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Long mindless minutes scratched by as Buffy felt her eyes riveted to the unmoving form of the vampire she had come to recognise and catagorise as hers. Awareness clawed at her spine and every delicious tingle of anticipation pushed her further into a panic and drove her instincts into flight. She could see the cuts, the welts and bruises that deformed his beautiful skin and knew that the fault was hers. But more than that, she saw the vampire. The being she had been trained to hate, to eradicate. And it scared her.
They had come a long way from Sunnydale, driven from their homes and security on the whim of a demented hellgod, and on the long drive to the Hyperion her thoughts had been focused on Spike, on how they could find him. It had never occurred to her that Angel might have found him already, and as grateful as she was that there would be no search that Angel hadn’t dusted him her current nerves of jelly proved to her that she wasn’t ready to confront the latest vampire to run out on her.
Two long years of disturbing history between them tainted her moment of reconciliation. He was a vampire for God’s sake; and just because he’d wiped out a few demons for her, really didn’t mean that he did it to make her job easier. The motivation could simply have been survival, or the need to kill. She had seen that force, that thirst for violence within him often hell she had often intentionally fuelled it just to watch him go off and be impotent in his retribution. They had put a lot of stock into his claims of change, and within seconds of breathless desire and hope, she was returned to suspicion and distrust. Questioning her feelings, unsure in the strength of her love.
‘What had they been thinking?’ she asked herself slightly hysterically. Giles, Xander, they were now encouraging her to bring the pest back home, convinced he was worthy of their group membership. One mention to him of how they seemed to need him would make him insufferable and even more arrogant. No, this was all a very stupid mistake and she needed to get out of this room fast before she made a fool out of herself.
On shaking legs she stood, and quietly let herself out. The figure on the bed hadn’t moved even a fraction in the time she had been in there and she had to wonder how out of it he was after two or so days of recovery time.
Slinking out of the barely open door she bumped abruptly into something hard and immovable. She looked up swiftly in surprise and encountered stormy and angry brown eyes.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?” Angel spat out, barely controlling his fury.
Buffy gulped, finally wounded by his seeming lack of feeling for her and confused by his temper.
“I just thought I should get out before I did something foolish. I suddenly came to my senses. I don’t need to align myself with vicious vampire, Angel. I’ll work something out with Giles about Glory.”
Her defensiveness was fuelled by fright and before her eyes she could see the skin of his face tighten and her heart began to beat with alarm.
“Why, you insecure, ignorant little…”
He closed his eyes at her gasp of outrage, and tried desperately to reign in his feelings of intolerance. He had made her be this closed woman, lacking in real knowledge and understanding of the things she hunted, and so without the true weapons to know how to fight this particular burden. He had guided her prejudice, keeping himself in her little pocket of exceptions, and now paid the price for not allowing any room for her to slot his Childe.
“He hasn’t said anything much. Mainly just groans of pain. But I know. He left Sunnydale because of you, didn’t he?” His eyes tore into her with all the intensity of a firestorm.
She nodded her head hesitantly, conceding his point but enlightening him no further.
“He’s in love with you.” It was not a question and she looked up at him sharply.
“William always loses direction and does a runner because of love. Don’t you know him well enough to know that, Buffy?”
“Yes…” she answered almost ashamed. She did know, she knew that it was her that had given his feet wings, that had forced more love from her life, and her cowardice rose to bite her in the ass.
What had happened to her resolve? To death being her gift? Nothing had prepared her for the suffering Spike might have endured. She had been so sure that even though she had finally worked out that she might have feelings for him, that she could admit to needing him both for her work and in her life, that she had forgotten the practicalities of romance on the Hellmouth. More particularly, her own disastrous romantic efforts that went straight to hell without a seconds hesitation.
And her friends, her mother and Giles and Xander. Were they saying it was okay for her to give him hope for a requited love? Or was it something else they were encouraging her to do to make sure he stuck around? Surely they wouldn’t be promoting a relationship between the Slayer and a soulless, evil vampire. That would be just too wiggy.
Gaining reassurance from her thoughts and straightening her backbone in determination, she allowed her voice to fall in at normal volume, allowing no more weakness to give her away, and despite the confidence in the words, she screamed internally to stop being such a bitch and stop making excuses.
“Angel. His feelings aren’t important.” She paused, guilt making her insides clench in self-disgust as Angel blanched and then resumed his angry frown, no longer being able to even look at her. But she pushed on, her own words to an extent burning her with the unwanted vitriol. “He is a vampire, one that is only helpful to us now because he has a chip in his head preventing him from hunting people and killing them. He needs the violence, and for that alone is why he has been helpful to us in the past.”
“God, do you even listen to the garbage you are saying?”
His outburst shocked her into mortified silence.
“You think that chip stopped him from hunting?” At her slow nod he barked out a sarcastic laugh. “Oh baby, he’s been hunting. Not killing, Dru and Darla did that for him, but it didn’t stop him hunting.”
At this startling confirmation Buffy lost all colour in her face along with the hope that she had been wrong to doubt his desire to change. She fell hard against the door and reached behind her with an unsteady hand to pull a stake from her waistband. A solitary tear squeezed out of her left eye and her hand grabbed for the doorknob, about to twist it and put an end to the evil lying motionless in the room. Before she could make the action though, Angel had grabbed her wrist and turned it sharply, pulling it behind her back in a show of strength he had rarely used on her.
“I think you and I need to have a little talk before you really do go and do something foolish.”
Her lips straightened into a line of menace as she tried to jerk her arm out of his grip, and then winced as the muscles in her shoulder pulled painfully.
“Angel, what the hell has gotten into you?”
His face was an implacable mask and instead of answering he pulled her down the corridor and thrust her into an empty room before shutting the door with a determined click. Looking at his face, cold in both temperature and emotion, she sucked in a breath to try and counteract her sudden nerves.
“Okay, Angel. What exactly is this about?”
“This is about you not understanding the basic, elemental nature of the people you are set to kill.”
“They aren’t people. They’re monsters. I need to eradicate them, not work out which bedtime story they like best.”
“How stupid am I? I thought you saw me as a person.”
“I do…but you have a soul. That makes you different.”
The darkness he had been struggling with since Darla’s return threatened to swamp him, to make this confrontation as bloody and violent as it deserved to be because of her ignorance. But thoughts of Spike, devastated underneath a cold, white cotton sheet strengthened his resolve. Remembering, caring for Spike brought the sanity back, the determination of his mission to the forefront of his existence.
“Even with a soul, I’m still a vampire. I hunt too. Just not people, right now.” His cloaked reference to Angelus was deliberate and he smiled in secret satisfaction as her heart indicated her sudden change in confidence.
Her nerves ratcheted up several notches to outright apprehension before she backed a few steps away, rubbing her man-handled and sore wrist while striving to concentrate on the situation at hand.
“The hunt is what it is all about for a vampire, Buffy. You rejected him, and I’ll stake my hotel you told him he couldn’t change, that it was impossible for him to be good.” He grinned in angry acceptance when she grimaced tellingly. “What did you expect him to do when you cut him free, Buff? You told him he couldn’t possibly be good but you still expected to have him sit away somewhere continuing the mission you felt him incapable of. And now you are disappointed that he did exactly what you expected of him, anyway. Make up your mind.”
She slumped against the door, defeated and miserable that Spike hadn’t proved her wrong. That he had killed, and had fed on humans once again. She couldn’t protect him from that, and she couldn’t take him back from that either. The Scoobies would never allow it. She shouldn’t even want it. But it hurt anyway.
“I think it is time you let yourself be open to the truth now, don’t you?”
Her head shot up in an instant, her bottom lip quivering delicately as the only sign of her emotional upheaval.
“What are you getting at?” She was getting really tired of his cryptic meandering path to the story; tired of having to kill the ones she…had strong feelings for, but knowing that Spike had to be taken care of, and Angel was wasting her time.
“He returned to his family, Buffy, and he tried to make them proud of him.”
Flashes of his beaten and broken body from only moments before gathered in her mind and she looked at him startled, but with a glimmer of understanding. And mounting hope.
“They weren’t though, were they?”
He didn’t speak, just shook his head in the negative, and waited for her to catch up.
“So, why weren’t they? He was hunting, feeding…why weren’t they immensely pleased to have him back? Why did they do…that…to him?” She waved her hand absently at the direction of the other rooms down the hall, toward the one where Spike lay unconscious. Thoughts of his suffering suddenly made her feel ill, and she felt herself falling back to those soft feelings of depth that had carved her heart into ribbons when he left.
How could hunting not be enough? Consuming be wrong? He was a vampire and he had acted like one, probably with relish, yet Dru and Darla had tortured and rejected him.
Comprehension made her green eyes glitter as she raised them to capture the brown ones filled with answers and knowledge.
“He stopped hunting, didn’t he?” Her voice was filled with awe and excitement as she watched his nod of agreement, and she let out a sigh of gratitude and sunk bonelessly to the floor.
Tired of trying to sort it all out for herself, she surrendered to the elder vampire and with her eyes pleaded with him to unravel the truth for her.
“Tell me…” she whispered, and he did.
“He was starved when I found him; looked like an Ethiopian a step from the grave. This lawyer I know was with him, Darla had taken over his apartment…long story…anyway, he told me what had been going on. Spike would talk to him, was a bit delirious, but you know Spike, can’t shut the guy up, ever. But I’d already heard a lot of it, on the streets. He started hunting, Buffy. But he stopped.”
He paused, watching her reaction and feeling reassured by the shimmering crystal of her eyes.
“Killing humans, or at least leading Dru and Darla to them to kill, was making him heartsick. He only went out with them for the first few nights, then stayed at home. They began to bring meals home he wouldn’t touch them. That’s when they chained him and started to beat him…torture him. He was in bad shape. Worse shape than I have ever seen him. He’s my childe, and he has been trying to be good. He might have slipped but he’s done the best he could without guidance. Without faith and support. I won’t turn my back on him, and I won’t let you stake him.”
Buffy raised wet miserable eyes to him, and began one last ditch effort to refute the possibility. One last argument to herself that the white-haired nuisance was not for her.
“It’s the chip, Angel. As soon as the chip is out he’ll be back there in it in no time.”
Angel snapped and started up to punch the wall in frustration. He stepped away, remaining quiet, thinking.
“Think about this then. If Angelus had been caught and had a chip put in his brain, do you think he would have come to you for help?”
Buffy blinked, the thought never having occurred to her.
“To tell you the truth, knowing Spike like I thought I did, I’m stunned that he did it. He could have gotten any one of his minions to collect his food; he could have still organised attacks. He found that Gem right under your nose.”
He relaxed a little at her short giggle, acknowledging the tale before he started back in with the crippling facts.
“He did plenty of wily things that I don’t think you ever gave him credit for, or if you did, it disappeared as soon as you eliminated him as a threat. That he went to his enemy for help is amazing. That he helped his enemy in her fight to do good, is astonishing. That he then fell in love with you and promised to be the opposite of what he was raised for you is miraculous. He has turned his back on his demon, on his nature to be something no other vampire has ever been, and you continue to kick him down for it. I might have a soul Buffy, but for him to do what he is trying so hard to do without one? In my book, that makes him better than me.”
Her silence was unnerving, no reaction to show which way she now leaned.
“I think there is something you need to understand about my soul, too.”
Her eyes were drawn back to him in surprise, sure that he had finished with his revelations. She waited for him to continue, her thoughts fighting to stay in the room with him while her body was eager to go back to her vampire and offer him the affection and comfort that he deserved. And the penance she owed for doubting in her newly claimed affection. Offer him her thanks and apologies, while she attempted to give him the support that had been lacking throughout their association.
“It wasn’t my soul that put me on the path to redemption.”
Her shock was confronting to him, he didn’t want to reveal how miserable and pathetic he had been for the hundred years following its return to him. Not wanting to lose face in the eye of her devotion. But Spike needed for her to end her judgmental attitude, and the only way lay in her need to know the truth about souls and motivation.
“It was you.”
She gasped in shock, Spike’s words surging forth in her memory. He had claimed to want to be good for her, and now Angel said she was the reason for his repentance.
“Huh?” She felt beyond words now, the steady list of revelations too burdensome for her to absorb them totally.
“Whistler took me to see you when you were at Hemery. I followed you to Sunnydale to help you in the fight. I fell in love with you as soon as I saw you, and chose to get my act together and fight against evil instead of wallowing in it. I wanted to keep you safe, alive. I think Spike has done the same without the benefit of a soul, with his demon in complete agreement of his motivation and action. It was his demon that rejected the taste of pumping, human blood. Something I am sure I could never have done. He deserves a second chance, Buffy. And a bit of loyalty.”
Loyalty.
He had recently given her that.
He had given her so much, and she had given him nothing but doubt and harsh, hateful words. And even in the face of revelation her own feelings for him tender and new her forceful run from the commitment ejected further recrimination. She had become the carbon-copy tourist flyer for the Council of Watchers, the embodiment of hard automaton Slayer. She had believed the lie, perpetuated it. Stood rigid in her disbelief of possible demon evolvement.
Self-realisation and confrontation was a bitch.
Pushing herself unsteadily to her feet she again tried to claim the door handle, but more words from Angel stopped her.
“There is something else, something I’m not sure about…but I am concerned.”
“What?” The tone of his voice set her teeth on edge, every cell of her body poised for fight or flight, whatever was necessary.
“I’ve been giving him human blood to heal. While there has been a small improvement, after two days he should really be a lot better. I think he might be dying.”
She spun around then and slapped him, no Slayer strength, just old-fashioned girly fear. Her hands rushed to cover her mouth and the tears she had thought under control now returned swiftly to wet her cheeks. So close, and yet her fear had allowed her to turn her back on him. Buffy shuddered, escalating terror for Spike’s unlife seeking release.
“How?”
“I think he is so sick of being rejected and hurt, that he has talked his body into shutting down. I told you he’s given up. He wants to die.” Angel was quiet for a few minutes, staring heatedly at her face before raising desperate eyes to hers and both pleaded and demanded. “You had better fix him and make him want to live, or so help me…” His voice broke and he turned away from her.
Her hand turned on the knob and the door began to swing open. As she set one foot out she thought she heard him speak again, but it was just a whisper.
“I need him alive to give me light.”
In confusion, she relocated Spike’s door and re-entered the room, kneeling next to his still figure and gently took his hand. No indecision remained, no panic or lack of understanding stood in the way of her decision. She couldn’t let him down, couldn’t let him leave her permanently.
They needed him, they all needed him.
And in the face of all that was topsy-turvey, apparently Angel needed him too.
Was there any doubt that an apocalypse was in the wind?
A/N...don't forget to review!