He came to with a rush of anxiety at the harsh whispers behind the door.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?” Ah, Angel, his unlikely savior and unwitting witness to his end. An answer took a short pause before delivering the final blow. Her voice made him suck in unneeded breath, shed useless aggravating tears of hopelessness, and he sunk further into despair.
“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 a vicious vampire, Angel. I’ll work something out with Giles about Glory.”
Oh God! She had come and he was useless, gone for good in her eyes. His leaving had meant little to her except for his final promise as he walked away, to help her against Glory in saving the life of her sister. But now she had seen him, swathed in useless white cotton as his body floundered and wasted away despite Angel’s nursing efforts to entice him back to health.
He drifted in and out under waves of understanding, voices only circling him with words that made little sense to his shattered mind. It was the tones that he heard, confusing him until her bitterness and loathing cracked through, and he shrunk back against the mattress, knowing that finally his end was near, and embracing it for the final escape from emotional anguish that it was.
“His feelings aren’t important,” he heard as those detested tears fell from eyes resigned to being the windows of his soul, sharing unwelcome love to those who would rather live without it, without him. “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 that alone is why he has been helpful in the past.”
His last tether to hope was torn from him forever as he digested her hated summary of his worth. He covered his face weakly with his unblemished pale hands, one hand sealing with all his remaining strength his mouth before his devastated whimpers could be heard on the other side of the door.
All the feelings he had been swamped and buried amongst for the past weeks rose to drown his motive, and all he saw were the lifeless limp bodies of women he had chosen for Dru to crack, falling with a final thump to the ground as he drained them of life. It didn’t matter that he had stopped, that he had wanted to stake himself rather than feed on those that Buffy was meant to protect. It was too late for him; he’d given in to the temptation of gaining his old existence back and found himself shrinking from the experience. How could he complain when Darla and Dru pointed out to him the error of his ways in the most brutal and cruel way they could imagine? They were vampires after all, and it would do him well to remember.
“You think that chip stopped him from hunting?” Oh Angel, now you’ve done it, mate. She’ll be hell bent on staking me now.
He couldn’t help but let out an hysterical giggle, though was relieved that his weakness kept it quiet and Buffy would never have heard, though he couldn’t guarantee Angel’s ignorance of the weakness of his childe. Spike rolled to his back, careless of the cuts that refused to fuse together and still wept blood onto the sheets, the pain making him bite the inside of his cheek but bringing him a bitter relief in distraction.
“Oh baby, he’s been hunting. Not killing, Dru and Darla did that for him, but that didn’t stop him hunting.”
He felt rather than saw her hand on the doorknob, ready to fling the wooden rectangle inready to pounce on him and slamming the sharp edge of the stake to his chest. His eyes squeezed shut as he tried to project for the last time his love for her, his forgiveness to Angel for shortening his possibility of redemption, and succumbed to what hideous tortures the afterlife would hold for him. His body gave in to jolting shudders as he waited for the weight of her over his body in promise of death, eyes screwed tightly shut to block out his final look at her face, not eager to see anymore of her disgust.
After tense excruciatingly slow minutes, he opened them to find the room still empty and silence outside. His disappointment was obliterative, ashamed that she couldn’t even bring herself to face him one final time before he was no more. The shudders calmed but his mental anguish escalated to a pitch unrecognisable to him. He didn’t understand, and was now past his ability to grasp even the simplest concept. He did, however, receive one with a magnitude that was gargantuan in its ugliness. She saw him again for what he was after almost eighteen months of him shaded in goodliness and favour, now the Big Bad was back out to play and she remembered. And she hated him. And he could do nothing for her or the Nibblet but pray that she would make it quick. Make his dusting quick so that the pain of waiting would be over and they could go on without him blackening up their existence.
The endless shaking of his form reduced his stamina and he fell into a recline that seemed deadly in its stillness. Indeed, his skin drained of more blood than excess, and he weakened further just by lying inert. His heart had accepted defeat and the functions of his demon fell into a grief so deep that he was unable and further, unwilling to rouse himself from its depths. The lack of voices concerned him no longer as his psyche surrendered him to a void deprived of feeling, deprived of hurt, but also deprived of love.
He had hunted, now it was his turn to be prey.
Silence was bound within the four walls of the hotel room; failed engagement of sound as one unconscious vampire lay undead and uncommunicative on the bed, and one Slayer sat uncomfortable but jittery on the floor, the pads of her feet bouncing in resistance to her bent knees. The stillness corrupted her panic as her eyes rested upon the figure of Spike; her vampire crushed and torn to a nearly unrecognisable mass. Buffy sat almost two metres from the bed, watching intently. Thoughts ran rampant through her mind and provided the only action abound. Her focus was within, questioning herself and her reactions and berating herself over her cowardice and self-inflicted misery and suffering. Her wounds were only emotional however, unlike the disintegrating health of her helpless vampire.
His lean repose was granted through horror and violence, rejection from his known, as he was deemed unworthy of their acceptance. He had embraced his past, encountered a small roadblock in his first baby steps back from the side of Good, but pushed beyond it to gain the favour of his familial women and a spot within the family that could make him feel wholegive him back the sense of belonging that he craved.
But the truth that had seeped from his inner core made his action abhorrent and he tried to cut loose from the death he was becoming both witness and instigator of.
Angel’s speech had struck her hard, forcing her to open semi-closed eyes to the possibilities of struggle; that not all defeat meant that the war was lost. She had been a fool as well as a failure in her stubborn blindness. He had seen things in a few days that had been obvious or at least should have been obvious to the Scoobies for the past six months. They had been unseeing in their prejudice, and so by continuing to discard the validity of Spike and his attempts at transformation, they relegated it to some selfish impulse on his part.
Her eyes rested on his hands; pale and motionless they held the fate of death and defeat at their fingertips. They were also the only unmarked patch of flesh on his entire body, she recalled, and flushed hotly in embarrassment at the recent memory of how she discovered that little fact. She had peaked under the sheet to check the extent of his damage, never even considering the possibility that he might be naked. Well, okay, she might have hoped. But her disgraceful voyeuristic moment had quickly brought back the gravity of the situation as she finally understood what that strange look that had passed between the men had meant. He was damaged. All over. Black and red, with small slashes of white in relief. Angel had only barely cleaned the worst of the torture from Spike’s body and she cried as her eyes fell again to those pale, white hands, fingers smooth and unbroken. The marred beauty of his flesh began at the wrists.
Seeing his body at such close rangecovered in splashes of a colour palette macabreBuffy felt like she could almost see his process. The need to hunt and prove that he wasn’t different to his known self, that he hadn’t transformed under the influence of the Scooby gang and, more rightly, the Slayer herself. The breakdown of his resolve to kill and feed mindlessly as he began to put faces to ‘happy meals on legs’. And finally, his broken heart at the realisation of himself as an evil killer who had wanted to change, but rejected the effort when help was denied to him. Looking at him now, Buffy felt it all: the uselessness, the grim ugly truth of her own part in his downfall. She saw his craving for end on the straight lines of his lips, by the inanimate hanging of his arm over the edge of the bed, and hung her head in defeat, sad and miserable, but above all terrified.
Too late. She was always too late.
A moan beholden of pain broke the glutinous shield of inactivity, fear holding all still for far too long as Buffy’s stiff limbs began to bear witness as she slowly pushed vertical. She made no step toward him, shame dictating her movements from this point as her reliance on instinct and her heart had never been at the forefront of her power. She watched his awakening with longing, wanting to touch his unblemished hand and offer her tardy support, but afraid that he wouldn’t let her be near him. As if she deserved it, anyway. She didn’t belong on the pedestal that he and her friends kept her on. She was fallible, she was blind and she was ignorant. Angel had uncovered it all in his desperation to protect his childe and get him the support he deserved.
Shining baby blue eyes blinked open to stare at the ceiling and she held her breath, unsure and frightened about where this was going to go. The flesh along her limbs began to buzz and tauten as she watched his awareness, felt the moment he could sense her presence. But he didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t even flinch. The previous stillness resumed, and her heart ached for the damage she had caused. She may not have rent blood from his body, but she had crushed his heart and will to exist.
Her hate within clashed with her voice of reason as the rising knowledge of affection for him asserted itself. While she held herself as still as stone she felt her emotional self leaning forward, eager to snatch some contact with the vampire that was stealing her heart while she was trashing his. Her vision blurred as the tears she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge slipped silently down her cheeks, setting off a scent of wetness that was confusing to a vampire in the clutches of melancholy.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that it had to be his choice to move, to call out, to imply any kind of contact. Selfish again she knew, but she didn’t want to force him, or overburden him with her own pain when he was drowning in buckets of his own. Really, she had no rights here no right to pain for she had created all of it, her own loneliness while she had fractured the very core of the man and demon that Spike had been. She wasn’t expecting the coming confrontation to be easy. But at the bitterness his voice projected when it finally filled the room, she took a step back and clasped her arms around herself in a protective stance.
“Where’s your pretty stake, Slayer?” He continued to stare at the ceiling, the blank expression in his eyes separate from the frost coating his voice.
The shaking of her body continued through to her voice as she attempted to step closer to him.
“Why would I need a stake?” She queried back, honestly bewildered by his opening correspondence after weeks of being apart.
His jaw clenched in stubborn defense, and she gasped as she saw a tear fall from his eye.
“Heard you and Peaches outside discussin’ my hunting abilities. Really wasn’t expectin’ to wake up, luv. You must be slippin’.”
Buffy stood shocked in place, her face draining of all colour as she internally went over the conversation she’d had with Angel outside the door. Her panic had led her to say things in a manner that she really never would have done if she hadn’t been desperate to pitch one last attempt in talking herself out of falling for Spike. Now that she had been sorted out again, she was to be shafted due to her own stupid mouth. Her stupid fears and insecurities had thrown up roadblocks that they both could ill afford and she knew now that to convince Spike that she didn’t want to kill him that she in fact wanted to be the one to help guide him and show him his powerful worth would be ultimately consigned to the difficult basket.
It wasn’t fair. Everything was always so hard, every small concession in her life had to be fought like an apocalypse to gain any headway. And she was so tired of it. If she had just offered him a crumb, he would never have left. Then again, if he had never left, she may never have admitted her feelings for him and the Scoobies may never have recognised his value in their group.
“I’m sorry, Spike. What you heard, it was me just reacting…you know…badly. But I’ve calmed down now. I don’t want to fight you, and I’m not going to kill you.” Her voice had never risen above a whisper and all the apprehension she felt was embedded in the strains of sound. It shook embarrassingly, and she shielded her eyes by looking at the floor, just in case he turned his head to look at her.
Coward, she taunted herself and in stubborn acceptance she raised her eyes again and nearly fainted when they fixed on the hurt of shining blue across from her. No longer caring what caution dictated to her she took the remaining steps to his side and lowered herself to sit beside his reclining form.
“I’m so sorry, Spike. I was wrong. About everything. It’s been miserable since you left.” She adopted a small, safe smile, hoping for a positive response from him, but remained bewildered when his face didn’t flex one way or another.
Finally she gave in to impulse and gently took one of those perfect hands in hers and stroked the skin softly, emotion rising to her throat and immobilising her voice box. Her eyes fixed on the activity, clinging to something meaningful, clear and pleasant, but her eyes couldn’t stay fixed forever and they wandered to the bed, too nervous to look at him outright. Around him clouds of red fanned artistically and she sucked in an alarmed breath, reaching out fearfully to swipe a finger over the blood.
Her eyes sought his in panic.
“You’re bleeding,” she told him stupidly. Until now she had ignored Angel’s caution about Spike’s apparent unwillingness to heal. He was a vampire who had been sucking up blood like there was no tomorrow. It wasn’t possible that he wouldn’t heal.
But the terrifying evidence lay before her in crimson tie-dyed sheets. Her breath caught on a sob and she forced his hand, still clasped within hers, to her lips where she kissed the pure white flesh in temptation. Her tears leaked from her eyes and fell to his palm and gathered as it was cupped to her lips.
He looked at her actions in confusion and awe.
“What are you doing, pet?”
“Spike, don’t do this. Please don’t give up.”
Suddenly, he felt overwhelming rage against her and snatched his hand from her grasp, flexing his fist experimentally as he felt all his strength seep from his other limbs. He could feel the steady release of blood continue from his wounds and knew that he wouldn’t have too long. He felt weary and mad as hell that she had to appear during his last moments to offer him useless hope in the form of her sweet lips and tears. It was too much, to know that he had failed, that he had lusted after someone so far above him that his dust would barely even reward her level of light.
He could never take back all that he was, and he just needed her to be gone. Away from his side so he could go out alone, like he deserved. His pain was wrenching, gutting, and he hated her eyes on him, judging and knowing the evil that he was. His demon shifted within and he felt himself begin to drift, searching frantically for that small space within his mind that might offer refuge from this awful searing failure he felt throughout his being.
She saw the life fade in his eyes, the blue turning pale when she was used to seeing them sparkle with vitality, and wondered absently how she had known that when she had always tried to ignore his appearance. His pupils turned glassy without focus and she knew that he was disappearing, his body still useless on the bed but mentally distancing from her and whatever humiliation she continually brought on him.
In furious tides of panic she rushed to him, grabbing his bruised and blistered face with her hands and started to shout. She called for him to come back; to not be a coward, to return to her so they could work it out. But his distance only increased.
Startling insight gripped her as she watched in powerless fixation the man that offered her hope and love slip forever from her grasp. Angel had given him blood, human blood, but it did nothing to heal the open wounds of Spike’s heart. He was empty of hope, of reason. He needed faith, love, and by God, he needed Buffy. It was like a blinding flash from somewhere higher, he needed her. Her belief in him, her power to restore his aching romantic heart. Her power lay in her blood. It was always about blood.
The room was clear of anything sharp and she felt like time was running out, no chance to go searching for a blade of some kind. A shoddily built bedside table sat alongside the bed and in a fit of desperate temper she kicked it hard, wincing as it splintered easily. Grabbing a jagged piece of wood, she tore it into her flesh and allowed her power to seep from the cut. Without thought to her own painor even putting a plan in motion she had thrust her forearm to his lips, almost screeching in raw panic for him to drink. Nothing happened; he lay there inanimate staring unseeingly at the ceiling as her blood dripped from her arm to his chest. Wasting.
And yet, there was something. A spark of recognition, something light in his eyes, a resurgence of something buried deep in the shadows. She held her breath and waited for whatever it was to surface. As suddenly as the strike of a hidden rattlesnake he pounced, lips suctioning onto her arm and he gulped, pulling great mouthfuls of her source past his tongue to glide down his throat and replenish his diminishing strength.
Her heartbeats skipped radically then began to slow, and the demon raised his senses, locating the giver and shrunk back a little in fright, pushing the wounded arm from his lips while searching the face of his second savior. While he observed her, collapsed and breathing heavily, he smelt her scent of completion and smiled happily. The recognition flared and he snorted in surprise, but possessive pride. Her blood had filled him up with purpose, provided within him a sacred swelling of warmth of healing, of joining, of hope. She had come for him, had saved him, had made him hers forever more. Then Spike surged forth and he recognised her and he fell back in perplexed awe.
He watched.
And when she at last raised her head there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips.
Unable to speak, her throat too clogged from emotion, she sniffled.
He captured her gaze, seeing strength from her acceptance of events, and rewarded her with a brilliant smile.
As if being wiped like a magna-doodle, his bruise-blackened skin faded, cuts in his skin melded, and the blood finally stopped flowing. Bones knit stubbornly back together, and health began to radiate from every inch of exposed skin, causing her to shiver in a let down of her fear.
She reached out a shaking hand to his cheek and let it rest, becoming lost in the soft mystified reflection of his eyes.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she whispered hoarsely, fingers barely touching his cold skin. She shifted closer on the bed, unaware of the leaking blood from her arm as it stained her clothes.
Her eyes watered up some more as she determinedly cupped her hand around his jaw.
“I believe in you,” her voice barely there, relying on his superb hearing as she pulled him forward, her body drifting closer.
Then everything stopped as she placed her lips over his and massaged them with her tongue, clinging and suckling with a need so deep she felt swept away on something unknown.
Swept away on true love.
As their desperation to feel each other escalated, the kiss became deeper, more open and tongues matched rhythms perfectly. It was as if they were made to fit, to slot together in belonging. So at last she knew her place, beside him, within him, over him. She could never let him go again.
Their lips clung to each other even as they slowly pulled apart; Buffy’s eyes misted over in desire and gratitude.
Spike tilted his head, looking for the change in her, seeking the truth and despite the warming promise of her lips, hardening his heart for what truth she might expound. She had always been contradictory, but still his lips slid high in a smile at the dreamy look of completion on her face.
“Wow,” she told him saucily, bending forward again to place a too brief kiss on his neck while reaching and taking his hand in hers. She threaded their fingers together, united.
He sat up in the bed, feeling a need to be on a level with her and she scooted closer still, winding her other arm around his neck and loosing the curls at the back of his neck with her busy fingers.
“Buffy?” he questioned in a bewildered tone, almost fearful that he might prompt her to let go.
Instead, she smiled secretively, seductively as she again placed her lips against his, playing gently and nibbling softly before again pulling away. His heart objecting violently, too soon.
“Hi…”
He looked at her in wonder, guessing that perhaps he had turned finally to dust and was visiting her in some future where he was deemed worthy enough to enter her otherworldly realm. It felt like Heaven, but he knew it wasn’t possible with his past. The last few weeks rushed back at him and he sunk further into a depression that was singular in its dependence on him to fuel and refuel with his murderous memories.
She saw the shift from happiness as his eyes began to dull and she gripped his hand hard.
“Don’t,” she pleaded desperately. “Don’t give up again, Spike. I don’t think I can give you any more blood just now, and I can’t stand to see you like that again.” She waited a beat, a fraction of time. “I believe in you.”
That phrase again, the one that suggested that she trusted him, that she would help him. His demon and William rose together in warmth, hoping that this finally, would lead him to the man he was meant to be. That she would guide him to the man he could be.
His surprise was captivating, but her resolve stood strong.
“We want you to come home, Spike.”
His confusion was almost hysterical if it weren’t so sad, and she bit her lip to hold back further rounds of tears.
“Well, after we sort out Glory, and keep Dawn safe.”
Recognition had his blue fire eyes flare, and he looked quickly around the room, searching for clothes. He came up empty, eyes swerving back to her and he gulped, knowing she wanted him to say something but not able yet to speak. She had shocked the hell out of him and he still didn’t know what it all meant for her. To her.
She couldn’t keep her hands still. She surrendered his hand and let hers join her other around his neck, almost bringing her chest flush with his. The heat between them burned and he found his arms encircling her waist, one palm sneaking under the hem of her top to rest against her skin. He raised his eyes to hers in amazement.
“I want you to come home,” she whispered against his lips, and they kissed again, immediately with open mouths and swirling possessive tongues. He sunk without explanation, casting out doubt for this one moment where he could claim all his dreams and hopes in her, even if she kicked him when she was done. For now, he had her, and as his arms held her solid against his chest, his eyes washed with moisture not befitting a man but broken, while he restructured himself in her promises.
When he felt her again draw away he tugged her possessively, before letting her pull back from him.
And then her words began to crystallize in his head.
“Who’s we?”
She looked at him, her lack of understanding blatant and funny as she was swept away in a haze of attraction.
“Huh?”
“Who wants me to come home?” He braced himself for the knowledge of who wouldn’t make it onto the list, and was surprised when it was recounted in full.
“All of us. Even Giles and Xander. I didn’t know it but Xander actually called Angel to ask him to find you.”
His eyes widened in delirious delight and the moisture increased to tears relief and happiness giving them colour as they slid down his face.
With a shaking finger and a wobbly lip Buffy traced their path along his cheek and leaned in to do the same with her lips. When she fell back her own eyes brimmed over with emotion.
“I was so wrong, Spike. I can love you. Please let me try.” Her voice broke as she pleaded for a second chance and she clung to his neck at his ecstatic expression of possibility.
“Do you mean it?” He had difficulty in believing, so long had he been rejected and denied, it seemed impossible that things could change. But he was so eager, so needy for a show of devotion that he was about to believe it all. But something lagged behind in the rush, something forced him to question, to deny. Something held him on guard, held him away from falling into her arms and declaring himself hers.
Fear. It held him in thrall; urging him against rashness, against haste. So he held steady.
Staring back and recognising his attempt at withdrawal, she knew that patience had lost, that she was too late to hold out, to take things slow. Her opportunity had disappeared, and only one thing she hoped could drag him back now.
She let him watch as she lowered all defenses, rid herself of all walls surrounding her heart. She lay herself bare to heartache and rejection, as the emotion welled within and displayed obvious on her face. Taking a deep breath she held it while searching his face for encouragment. He kept it blank. She began to shake as she focused first on his lips, then as courage flagged sought desperately for his eyes, beautiful cerulean eyes that shined with everything he embodied. Love. Loyalty. Hope.
It was time.
The breath released, her voice clawed for volume as it lay cracked and withered in her throat.
“I love you.”
And the dam broke free; he held her to him tight with purpose, refusing to let go as his body dissolved into emotional shudders of relief. They held each other as both cried out their happy reunion.
And rejoiced in finally knowing each other.
A/N...Phew...thank God that's over with! I'm hoping this scene will affect many of you, as it meant alot to me. I am very grateful for all reviews, and I just wanted to say particualarly to Gail that I have tried to extend the characters Joss gave us, and yes, correct some things that never satisfied me. I think I have actually stayed pretty true to Buffy with her lack of decision and trust in herself. But the main thing is, it had to be different, or I would just be rewriting the show. Angel and Spike had been close for the twenty years before Angel got his soul, as evidenced by flashbacks of the Immortal etc...being Spike's Yoda...but from other reviews it seems pretty favourable that I had Angel be the lesson bearer. I thought it a poignant lesson that Angel could find his way back to his purpose through learning it from Spike. I hope you continue to read despite your lack of faith in how I am portraying the characters, and I have no problem with anyone else telling me their opinion of my writing. I thank you for taking the time.
And I look forward to all new reviews for this chapter.