Spike was moved to the large bed in Buffy’s room at her request. Now that Faith was healed up – considerably more so than Buffy at the moment – she felt justified in reclaiming her room. Having Spike there with her was an unconscious decision; she didn’t even consider the possibility of sending him back down to his cot in the basement. Spike wavered in and out of consciousness and had yet to say anything, but Buffy felt confident of his recovery. After securing the curtains shut against the daylight, Buffy yawned widely and turned to thank Xander for helping her bring Spike upstairs. She frowned when she saw that he was no longer in the room, having slipped out without a word.
Buffy sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh and put her head in her hands. She knew she should probably go downstairs and help with the wounded, but she couldn’t convince her legs to actually move. Responsibility was not attractive in the least to her exhausted mind. She knew that she was injured herself, though how badly was another question. She half-expected to keel over at any moment but couldn’t seem to work up the energy to care. Turning towards Spike, she wondered if he had sustained any wounds. She attributed his fleeting responsiveness more to his ordeal with the amulet rather than to a physical injury, but she decided it couldn’t hurt to make sure. Biting her lip in concentration, she carefully eased his arms out of his duster and pulled the grimy leather out from beneath him. He was silent until she arbitrarily placed a hand in the center of his chest. A small cry of painful protest came out of him then, and his eyes flew open. Though she muttered an apology, he didn’t seem to hear her and fell back into the same unresponsive daze he’d been in since she’d pulled the amulet off of his neck.
Realizing he was indeed wounded, Buffy tugged the bottom of his t-shirt up, exposing his stomach and chest. She cried out in alarm at what she saw. The area of his chest where the amulet had rested was charred black. Burned was an understatement. It was as if his body had actually started the process of turning to ash but was stopped just in time. Blinking back tears, she pressed a fist against her mouth to fight back a sudden rush of nausea. She fully realized at that moment how close she’d come to losing him, but her exhausted mind refused to let her dwell on such upsetting thoughts. She had to get out of there. Covering the wound with his t-shirt once again, she stumbled to her feet and out of her bedroom as fast as she could, turning her thoughts toward finding him blood and bandages.
Downstairs, she found Giles in the middle of a meeting with the uninjured Slayers. Wondering why she hadn’t been summoned to attend, Buffy listened half-heartedly as she poked through what was left in the medical supply box at the foot of the stairs.
“The earthquake is over, yes,” Giles was saying, “but things still are very unsettled out there. I want you all to be ready to flee if necessary – another tremor could do this town in. I fear the Hellmouth might be in danger of collapsing in on itself completely.”
Andrew’s hand popped up in the air. “That’s a bad thing? Wouldn’t it be, I dunno, helpful if it collapsed?”
“Seeing as we’re standing on top of it right now, I’d hardly call the entire town plummeting into a deep chasm helpful to our endeavors,” Giles replied, seeming annoyed at Andrew’s presence at such an important meeting.
“Shouldn’t we maybe just leave town?” suggested Willow, who appeared to have gained a significant part of her strength back. “I mean, just until we’re sure the aftershocks are over?” Several people around her nodded worriedly, but Giles shook his head.
“I understand your concern,” he replied, “but you must take into consideration what might happen once the sun goes down. We can’t be sure that the threat of The First’s army is gone until we’ve looked further into the situation. Who knows what might happen if emergency crews arrive on the scene? We must be willing to sacrifice our safety to ensure theirs.”
Buffy approached with a nod and said, “Giles is right. We don’t know who might try to approach Sunnydale tonight after the quake – police, ambulances – there could even be media on the scene. We need to make sure the city is safe, or we could be sitting on the edge of a massacre.”
“What do you mean we?” asked Faith incredulously. “You’re not going anywhere like that, B.”
“Why not?” Buffy argued, still upset that she wasn’t asked to the meeting in the first place.
“Uh, maybe because of the gaping wound in your stomach?”
Buffy blinked down at her bloodstained shirt, suddenly feeling the pain she’d been ignoring, and she had to fight her body’s urge to shrink and curl in on itself. Giles gripped her gently by the arm and led her towards the couch, where several girls had the courtesy to move aside so that she could sit. Glancing up briefly for permission, Giles lifted the edge of her blouse to reveal the wound. “Does this go all the way through?” he asked in disbelief. “Good heavens, why didn’t you say something? You could be bleeding internally.”
“That sounds like fun,” Buffy managed, glancing wearily at the curious faces all around her. Couldn’t they take a hint and get lost while she was getting her checkup?
“Willow, can you see what you can do about this?” requested Giles. “I don’t trust the speed of her Slayer healing with the seriousness of this wound.”
Willow approached obediently, nudging other people aside so that she could kneel in front of the couch. “Aren’t you exhausted?” Buffy asked her.
Easing Buffy onto her side so that she could see the entry wound on her back, Willow shrugged and said, “Sorta running on fumes, but surprisingly good fumes. I’m okay.”
Satisfied that Buffy was in good hands, Giles began giving out orders, naming Faith the leader. Buffy sat and watched in silence, not really knowing what to say or think. It felt strange to be surrounded by Slayers who had the potential to become every bit as strong as she was – even stranger that she was excluded from the new plan of action. A mere bystander on the sidelines of something big. She didn’t expect to feel jealous, but an old twinge of rivalry borne from when she was originally introduced to Kendra and Faith was resurfacing. She couldn’t even bring herself to say goodbye as the second front swept out of the door to return to the battlefield. She numbly watched the new Slayers file outside, toting her weapons in their inexperienced hands. It didn’t seem real somehow.
Willow returned from the kitchen and stooped in front of the couch with a shallow basin of water. She took a few dried leaves and crumpled them into the steaming hot water. “I kinda feel like Aragorn in the Houses of Healing,” she said with a sheepish smile.
Buffy frowned, too tired to ask what Willow was talking about. Instead she leaned back on the couch, breathing in the sweet aroma of the leaves. “What is that stuff? It’s nice.”
“Nothing special,” replied Willow. “It’s mostly just to relax you and help with the pain while I work. You might get a little sleepy, but that’s normal – so don’t think you have to fight it or anything. Am I hurting you?”
Buffy shook her head, only vaguely aware that Willow’s hand was pressing into her wound. She drifted on the edge of sleep for some time, seeing visions of sunbeams and fleeting sparks of light that danced just out of reach. Eventually Willow shook her patient gently, nudging Buffy out of her strange dream. She felt as if no time had passed at all, but the angle of the sun outside seemed to indicate otherwise. “All better now,” Willow announced brightly, though she looked paler than when she’d started. “I’m gonna go see if the others need any help. Most of the wounded are already gone, though. Xander took Principal Wood and the other injured Potentials to a hospital out of town – except I guess they’re not really Potentials anymore, huh? We’ll have to think of another nickname for them.”
“Spike,” Buffy whispered, suddenly remembering that she’d left him upstairs unattended. “Will you check on him? He’s up in my bedroom and hurt pretty badly. Burned on his chest by that amulet, I think.”
“Oh. Sure.” Willow didn’t sound very happy at the prospect, but she picked up the basin of water as well as a few other supplies and went upstairs without complaint.
Now that the strange herb was gone, Buffy was able to blink the last bits of sleep from her eyes and attempt to wake up. As she sat up, she felt a tug of pain in her abdomen. It felt as though someone had been prodding around in her insides with a long, pointy stick. Buffy lifted her shirt and found neat bandages. She knew Willow had probably fixed her up just fine, regardless of the pain she was still feeling. With a self-indulgent groan, Buffy rose to her feet, intent on finding a glass of water.
***
Willow knocked tentatively on the bedroom door before she peeked her head in. “Spike?”
The shapeless form on the bed didn’t move, but Willow thought she heard the slightest intake of breath from beneath the blankets. Sure enough, when she pulled back the cover from his face, his fully dilated eyes were blinking questioningly at her. “Buffy asked me to check up on you. She’s recovering downstairs from a sword wound.”
She watched him struggle for a moment with words, as if he was having trouble taking in enough breath to actually speak. “She okay?” he finally managed to rasp, his voice sounding as rough as a Turok-Han’s. Still, the fact that he was communicating rationally was reassuring.
Willow set the basin of herbs on the night table beside Buffy’s bed. “She’s just fine. A little shaken, though, and pretty beat. Sorta hanging on by a thread like the rest of us.”
Spike made a face. “Stinks.”
Willow smiled at the herb she was crumbling into the water. “You’ll get over it. Now let’s see what’s wrong with you. Can you sit up?”
Spike’s eyes drifted shut drunkenly in response.
“Okay, maybe not. Are you wounded? Buffy said something about a burn.”
“Chest. Hurts like a bitch.”
Pulling back the covers fully, Willow lifted the corner of his t-shirt. Seeing for herself the extent of his injuries, she forced herself to take in a deep breath before she continued. Buffy had certainly underestimated his condition. Faced with the prospect of such an extensive healing session, Willow suddenly felt exhausted after all she had done that day. In fact, she was shocked she wasn’t unconscious at the moment, but she couldn’t leave anyone – not even Spike – in such a state overnight. His pupils seemed to grow even larger as the cold air in the room hit the burn, and the corners of his eyes began swimming with tears. No, she decided; she definitely needed to see to his wounds tonight. She was going to pay the price eventually for expending so much energy, but she’d worry about that later.
She noticed that Spike was shivering and thought the very notion strange. Could vampires feel the cold? His skin was clammy and even sweaty to the touch – neither of which seemed very vampiric at all. She vaguely remembered Angel’s body reacting much the same way when he’d been poisoned several years back. While she didn’t think Spike was poisoned, he was definitely ill. She wondered what exactly had happened down in the Hellmouth that could have caused such a reaction. She would have to get the entire story out of Buffy later.
“What do I do?” she whispered, wondering how she could heal and revive the dead flesh of a technically dead being.
There was the possibility that Spike’s body could regenerate by itself, but the burned flesh seemed so beyond repair to her eyes that she worried it would heal incorrectly or possibly not at all. Finally she sank down onto her knees, placed her hands flat on the damaged part of his chest, and tried to ignore the sick feeling inching up her throat when Spike groaned in protest. She whispered a few words in Latin, and focused her mind on bringing regeneration to the damaged skin. She allowed a small amount of her life-force to seep through her hands into his body, feeling considerably weaker as she did so. But his skin felt warmer almost instantly, which encouraged her to continue. Eventually a soft rosy glow tinted the edges around the burn, which had started to peel.
“I’ll take that as a good sign,” she said decisively. “And wow, that was gross. I’m gonna go get you some blood, Spike. I think that’ll help more than anything I could do.”
“Thanks, Red,” he managed, and to her ears, his rasping sounded slightly less pained. “Ask you a question first?”
“Sure,” she said, leaning wearily on the bedpost.
“Is it … gone?”
Willow frowned and looked about the room. “Is what gone? The First? Well, we’re not sure yet, but that amulet thingy you whipped out helped a ton. Even more than my nifty Slayer spell, you big showoff.”
“Not what I meant,” he said. To her surprise, he pushed himself up into what appeared to be a painful sitting position. His eyes were blank and cold as he stared back at her. “My soul. I feel … numb. Like something’s missing. Is it gone, then?”
Willow’s mouth fell open, and she took a step backwards before she knew what she was doing. “Uh … is this the part where I run and scream? Except, hey – witch here – so there will be no funny business, got that?”
“Not gonna hurt you,” said Spike in an even voice. “Just answer the question, all right?”
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Willow looked into his eyes, searching for the spark she’d seen there throughout the year. It was several minutes before she finally came to a conclusion.
---------
To be continued.
A/N: Two chapters, and I’ve already made two Lord of the Rings references. Heh. I’m hopeless. ;)
[Reviews - 118]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 5640 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +