Rome.
Perhaps the only place on earth that could face the winds of time without adhering bending appropriately to revolution. It had not changed in fifty years; it had not changed in a hundred. Not for the conveniences of cars and motorboats, nor chain restaurants and tourism. All else notwithstanding, it was the same Rome he had known all those years ago. He remembered standing at the steps of the Pantheon, blood dribbling down his face from a late night feast as the sun merged over the lazy horizon. A gorgeous sight, even for one who could not enjoy its warmth. Granted, there had not been time to bask; Angelus and Darla were easily bored, and their massacre having come to a disappointing end, they were ready to take their party elsewhere.
Drusilla had complied eagerly. He had wanted to stay and watch the sun. A young vampire, then. In the early stages where he had lived just long enough to verify that he wasn’t going to be offed like a nameless fledgling, but similarly without the luxuries of an experienced master.
Angelus had invited him to sunrise. And eventually, as it would for every morning for the next century and a quarter, the dawn had rejected him and forced him back into the shadows.
Standing at the Pantheon now, Fred and Wesley beside him, Spike had to battle the urge of instinctive panic that surged through him every time his skin was kissed by a golden ray. He flinched whenever they were drawn from the shadows; at times, reaching for his coat to protect himself from meeting his end. It grew easier with each pass.
Was it possible to eradicate a century of habitual death? He had been dead for so long that life seemed rather pointless in comparison.
“Oh! Look!” Fred was buried in the brochure snagged from the airport, her eyes alight with interest. Wesley and Spike had taken turns to attract her attention to the more palpable intrigues that Italy had to offer with little avail. She was a child on Christmas morning, immersed in the magic of a city that never aged. “There’s a vampire tour!”
The men traded a long glance.
She frowned. “What?”
“Kinda pointless to go on a vampire tour, luv,” Spike offered softly, not without a smile. “’Sides, it’s nothin’ fancy. A take off of the Big Easy…which is ironic, ‘cause the Big Easy’s pretty much a take off of everythin’ else in Europe.”
A pout crossed her brow. “I thought it’d be entertaining.”
“The lives of vampires who live in coffins and turn into bats.” The platinum blonde rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “’ve gotten so bloody sick of that stereotype.”
“Now be fair,” Wesley inferred. “It might have been authentic.”
“’F it was, it wouldn’t be advertised in a sodding brochure, mate.”
“Haven’t you ever read Anne Rice?” Fred asked pointedly. “Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires? It’s a classic conundrum!”
Spike opted to keep his very unflattering opinion of Anne Rice to himself while arching his brow at her in silent response. She flashed a smile and shrugged, pocketing the brochure with a cheery sigh. “Well…you both have been here,” she observed. “What’s there to do?”
“We’re not on vacation, Fred,” Wesley reminded her.
“You two lovebirds are on your own after I find the Slayer,” the former vampire agreed. “’m sure there’s loads better to do than shadow a has-been Big Bad.”
“Like finding Giles and beginning to form a front against Wolfram and Hart, perchance?” Wesley asked, doming a brow. “Or perhaps Willow…she mentioned the last time we spoke of being tapped into some magic—”
“Deep enough to destroy the world? Yeh—been there, done that. Wolfram an’ Hart’d chew her up without botherin’ to spit her out again. You have any conceivable idea jus’ how much mojo Red can handle?” Spike chuckled humorlessly. “She’s cleansed, I think…but that doesn’ mean they’d be beyond a seduction plan.”
“Even with Angel as the CEO?” Fred asked helplessly. “I mean, he did help us get here and everything…right?”
The men exchanged another glance.
“A-and,” she continued, “Lorne and Charles…they’re still over there. Working there. And what about Cordelia?”
“Do you really think Cordelia would approve of what has happened?” Wesley asked softly.
“Well, her body being the vessel for an evil god bent on world domination using the guise of world peace? I’d say not. But she definitely wouldn’t want us to go after Angel. He’s a champion. He’s a good guy. He’s—”
“A bloody ocean away an’ still drivin’ me crazy,” Spike grumbled, caressing his brow with a groan. “Look poodle, I know my grandpap means an annoyin’ lot to you. An’ yeah, I’m grateful that he was able to step off his almighty horse an’ lend yours truly a hand. An’, as much as it chafes me, the big git likely doesn’ realize what he’s doin’.”
“So, instead of trying to talk with him reasonably, we should just organize an army and attack?”
The former vampire threw his hands up in the air. “I din’t say anythin’ about attackin’. That’s yours and Princeton’s area. I wash my hands of the Aurelius clan. Bloke was nice enough to lend us his goods, but that’s it. I’m here for Buffy…an’ then I’m through.”
Fred glanced to Wesley. “And you’re not going back?”
He shot her a pained look. “No,” he replied softly. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
A few rugged breaths tugged at his throat, his tormented eyes begging her wordlessly to understand. “Wolfram and Hart…I don’t presume to know how Gunn feels. Or Lorne. But it was killing me. When I found Spike that first night, it was a way out. And I am out. I’m out.” He lowered his gaze to the ground. “I called you that night because I wanted you out, too. I wanted you away from there…where they could not reach you.”
There was a long pause. It was strange; a suspended moment in a steady stream of traffic. Three people that were otherwise of no consequence. Just three people in Rome. Talking as the masses passed without a second glance.
“And if I…” Fred suddenly looked nervous, swiping her hands on her jeans and taking long, calculative glances at their surroundings. “And if I want to go back?”
Spike cast Wesley a somber look. The question had obviously lingered in the background. A sort of foreknowledge that no one wanted to admit. However, for everything he knew about the man that stood by his side, he would not have predicted the answer that came tumbling out his mouth.
“You don’t,” the former Watcher said softly. “I won’t let you go back.”
“What?” Spike asked.
“What?” Fred echoed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, casting his gaze downward. “But I cannot allow it. Wolfram and Hart would destroy you, Fred. It was destroying me. I got you out, and if I have to chain you in a closet—something I have been known to do—you will not be going back. If you resent me forever, I do not care. At least I will die knowing that I have saved you.”
Her eyes were wide with astonishment. The former vampire couldn’t say he blamed her. “Wesley—”
“I got you out, Fred.”
“Yes, under the pretense that we were helping someone—”
“We are.” He spoke shortly—such to the point that she would know there was nothing else to say on the matter. “We are helping Spike find Buffy. Afterwards…well, I don’t know…but I cannot go back there. It was killing us.”
“It’s not your decision, Wesley!”
“Oh, but I think it is.”
“I don’t know where you get off telling me—”
He shook his head, raising a hand to effectively diminish her argument. “It’s for your own good, Fred.”
She glared at him. “I think you need to spend a little less time worrying about my own good and a little more considering problems that actually involve you. You’re not going to tell me where I’m allowed, Wesley. I’m sorry.”
It was strange watching a scene from his life fold out in the guise of someone else’s. Spike licked his lips as he watched Fred backtrack and turn in the other direction. There was no qualm as to where she was going; they had checked into one of the more touristy hotels immediately after the airport. There was a shortage of options on where to run.
Perhaps it was out of habit; so ingrained in his long list of situational responses that his body couldn’t help but obey, even if it was someone else’s girl he was chasing. Heedless of the fact that he left Wesley standing alone down the way, Spike took after Fred and was mildly surprised when his lungs challenged him after the fact.
“Bloody hell,” he gasped, hunching over. “Need a smoke.”
Fred’s brows perked and a shadow of a grin crossed her face. “Yeah. That’s definitely what the oxygen shortage is telling me. Besides…no smokes, remember?” She reached into her knapsack and removed an apple, handing to him with customary perkiness. “Munch on that. Remember our agreement?”
He grumbled but munched obediently. “Sodding Nazi.”
“Am not!”
“Where you think you’re goin’, pet?”
Her eyes softened at that, hazarding a glance over his shoulder. “Away. Wesley can’t just…waltz into my life and expect everything to work out. I—”
“You know he loves you, right?”
“Yes.” The honest rapidity of her response surprised him, such to the point that she giggled at the look on his face. “What? I didn’t know it was a secret. Yes, I know Wesley has feelings for me. And yes, I know that he’s done whatever he’s done out of what he thinks is in my best interest…but he can’t go around choosing my best interest for me.”
“Wolfram an’ Hart is in nobody’s best interest,” Spike said gently. “I’ve played the evil game, luv. Won every time that I was pitchin’ for their side. Take it from someone who’s done the switch over; evil’s evil. You can’t get rid of it with a simple facelift.”
“But Angel—”
A sigh rolled off his shoulders. “Believe it or not, the Great Poof doesn’ have all the answers, all right? He’s wrong about this. An’ Wes’s a smart bloke to get away from it while he can. Before it hurts him anymore…or you.”
Her eyes softened perceptively. “Spike—”
“Evil doesn’ change.” The tone of his own voice startled him with conviction, his heart straining to be heard. That was a lesson learned the hard way. A lesson he would never allow himself to forget. Preaching the same to Buffy time and time again. A vampire can change, he had said. The chip was change. Not change enough. Not enough to divide his mind in that fine line between right and wrong. He had shoved her to the ground without knowing any better; his mind not reacting because evil was what it knew. The logical side, the human side, refusing to emerge until the damage was done.
Not in the irreparable way; in the nearly-so. And though he knew that he couldn’t blame a quaky system of ethics entirely on his demon side, considering what he had nearly done to the woman he loved more than anything in the world made his insides clench with self-loathing.
And reminded him why he was here in the first place.
“’m not gonna drag you back kickin’ an’ screamin’,” Spike said softly, blinking back to the present. “I jus’ had to…one of us has to have a happy endin’, sweets. Odds are eventually it has to happen. Things can’t go on like this without the sodding Powers givin’ us some sorta break. An’ since I have a soft spot for people who take me in after I’ve gone loose upstairs, I’d like it to be you two. Jus’…give it some thought.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, rather smiled simply and took another bite out of his apple before turning to head back for Wesley.
The man was standing at the corner, looking solemn but not surprised. He nodded when he saw Spike and turned to walk in the opposite direction, offering just that in recognition.
“She’s going back to the hotel?”
“’d wager so.”
Wesley nodded again, more to himself. “I’m taking you to the address Angel gave me,” he said. “After that, I’m going to leave. Go back to the hotel and see if I can talk to Fred. If she doesn’t want anything to do with me…can I trust you to watch out for her?”
Spike’s eyes twinkled. “What happened to chainin’ her in the closet?”
There was no immediate reply.
“Mate?”
Still nothing, but the former vampire decided not to pursue the matter. The haunted look in the other man’s eyes was more than enough to attest what he was feeling. That and then some.
When Wesley did start to speak, however, his voice was guarded rather than conversational. “I cannot lose her to Wolfram and Hart,” he said. “I’ve gotten her out in time. Did all the right things. It was killing me there…eventually, it will begin to kill Angel, and Gunn and Lorne. Just gnaw at their insides until there is nothing left.” A sigh quaked his shoulders. “I only made it first because I was closer to death than they were when we took the job.”
Spike’s brows perked and he took a bite out of his browning apple. “Know the feelin’,” he agreed.
The other man continued as though the interruption had not occurred. “I’ve lost one to them,” he said. “I will not let them have her, too.”
“Lost who?”
Wesley blinked. “Pardon?”
“Who’d you lose?”
His eyes distanced again. “Lilah,” he breathed, and for one so in love with another woman, Spike was surprised at the wealth of emotion that flooded his voice with her name. “Wolfram and Hart attorney. We…” He glanced down as though realizing he was speaking aloud. “She and I…in the last months…we grew very close. She was my…”
“Girlfriend?” Spike ventured. Just a guess.
Wrong guess. The look in the former Watcher’s eyes grew cold as he directed them around a corner, subconsciously drawing them closer to their objective. “Fuckbuddy.”
The word sounded strange coming off his lips.
Spike’s gaze darkened. “Really?”
“She was evil. I was lost. It was wrong.” Another sigh. The words resounded so familiar—too familiar. The former vampire had to bite back the instinctive flood of rebuttals that attacked his tongue. Especially for what the man revealed next. “I was using her for sex.”
“Wanker.”
“Yes. Yes, I was.” Wesley frowned. “I was wrong. But I…I cared for her. I grew to. And even…” He glanced down. “I think I loved her for a while. Without even realizing it. It just happened. I ended it when I hated myself for using her, but then…I loved her for a while. She wasn’t Fred, but she was…and she cared about me in her own way.”
Spike had the sudden urge to punch the former Watcher over the side of the nearest railing. The wry irony that he should be telling him this in the first place was not at all lost on him.
Fuckbuddies.
Yeah. That’s what they were, all right.
“An’ you lost this one?”
Wesley inhaled sharply. “Cordelia killed her. Tried to make us believe Angelus did. It was while she was possessed.”
“Well, that much I wagered.”
“I cut her head off,” he continued numbly. “She was dead. We thought Angelus had had her. I talked with her…nearly went out of my mind…and then she showed up after Jasmine was gone. An eternal employee of Wolfram and Hart. I tried to save her…tried to burn her contract…I couldn’t. I couldn’t save Lilah.”
There was genuine sorrow in his voice, and that alone persuaded Spike’s temper to a simmer. Hearing that anyone had been used did not bode well with the former vampire. Even with everything that he had done to deserve the treatment Buffy gave him that year—even with the forgiveness, the tears, the confessions—there was a part of him that would remain forever scarred because of it. In just minutes, he felt for this dead woman that the other man spoke of. Felt for her; felt as though he knew her. Felt that way because he was her in so many forms.
He didn’t think Wesley would appreciate a vote of confidence that Lilah had indeed loved him. But from what he knew of evil and its heroes, that ever-changing gray area left little room for doubt. Evil didn’t bend over for anyone. If evil cared at all, it cared with everything it had.
He was evil and he fell in love with a beacon of light. He suspected, in many ways, that Lilah had been the same. Even if Wesley’s beacon of light was hazed with shadow.
“Fred will come ‘round,” he said when he could think of nothing else.
“Yes,” Wesley agreed, bringing them to a stop outside a modest looking flat. He glanced to the number that rested above the door, trading glances with the card in his hand. “Let’s just hope it is not too late.”
Spike breathed a deep breath and nodded. For all the apprehension he had been feeling in regards to this moment, it seemed almost anticlimactic. Years had gone by since he saw Buffy—years in dimensions he could not remember. Years in a body that had worn him top to bottom. It had only been months for her. Just months. And somehow, in the between area of all that, here he was. Standing at the walk outside her flat. A former Watcher was at his side. He had brought him here.
Brought him to Buffy.
God.
“For what it’s worth,” Wesley said resignedly, pocketing the information and crossing his arms. “I wish to remain in touch.”
“Don’ go callin’ the pastor yet,” Spike murmured. “It may end tonight.”
Might. Might. And just like that, his apprehension made a startling comeback. For everything else, the world seemed to dim behind him. Leaving nothing but his body separated from hers by walls that were no longer intangible.
He had lost his vampiric senses, but he did not need tinglies or a heightened sense of smell to know Buffy was in there.
Buffy. His Buffy. This place where fate had brought him.
I love you.
No you don’. But thanks for sayin’ it.
He hadn’t believed it when he said it. Her eyes were never good at lying to him.
Even so, he was so overwhelmed with doubt that it was almost better to not know than consider the wealth of hurt her denial would bring.
The cuts that would bleed again at the whim of rejection.
But he could not remain on the corner forever. He refused to live his life standing just outside hers.
It was time.
To be concluded in Part Five: Night Divine...