TITLE: Resurgence - Chapter 2: Dreams and Daggers
AUTHOR: Sheri Steeves
FEEDBACK: Please! Post to list or send e-mail to sheristeeves@hotmail.com
ARCHIVE: alt.tv.buffy.v.slayer.creative, fanfiction.net
SPOILERS: Takes place after Season 5 - The Gift.
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy etc own all of this. I'm just borrowing to feed my addiction until season 6 starts.
SUMMARY: It has been a year. New prophecies turn up, strange events unfold. And maybe, just maybe, Buffy will be back. Depends on what my muse lets me do.
The silence was broken only by the creak of broken timbers, the shifting of bricks and the harsh sound of someone sobbing. Gasping, racking sobs of someone in great pain. Spike realized that those sounds were coming from him. Choking back the next sob, he abruptly, fiercely brought his emotions under control. Locked them away for later. For the empty, lonely nights of solitude. Time enough then to deal with his grief.
Shifting to look back at the others, Spike gasped as pain shot through his leg. Remembered the fall from the tower. That long, endless moment of weightless eternity. Watching his hope, his chance at saving Dawn get smaller and smaller as he fell. The abrupt blossoming of all-encompassing pain as he hit the ground, then nothing.
His awareness of the world again had come into focus like a telly being turned on. A sharp pinpoint of definition at the center, the picture fuzzy at the edges but getting larger and sharper as he watched. Then he saw.
The sudden noise of the portal opening had made his undead heart cringe. They had failed. HE had failed. Failed Niblet. Failed himself. Failed Buffy. Looking up he had seen Buffy and Dawn talking, their light and dark hair tangled together in the winds escaping the portal. He had seen Dawn grab Buffy as Buffy moved to the end of the platform. Saw Buffy shake off Dawn's hand and move past her. A cold feeling had crept into him, starting in the pit of his stomach and moving up to grip his heart and sit in his throat like a lump he could not swallow. Then he had known. He had known what Buffy was about to do. What she had really meant with that conversation at her house when she asked him to look after Dawn.
He had tried to yell, but nothing would escape past the lump in his throat. He had tried to reach her, but he hadn't taken more than two steps before she dove from the platform. Dove to her death. Another step and he had collapsed behind a wall as the coldness suddenly broke and a scream escaped him. Unheard by the others over the noise of the portal closing, all his love, his hate and his grief were in that scream and the sobs that had followed unbidden, unstoppable.
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Spike jolted awake, the scream echoing in his ears, cold sweat running down his spine. The dream again. Always the dream of the night he had failed Buffy. It wasn't enough that he had to face every night knowing she was gone, but there was no escape in sleep during the day either. He had tried everything he could think of to stop the dreams. Drank himself into a stupor night after night for a time. That just gave him a hangover on top of the dreams. Patrolling all night, slaying every demon and vampire he came across helped only while he was fighting. When he was fighting he could let the anger out, release the rage that simmered inside. Whatever hapless creature he fought was merely the recipient of the built-up guilt inside. But when the fight was over, nothing had changed. There was no one to join in the euphoria of surviving another battle, no one to share the feeling of triumph. Buffy was still gone, and he was still... well not alive, but still here.
Knowing he wouldn't sleep anymore today, Spike swung his legs over the side of the bed. The basement was still dark, but his vampiric sight could make out the shape of stacked boxes, a tool bench and other vague shapes. The Summer's basement was a far cry from his crypt, but it was safer for both him and Dawn. He was keeping his promise to protect Dawn, just as he said he would. It was safer for him to stay here, where other vampires couldn't enter. The demon underworld had little love for Spike now that it was common knowledge that he fought on the Slayer's team. They had ways of dealing with turncoats. The smashed contents of his crypt brought that fact home with astonishing clarity the night of Buffy's funeral.
Her funeral. With a jab of pain, he realized what day today was. The pain was as fresh now as that day a year ago. Dawn was probably at her grave, with Willow, Tara and Xander. He should be there with her, to comfort her, to share her pain. But until the sun set, he could not. Shaking of the remnants of the dream, Spike started up the stairs to the kitchen. There was another small matter to worry about. He hadn't worried about it at the time, too busy a year ago with dealing with losing Buffy. But now it seemed significant, especially after last night.
Xander had seen Dawn home just before midnight last night, while Spike continued to patrol. When he had finally crept back in the house just after four in the morning, he had looked in on Dawn as had become his habit. At first glance, she had been sleeping sound. Then he had seen spread around her the contents of the box of Buffy's stuff that she kept. Mr Pointy, Mr Gordo the stuffed pig, the picture that Dawn had given her for her birthday, and the gold cross on it's chain and the cladagh ring that the poof had given Buffy lay beside her on the bed. From the light of the setting moon, he had seen the silver tear tracks on her cheeks that told him the Dawn had cried herself to sleep. Quietly, not wanting to wake Dawn, Spike had gathered up the momentos and put them back in the box on the floor beside the bed. As he had picked up the gold chain, it had slipped from his hand. Unthinking, he had grabbed it by the cross as it fell. Nothing had happened. No burning, no blistering, no smoke, no pain. Stunned, the cross still in his hand, he had left her room and retreated to the basement.
Now he thought back to THAT night. To Doc stabbing him with the knife. The knife wound that had healed but left a scar. He hadn't thought too much about it, but now Spike realized that it was strange. Part of the vampire package was super-fast healing. And no scarring. Hell, he had healed from being crippled and from being tortured by a God. A mere knife wound should not have left a scar. The only other injury that had ever scarred had been that sword cut from the first Slayer he had killed. Maybe there was a connection there, maybe not. There was only one way to find out.
tbc
