Disclaimer: I don’t own or profit from BtVS
Spoilers: Innocence.
A/N: Not my best chapter. I’m not very happy with it, but it’s not getting any better, no matter how much I stare at it. This will be the last chapter for a while that does this jumping around malarkey. For now on we are gonna find a scene and stick to it!
Remember When
Chapter Six
Buffy entered through the backdoor and stood silently in the empty kitchen. The morning light was bright, swathing the room in a wash of yellow that was mocking in its cheeriness. If her life was a proper Bronte novel then the world should be cloaked in storm clouds. It seemed unfair that the sun chose to shine so brightly instead. She cocked her head, listening intently. There was no sound of running water in the upstairs bath or the slamming of drawers in her sister’s room. She expected to come home to an interrogation, but the silence reminded her of her mother’s promise for a Saturday shopping trip at the mall, because she would be out of town for her birthday. Dawn was safely ensconced at Kim’s; the third in the triumvirate of preadolescent hellions who included Dawn and Janice. The house was blissfully empty.
Buffy’s clothes had an uncomfortable clingy feeling of partially dried material that only results from being left in a sodden heap on the floor all night. Her giraffe print pants chaffed at her inner thighs and her blouse rucked up beneath her armpits. She swept her matted, blonde hair away from her cheek, wiping morning grit from the corner of one eye.
She had experienced the most magical evening of her young life and instead of waking to the splendor of her lover’s handsome smile, she found herself abandoned and alone. This was not the fairy tale she expected. Abandonment wasn’t part of the fantasy. There was no sense of female empowerment after being initiated into womanhood. She was dulled. Hurt. And terribly frightened.
She passed through the room mechanically, making it as far as the stairs before she sank down in exhaustion. She sat on the bottom step, her brow touching her knees as she wound her arms around her shins. What happened? Where was Angel? Why had he left her?
Doesn’t he love me?
Tears were thick and hot behind her paper-thin eyelids, but she refused to spill them. She recounted the evening, trying to understand where Angel may have possibly disappeared to after she fallen asleep in his bed.
After they made love.
Could he have gone back to the factory? Did he try to take on the Judge by himself? Was he injured, waiting for her to rescue him? Was he dead?
Her heart clenched, and a low moan lisped from between her tightly clenched teeth. Surely, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to go back without her. Yes, in the past he had disappeared for days at a time, but that was before. Before they expressed their love to each other with such intimacy.
Perhaps he went back to protect her. The judge was reanimated. She and Angel had been at the factory last night and saw him with their own eyes. Seen the Judge.
Seen Spike.
Spike who was alive, and cocky, and nearly skeletal with hunger. The ravages of his body as she spied him from the catwalk had muted the ecstatic thump in her chest. The uneven palpitations of her heart had been so loud that Angel had cast her a bewildered glance, asking her if she was okay. She merely nodded, unable to take her eyes from her mortal enemy.
He looked terrible. His face was blistered and his skin was chalky. Even from the catwalk she could see the emaciation of his body. And the wheelchair. Her dreams were true. He was crippled. She had done that to him.
How could she kill him now?
How could she not?
The evidence of his injuries made her question what other truths her dream revealed. Her slayer dream had made one thing perfectly clear. Family came first. The intense feelings she manifested in her dream were a warning to watch out for Dawn, but it didn’t reveal from where the threat would come. In the dream, Spike didn’t pose a threat, but he was physically close. What if it was a warning? A reminder that if she let her guard down, let a vampire get too close, her baby sister would end up a vamp treat.
She had no doubt that once he was recovered, Spike would come for her. It was his nature to hunt her. Their nature to hunt each other. He was the scorpion, but damned if she’d be the stupid frog. She had to be smart. She had to stay alive to protect Dawn. To protect her family. Angel was now included under the heading of family. Spike wasn’t. No matter the wonky feelings she had for him or how Dawn worshiped him.
Spike wasn’t family.
It tortured her. The thought of being Spike’s executioner aged her. The knowledge he was alive and the ramifications of their next battle did so even more. She didn’t want to kill him, but she would, if she had to. Her relationship with Dawn was already under strain. What would happen when she killed Spike a second time? How much would Dawn hate her then? The thought of being distant from her baby sister made her heart hurt in ways Angel missage couldn’t touch.
The simple answer to her dilemma was to not reveal the truth about Spike. If Dawn didn’t know, then she couldn’t condemn Buffy for killing him. The very idea of lying by omission felt wrong. It left a nasty, bitter taste in her mouth. Buffy had secrets. So many secrets they threatened to choke the life out her sometimes when she lay alone in her double-wide, virginal bed. But secrets weren’t something she kept from Dawn. Not normally. Not for lack of trying, she thought ruefully. Dawn had a way of wheedling the most tight-lipped of secrets from anyone. But this time, Buffy couldn’t allow it. She had to keep the secret of Spike’s resurrection to spare Dawn from further pain. She had to do what was right. She had to grow up. She had to be mature. Not just in body, but in mind.
Buffy felt old. Womanly. But not in the lush, mature way she thought she would feel. She expected to feel older the morning after her first sexual experience. Sex in her mind equated maturity. That somehow her experience would be reflected physically in the dips and curves in her body. But it wasn’t true. She felt used up, worn down and flattened out. She felt like a forty year old divorcee who knew all the ins and outs of the miserableness of life.
She had grown quickly in the last few months since Halloween. The teenage girl who wanted to be petite and feminine to impress a man no longer existed. She felt even further from the bubblegum popping preteen she was before her calling. There had been so many close calls, so many tragedies. Giles told her the good guys were always stalwart and true and won in the end. She asked for those lies, but now she wished she hadn’t. They just underlined the essential truth. Life is never fair. Life is never easy.
And now this. This sense of loss. The fear her lover was missing and hurt. The insidious terror he never really loved her in the first place. It both hardened and rendered her vulnerable. She was a little girl in the body of a woman. When she awoke alone she was left with some very hard, unanswerable questions. The worse of which wasn’t ‘where is Angel?’ The worse question she had to ask herself was, ‘Can I live without him?’
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What a complete buggering cock up! Those minions actually got the arm back from Angelus and the Slayer. What in the bleeding hell use were they? Now the great blue git was a real boy with all his parts and was only one devil-worshiping meditation away from using them.
Was it only last night the Slayer stood in his home, looking young and vulnerable in ridiculous giraffe print pants, goodness radiating from every pore like the sodding sun? So bleeding young. Barely a woman. Still mostly a child. Very nearly too old for Angelus. It must have been the soul corked up his ass whispering forgotten rules of propriety in his depraved ear, telling the bogtrotter to wait until she was older. Until she was a woman. But Spike should have fucking known the reprobate wouldn’t wait until she was ripe. As a woman she would have lost her attractiveness to him, even all souled up as he had been. Angel, Angelus, Liam. No matter his incarnation, he liked his women young. Too young.
And now the previously souled up paragon had gone and popped that unripened cherry, releasing the bastard within.
His family was together. Reunited in bloodshed and depravity and everything nice. They would paint the town red. Maybe even all of North America. Just like Europe a century before. It would be beautiful. It would be magical. Spike could taste the blood pouring down his throat and he longed for it. Longed for the days of unfettered freedom, strength and hedonistic pleasures. The days before the miserableness his life had become. Before cock-sucking Sunneyhell cursed him.
Drusilla’s wicked laughter trilled, followed by Angelus’ smooth baritone as they planned the assault on the mall. Dread curled in Spike’s stomach.
The bastard would hunt the Slayer, much like he had hunted Dru when she was human. He would make a masterpiece out of her torment. Her torture would be made worse by the deep-seated anger writhing inside Angelus for being made to feel something so exotic as love. Before he was done the little slayer would cry a torrent of tears, and her blood would be made all the sweeter for it. In the end, she would be their forth to replace the loss of Darla.
But what of the others caught in the crossfire? The sweet. The innocent. Those with big blue eyes and pixie smiles? Those whose youth was an aphrodisiac to the depraved.
Spike wheeled into small office used by the floor supervisor when the factory was in operation. An old steel desk was overturned, and the metal, filing cabinet was missing most of its drawers. He searched through the rubble, finding a water-stained yellow notepad and a business envelope with a cellophane window. In the top drawer of the desk he found a stubby pencil lodged in the very back.
He wrote with forceful sweeps of his hand, his penmanship masculine, but oddly beautiful. He folded the note and stuffed it in the envelope, handing it to Dalton who hovered near the door, waiting for instruction.
“You know what to do. Don’t let anyone stop you. Don’t get caught. Don’t show your face until it’s done.”
Dalton nodded, his eyes locked on the floor in shame. His master saved his eyes by convincing the Mistress to give him another chance. He told him to take the minions to the docks to retrieve the Judge’s arm, but the implicit order was to fail. His master made it clear that he did not want the Judge to be resurrected. But none of the other minions listened to him. He wasn’t a leader vamp. He’s skills were more scholarly. His master deserved someone better than a useless bookworm like him.
It would be a long while before he was back in his Master’s good graces. He just hoped he wasn’t dead before that happened. He shot a frightened glance at the new addition to their household as he scuttled along in the shadows. The vampire was strong, vicious and bloodthirsty. Everything a true vampire should be. And in that regard, Dalton found him utterly terrifying.
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Buffy entered her room with zombie like detachment. Her mother would be out of town for another few days and Dawn was still staying at Kim’s. She was alone. So completely and totally alone.
Her anguish consumed her. She collapsed on the bed, curling into a ball to try and keep her body from shaking apart from the force of her grief. She sobbed out a rhythm of betrayal and loss that etched an indelible scar of distrust on her heart.
Angel was gone. In his place a monster named Angelus arose. A monster who didn’t love her. Couldn’t love her. He was nothing but a demon. There was no soul to temper it’s hate, or teach it right from wrong. There was no soul left to love her. And if there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that a soul was necessary for there to be love.
She huddled on her tear-soaked comforter, all of her pain and suffering exhausting her more than any battle.
Another Slayer dream. There should be a quota on how many Slayer dreams she had in a year, since they usually heralded an upcoming apocalypse. Or loss. Or death. Or both. The death and loss of a lover. The resurrection of a demon.
She almost turned and walked away into the whiteness that spread in an expanse behind her. She wanted to revolt against her calling. Against those faceless, nameless beings who danced her along like she was nothing more than a puppet for their amusement. Buffy wondered if her life was an experiment to them. If they were trying to find her breaking point. An empirical study into how much she could shoulder before collapsing under the strain.
Buffy was of the mind that there should only be one apocalypse a year. That seemed fair, since there was only one of her. Well, there was Kendra. She wondered if they had a lot of apocalypses in the Caribbean, and if the benefit of blue water, white beaches and balmy temperatures made up for it.
She rubbed her eyes against the bright sunlight, and trudged forward, her shoulders slumped. She was absolutely defeated. What was the point of going on? Why would the Powers That Be even bother her with another dream? She didn’t care anymore. There was nothing left to fight for. There was just no use.
The first thing she noticed was Spike. Her body jerked with the overwhelming instinct to race over and cover him so he wouldn’t burst into flames. But then she remembered—dream—right. Perfectly safe for little vampires to be out in the sunlight. He was out of his wheelchair, squatting before a small grave. His hand was buried in the dark, newly turned soil. He shifted, looking up at her with sad, distant eyes as the dirt fell through his fingers. She tried to glance at the headstone, but her head refused to turn, and the image of it kept skipping out of her peripheral.
She opened her mouth to ask Spike whose grave it was, but movement from the mourners, huddled together like a murder of crows, caught her attention. Angel turned around, a greasy smile edging his lips. Not Angel then. Angelus.
“You had to know what to see.”
Her brow crinkled. Slayer dreams. Why couldn’t they be clearer? To the point. Pointy even. Like a stake.
Jenny Calendar lifted her veil, and acute clarity starburst through her heart like a stake through a vampire’s chest.
Buffy launched herself off the bed, panting. She was gonna kill the bitch. It wouldn’t be pretty. It wouldn’t be poignant. She was going to hold that lying whore down and make her bleed. She crossed the room to change her clothes when her bare foot landed on something crinkly. She lifted her foot, frowning at the envelope stuck to her sole. She peeled it off, her eyes narrowing at the single word written on the outside.
Slayer
Buffy’s gaze swiftly zeroed in on the open window in front of where the envelope had lain. It would be easy for a vampire to slip it inside even without an invite to her home. Just a little push and it would have floated right in. She swept the room, seeing nothing dangerous, before leaning out the window to examine the tree and her backyard for intruders. There was nothing. The letter could have been left at anytime, including when she as passed out cold with mental exhaustion on her bed.
She retreated to the middle of her room and slowly opened the envelope to slide out the piece of yellow paper. She carefully unfolded it and read.
Keep Snack Size inside. He wants her and he will come for her. Don’t let that happen. Keep her safe.
Terror clenched her heart, nearly stopping it cold in her chest. The note was unsigned, but Buffy didn’t need a name to know whom the letter was from. She didn’t trust Spike. He was a vampire. He was big, bad and dangerous. Someday soon they would have a confrontation with either him ending up dust in the wind or her broken and drained. Yet, despite all that, something visceral tugged at Buffy’s guts. The despair she felt only moments before sloughed off, and a hardened purpose took its place. Spike wouldn’t lie to her. Not about Dawn. If he said she was in danger, then Buffy knew it to be true.
All these months, Dawn told her how Angel made her uncomfortable. She hadn’t listened. She shrugged it off with a smirk and teenage attitude. Now all her little sister’s fears were justified. Turns out she really was the stupid frog, but it was Angel who was the goddamn scorpion.
If Angelus got ahold of Dawn---Buffy couldn’t even comprehend the notion of it. She couldn’t allow it to happen. She wouldn’t. Dawn was hers to protect. Her family. And Buffy would do anything for family.
Even kill love itself.