

“You just thought I was your next meal.”  Her tone was like ice, cold, hard and heavy, crushing the life from his chest.  It jerked him out of the euphoria of tasting her blood.

“Christ,” he hissed, his demon melting away with a crunch of cartilage.  “I swear to all that’s unholy I will kill you.  I have to kill you.”  He sounded desperate.  He sounded like a man whose last hope hinged on the grace of God and who knew miracles weren’t for the likes of him.

He pressed his mouth against her wound, but his fangs didn’t drop.  He alternately sucked and lapped at the small holes.  He wasn’t feasting on her or healing her.  Fuck!  What the hell was he doing? 

Relishing her, came the unbidden thought.

“Spike, stop.”  Her voice was shaky, and a new scent hit him.  Arousal.  It was rich with vitality and power.  It was beyond any temptation he ever encountered before.

He traced the line of her neck with his nose, stopping to nuzzle her behind the ear.  “Slayer likes to be bitten,” he sing-songed with a breathy whisper.  “Baby likes to play in the dark.”

He could feel the unrelenting stiffness of her body from the top of his chest all the way to his crotch.  It didn’t stop him from fitting the length of his erection into the crease of her ass.

“Get off me, you pig!”

She tried to force herself off the wall, but he still had her arms tangled with his.  She stomped on his foot with true vindictive viciousness, but he just laughed.  He wore steel-toed boots for more than the extra weight behind his kicks.

He flattened his tongue against her vibrating flesh and lapped long and hard along the line of her shoulder.  He reached his bite and drew another deep pull.

“You really going to do this to me?  To Dawn?”

“Shut up,” he growled.  “I haven’t done a soddin’ thing to you.  Yet.”  He nipped her with blunt teeth.  “You little girls best remember what I am.”

“Oh, we know what you are, Spike.  You’re a monster,” she spat.

“And don’t you forget it!”  His body was tense with frustration.  If he was such a bloody monster why hadn’t he ripped out her throat yet?  And why did her accusation make him more brassed off than satisfied?  He’d been trying to tell these little girls for months that he was a monster, and now that it finally sunk in, he wanted to rip out his hair and howl.

“Spike!”

Spike leapt off Buffy with speed that was shocking.  He hadn’t even known he could move that fast.  Buffy spun off the wall, but instead of rushing out of the alley, she turned her back to fuss with the collar of her jacket.  He was oddly touched that she was trying to hide his bad behavior from Snack Size.

Wait!  Bad behavior?  Fucking vampire here!

It did beg the question as to why she was hiding it.  She couldn’t possibly be trying to protect him, which meant she was looking out for her little sister’s feelings.  A small projectile launched itself at his chest, rocking him back on his heels.  He told himself that he wrapped his arms around the little girl to steady their precarious stance, not because he missed the warmth of her small body.

“’Lo, Snack Size.”

“You’re walking!” Dawn beamed up at him and he blinked.  Had anyone since his human sisters ever looked up at him with such innocent enthusiasm?  “That’s so great.”

Her genuine pleasure at his recovery rocked him.  He had to keep it a secret from his own family for fear of the painful retribution it would bring.  As a cripple he was subject to degrading victimization, but at least there was veneer of shelter to it.  While unable to walk he wasn’t considered a threat.  And if he wasn’t a threat, then he didn’t need to be brutally subjugated by his sires in order to reassure themselves of his loyalty by breaking any hint of resistance in him.

But this family gloried in his recovery.  They were happy for him.  He cut his eyes to the blonde teenager.  Well, maybe only the one girl.  The other was looking pretty brassed off at the moment.

“Yeah, Bit.  All healed up.  Still a little shaky though.  Wouldn’t want to have a go with big sis.”

Suicidal, that.  Pointing out his weakness while the Slayer was standing right beside him, wearing his bite like a mark of possession.  The taste of her still coated his mouth, and he could feel the small sips he took working their magic through his ravaged body.  A few deep pulls of Slayer blood would heal him completely and give him added power.  The Slayer was truly a magnificent creature, right down to her DNA.  Spike couldn’t help gazing at her appreciatively, but Dawn was dismissive of her sister.  The young girl’s entire focus was on her best undead friend in all the world and she never noticed how Buffy was fussing with her hair, trying to cover the wound on her neck. 

“Now you can totally get away from that jerky-face Angel.  You shouldn’t have to stay with him.  He’s awful.  Hey!  Maybe you can stay with us.”

“Whah!”  Buffy jumped like a scalded cat, choking on her tongue, but Dawn continued to rattle on uninterrupted.

“You like should have totally seen it.  Angel was all ‘grrrr’ and chased us down the hall.”  The little girl made a snarly face and curled her hands like claws, but she dropped them quickly as she continued to prattle on, bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement as she told her story. 

“I thought for sure he was gonna get us.  I was so scared I almost peed my pants.  I’ve never been that scared in my whole life, not even when Mom told me Buffy was in the hospital for crazy people.  And then he—he--- burst into flames and I didn’t know what to do.”  She sniffled, hastily swiping at her wet cheeks.  Dalton, the skinny, balding, unlikely hero, would always have a place in her heart.  “I was all burnt and blistered and trying to hide it from my mom, and Buffy was all ‘you’re such a dummy, Dawnie’ and I was all, ‘but Spike’s my friend’ and she was like, ‘don’t be stupid vampires can’t be emo’ and I was like ‘oh yah, then why’d his friend saved me.’  And you know what?  She couldn’t explain it, so you see, you totally have to come live with us, ‘cause you can’t stay there with crazy, fangy Angel.  I know he’s the one who beat you up.  Buffy’s gonna say no, ‘cause you’re totally in love with some vampy hobiscuit, but if you really love her I guess she can come, too.  But she has to promise to mind her manners.”

She took a deep breath, readying herself to launch into another run-on sentence, but she cast a quick glance at Buffy who was staring with dumbfounded horror and exhaled in a rush.  Buffy, stunned into near catatonia by Dawn’s insane word vomit, had forgotten that she was trying to hide Spike’s bite mark.  It was a vibrant, mottled red and purple against her pale skin.  Dawn squinted, canting towards her sister, before her head whipped around, her pigtails flying as her narrowed gaze lighted on Spike with preadolescent fury. 

Something sharp and heavy sunk deep into Spike’s guts.  As Snack Size rushed through the baffling arrangement of words that somehow denoted a sense of concern for his welfare, he was buffeted by a montage of emotions he was ill-equipped to process.  Amusement first, because damned if she wasn’t a cute little firecracker, her eyes lit up with excitement.  Then came guilt, concern and anger at all she suffered because of Angelus.  But the most bewildering of all was the warmth that spread from the vicinity of his unbeating heart, down his limbs, and into his fingers and toes, when he realized she genuinely cared for him.  He was dead certain that if asked right now if he was her friend, she would reply with an unequivocal and resounding ‘yes!’  And that was something to marvel at.  Because Spike, William the Bloody Awful Poet and Vampire had never, not once, while living or unliving, ever had a friend.

As quickly as the feeling blossomed it was gone, because he had already lost her before he knew what he had.

The little girl vibrated with uncharacteristic silence, as if the deluge of words dammed behind her tongue were churning to be freed.  The moment stretched into eternity.  As long as he had known her, the little girl had never been quiet for such an extended time. 

“You bit my sister?”  The words were barely a rush of air.  Her lower lip quivered and her big blue eyes were filled with so much hurt betrayal, Spike thought it might spill over and drown half of Main Street.

“Well, now.  Bit is such a dirty word.  Jus’ had a nibble is all.”  He shoved his hands in his duster pockets, resisting the urge to wave them in the negative.  He felt like a naughty schoolboy who’d been caught choking his pecker.

“You bit her?” she repeated forcefully.  As if she could make the truth disintegrate under the potency of her disapproval.

Her face screwed up and her cheeks flamed red.  Spike absently wondered if she was going to bawl like a two year old whose toy was taken away.  He shifted his weight, caught between the urge to beg forgiveness or run for the nearest sewer entrance.  He was unprepared for her swift kick, her hard-formed Mary Janes denting his shin.

“Ow!  Bloody, buggering fuck!”  He leapt back, hopping on one foot so he could massage the sharp pain.

Rage breathed fire inside his chest, spilling out of him in waves.  It was all so bloody unfair!  He should have snapped her neck Halloween night and been done with it.  Vampires were not supposed to have friends.  Vampires didn’t disappoint or betray people, because no one in their right mind ever trusted one.  She was just a foolish little child and he was an aged, master vampire.  He knew the right of things, and dammit, she would listen to him for once.  He bent slightly at the waist so he could look Snack Size in the eyes, spitting his words between tightly clenched teeth.

“Listen up, you stupid little brat, ‘cause I’m only goin’ say this one more time.  I’m.  A.   Soddin’.  Vampire!”  All the anger, insecurity and confusion he had felt since he landed in this miserable little town rushed to the forefront.  He threw back his head and roared the last word while in vamp face, his own fangs splitting his lip in his fury.

He didn’t see Buffy’s perfectly executed roundhouse that landed square in his chest, propelling him backwards into a cluster of garbage cans, creating enough racket to make normal denizens stop and look.  The Sunneydalers on Main Street merely walked a little faster, blinders firmly in place.  By the time he pulled himself out of the rancid refuse the two girls were standing deep in dazzling late afternoon sunlight, far from his reach where he crouched in the shadows.

They shared similar looks of despair and disappointment that only sisters could perfect.  He felt something inside him shrink and whimper.  It hurt deep inside where emotion had long since died.

“I’m the baddest of the bad.  A soulless bastard.”

He lashed out against the rubbish bins, tossing them against the sooty brick wall and smashing them over his knee.  He snarled, hissed and spat.  He raged like the demon he was.

Exhausted, he sank to his knees, his newly rejuvenated body still weak.  He lifted his head, his amber eyes meeting watery blue.

“Evil.”  He motioned to himself.  “Why don’t you chits get that?”

Dawn cowered in the sunlight, staring back at Spike in the shadows, just as she had done to another monster not so long ago.  Was that what Spike was?  A monster?  Someone---Something to be afraid of?  How could she have been so wrong?  How could she have distrusted her sister?  How could he not belong to them?

“You know…  When we thought you were dead, we cried for you.  Buffy sobbed about how sorry she was for killing you, and I totally blew her off.  When she refused to feed you, I called her stupid and told her you were our friend.  She told me sorry, but you were a vampire and not ours to help.  But you know what?  She has nothing to be sorry about.  You aren’t our friend.  You are a monster.”

The intensity of the pain her words caused made him want to vomit.  He had been subject to many expressions of horror, terror, sorrow and agony over the decades, but their look of betrayal struck him as the worst he had ever experienced.  He opened his mouth to say something, to defend himself, but there was nothing to be said.  He was a monster.

Buffy tugged Dawn away with one last sad glance and then they were gone.  The sunlight, framed between tall, listing buildings, remained empty.  He pressed his palm to the ridges on his forehead, his eyes clenched against the pain of his body inside and out.

“I’m a sodding vampire,” he hissed, but the only ones that heard him were the scurrying rats beneath the trash.

*~*~*

The girls ran down the street, their view swimming with tears.  Finally, Dawn could go no further.  She bent at the waist, her hands tucked to her aching sides as she shuddered with bone-wracking sobs.

“I’m sorry, Dawnie.  So sorry.”  Buffy stroked her sister’s long, brown hair, grieving with her.  They both felt as though they had lost something monumental.  Something completely irreplaceable.

“I don’t get it.  I don’t get it at all.”  Doubled over, Dawn panted into her knees.  Buffy swiped her eyes.  She needed to see her surroundings to make sure Dawn was safe, but she kept tearing up.  She felt her sister’s pain resonating in her own chest.

“He’s a vampire, Dawn.  You can’t trust them.  You can’t trust any of them.”

Emotionally and physically sapped, Dawn collapsed to her knees.  “Not even Angel?  I mean souled Angel.”

Buffy fell to her knees beside her.  They were on the side of the road, kneeling in the scrubby grass still wet from the sprinklers, and she didn’t care.  She didn’t care that her jeans were getting stained or that someone was going to see them.  All she cared about was her sister.

“I…”  What to say about Angel?  It would be so easy to say that he would never have betrayed her if he hadn’t lost his soul, but Dawn made a point.  Angel was a vampire, souled or not.  His true nature was just being repressed.  Suppressed.  Bottled up with a cork that could pop at any time.  The soul was just a lie, a cover for the truth.  Buffy reeled with the magnitude of her realization.

“You can’t trust them,” Buffy reiterated.

“How do you know?”

“What do you mean?”  Buffy flipped Dawn’s long pigtail over her shoulder, so she could see her sister’s profile.

“How do you know if anyone is ever telling the truth about themselves?  Not just vampires, but anyone.  The counselors at school are always going on about how actions are supposed to speak louder than words, but what about when actions are lies too?  I mean, Spike is always harping on how evil he is and how he’s a vampire, but until now his actions didn’t mesh with whole ‘grrr I’m the Big Bad’ thing he has going on.  What does that mean, Buffy?  How am I supposed to know who to trust?”

Dawn was looking up at her with big, wet eyes, begging for answers to unanswerable questions, and Buffy shattered.  She hunched forward, her hands cupped over her face.  She could feel true gut wrenching sobs building just beneath her breastbone, and she forced herself to take full breaths to fight them back down.  How did one know whom to trust?  Only a few months ago she would have trusted Angel with her life, and look how that turned out.  His inability to control his demon and love her despite his nature was the ultimate betrayal.  How does one prevent misplacement of their trust?  Was it all just some huge cosmic crapshoot?  Was life peppered with disappointment and heartache?  Buffy thought of their mother.  The man she promised to love and cherish for eternity left her for a younger woman, and she was so desperate to have someone in her life she let herself be fooled by a robot.  Was that the only example for them to follow?  That compromise was preferable to being alone and that eventually betrayal would rear its ugly head?

Buffy roughly scrubbed her eyes and dropped her hands so she could look at Dawn.  “I don’t know, Dawnie.  I’m still trying to figure it out myself.  Consistency maybe?  If people prove themselves trustworthy over and over, then you can trust them?”

“But for them to do that you already have to trust them.  How do you start to trust someone?  Should we even bother?”

Dawn’s words broke her heart.  Twelve years old and already jaded.

“Of course, we should.  You can’t have love without trust, and I don’t think life is worth living without love.  So no matter how much it hurts, we have to keep trusting.  We just gotta be wiser about it, is all.  No more vampires for either of us.  Cold turkey!”  She lifted her hand, pinky finger extended.  She smiled brightly, but she could feel it wobble around the edges.  Dawn returned a wan smile and gripped her pinky with hers.

“No more vampires,” she agreed.  “Cold turkey.”