TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 10/?
AUTHOR: tanith
RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.
ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.
FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.
DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.
SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.
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Spike and Buffy broke apart guiltily and turned to face the woman standing before them. She was tall and slim, and dressed in an immaculate white lab coat, her tight, brown curls scooped into a loose ponytail and tied with a scrunchie. Her face was cool and professional, but not unfriendly. Right then, it even seemed as if she were trying to force back the edge of a smile.
The woman stepped forward and presented her hand to each of them in turn. "I'm Dr. Miranda Peters," she said. "And you must be Buffy Summers and Hostile 17."
"Spike," Spike said, a bit harshly.
Dr. Peters took it in stride. "Nice to meet you, Spike," she said, without a touch of malice in her voice. "Ms. Summers has explained your unique situation to me. Although," Dr. Peters raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow, "she seems to have skimmed over some of the more interesting details."
Buffy and Spike exchanged a look, but neither said anything. Then they realized that Dr. Peters wasn't saying anything else, either; she just watched them, like specimens under a microscope. It did not help diminish Spike's level of anxiety.
"So, uh, why exactly did you agree to help us?" he asked finally. "Don't think either of us would be on the list of the Initiative's best chums."
"No," Dr. Peters agreed, "you most certainly are not. But I have, shall we say, my own agenda." With that, she turned on her heel and began walking toward the building to the right of the pool. "Follow me, please."
Spike turned to Buffy as they walked a safe distance behind Dr. Peters. "This is not doing anything to quell my fears, pet," he whispered.
"Let's just follow this through," she whispered back. "At the very least, we can get some more information, and then bolt if necessary."
He nodded, and then suddenly found himself laughing.
"What?"
"This is shaping up to be a bloody peculiar anniversary."
"Face it, Spike, we can never be normal."
For some reason, this saddened him more than he thought possible, even though he had told her exactly the same thing many times. His laughter died. "I know."
Ahead of them, Dr. Peters came to a halt in front of a shiny metal door, and after punching a code into the small keypad at its side, held the door open for Buffy and Spike. They entered, warily; but the room before them was nothing more than a sparse office, lined with bookcases holding row after row of leather volumes. Dr. Peters gestured for them to sit, before taking her own seat behind the desk. She folded her hands on top of the blotter, and looked up at the couple, expectantly.
Spike found he was fiddling with the gold bolts on the side of his chair. "Look, is all this really necessary?" he asked after a moment. "Can't we get on with it already? Or are you just really desperate to show off your office?"
Dr. Peters lips separated into a thin smile. "Just trying to make sure no fears go un-quelled," she said in such a way that made Spike doubt that there was any way her choice of words could be a coincidence. They were going to have to be more careful. It was foolhardy to believe that this would be anything close to easy.
He shook his fears away and tried to concentrate as she continued. "Now I know your past dealings with the Initiative have been...less than pleasant. But when you get right down to it, you're either going to have to decide to trust me, or not. If you choose not, then you're free to leave at any time."
"Fine. Just one question. Why?"
"Why?" Dr. Peters asked, looking down her nose at him. "I told you, I have my reasons."
"Well, that's pretty sodding unspecific. Considering that it's my brain you're going to be poking around in in a minute, I think we both deserve to be reassured that you're not going to do anything funny once you're in there."
Buffy's hand tightened around Spike's wrist as he spoke, but it was not a touch that asked him to back down, it was one of support. "Yes, Dr. Peters," she said, standing, "I believe we do deserve some sort of reassurance. I know you are fully qualified to perform the procedure - yes, I looked into you," Buffy added, off Dr. Peters' reaction. "Did you think I wouldn't? And so I also know you have a clean bill of mental health. But even people with the best intentions," her voice lowered for a moment, and Spike realized, grimly, that she was thinking about Riley, "still might not deal with this situation properly. Now we have come all the way down here, but we are perfectly content to go all the way back with nothing changed if you do not persuade us otherwise." Buffy took a deep breath, but her gaze never wavered from Dr. Peters' face. "So. Talk."
A multitude of emotions seemed to wash over Dr. Peters cool features then, but when they had passed, it was clear she had come to a decision. "Very well," she said, finally. "I didn't want to delve into this, but I was naive to think it wouldn't be necessary." She sighed and got to her feet. "Let's begin with a visual aide, shall we?" she said, a bit of a twinkle returning to her deep brown eyes. "I've always been a visual learner myself. Spike, would you come around to this side of the desk please?"
Spike broke contact with Buffy reluctantly, but he rose and went to stand by Dr. Peters. She was taller than he was, he noted, cursing the 19th century for producing such short people, and the 20th for messing about with the perfectly good height median. And then he cursed the 21st century, just for good measure.
He added a little something extra to this last curse when he heard what Dr. Peters said next. "Spike, would you hit me, please?"
Spike looked at her like she was insane, which he was beginning to suspect she was, despite what Willow may have found out about a clean bill of health. "Now why the hell would I want to do something like that? To give myself a nice, pre-surgery migraine?"
Dr. Peters grit her teeth. "Just do it please," she said. "Although not in the in the face, if you don't mind."
Spike continued to waver. He looked over to Buffy, who seemed as puzzled as he was, but nodded nonetheless. "All right, ducks, it's your poison," he said, and let his fist connect with Dr. Peters' shoulder in what really amounted to no more than a sharp tap. And he waited for the pain to come.
It didn't.
Instead, Dr. Peters said "Ow," and rubbed at her shoulder with her other hand.
"It's stopped working already?" Buffy asked, confused.
Spike shook his head, comprehension dawning. "She's not human, pet," he said.
"Impossible. I'd have known the second she walked up to us. But the good ol' Slayer sense isn't going off at all."
"Chip doesn't lie."
"He's right," Dr. Peters said, still rubbing her arm, and wincing in a manner that, at this point, was beginning to border on the pathetic. "I'm a vampire."
Now it was Spike's turn to be confused - again, he thought, disgusted. "Now wait just a bloody minute," he said. "*That* is bloody impossible. Non-human entity you may be, but vampire you are not. I can hear the blood flowing in your veins. I can also hear you breathing. And see you reflected in the sodding picture frame, I might add." He pointed behind them, where Buffy and Dr. Peters' reflections bounced back off the glass of the latter's framed Hockney print. Spike's image, of course, was nowhere to be seen. "Those aren't exactly what I'd call vampiric traits."
"No," Dr. Peters said. "But that doesn't change the fact that I am a vampire. Or the fact that if you and I," she gestured to Spike, "were to go to the airport, we'd set off every metal detector in the place."
Spike's whole world shut down as the pieces clicked into place. He took a step back and found himself leaning against a bookcase for support.
"You have a chip?" Buffy asked. Spike almost wasn't listening anymore, his brain forming other plans.
Dr. Peters nodded. "It makes me appear human in every way. You could almost go as far as to say that biologically, I am human. But I'm not. And were I to have it removed, or shut it off, I'd be just like any other vampire."
"How did this happen?" Buffy asked quietly.
Dr. Peters sighed. "I'll give you the short version. My partner, Dr. Brakeley...he and I had been working for the Initiative for four years, developing this and other implants." Her tone and expression grew wistful. "This was our baby, though. Our theory was that it could work like a vaccine for those who were turned. If they were reached soon enough after the turning, and they had the chip implanted, they could retain their humanity without ever experiencing the bloodlust, without ever setting foot down the dark path."
Spike returned from his reverie long enough to roll his eyes at this.
"But the Initiative wouldn't approve it," Dr. Peters continued. "They said it failed to address the problem of the soul. A vampire artificially turned human with the chip would still lack a soul. We were ordered to abandon work on the project, and go back to developing better versions of the chip you have." She glanced at Spike, but he was lost in thought and didn't even look up. "None of which, by the way, were successful. Which is not surprising, considering that less than a month later, the facility in Florida at which we were working suffered from a co-ordinated attack by a local group of vampires. I don't remember it very well now, but..." Bitterness crossed her features, but she pushed it away. "I was - I allowed myself - to be turned.
"I don't even want to think what would have happened it Dr. Brakeley hadn't been the one to find me. But he was. And the first thing he did was put our baby in my brain, and he kept it a secret so no one else would ever have to know. He saved me." There were tears at the edges of her eyes as she spoke, and Buffy dreaded what she knew would be the inevitable end to this tale. "Two months later he was gone."
"Vampires?" Buffy asked, because she had to know.
Dr. Peters shook her head. "Car accident." She laughed, bitterly. "The mundane deaths are still just as deadly."
"I know," Buffy said, quietly. She reached across the desk and gave Dr. Peters' hand a squeeze.
The doctor shifted away, suddenly uncomfortable. "Oh, look at me. Crying. How professional." She wiped at her eyes with a kleenex before disposing with that sole piece of evidence of unprofessionality in the rubbish bin under the desk.
"It's okay," Buffy said. "I think you've said more than enough to convince me that you have reason to be sympathetic to our circumstances."
"I have just one question," Spike said, abruptly surfacing. "And don't take this the wrong way, or anything, cause believe me, I'm not one to judge...but, uh, does this mean you don't have a soul?"
The quaver returned immediately to Dr. Peters' voice. "Yes," she said softly. "Yes, I guess it does."
"Do you miss it?"
Dr. Peters stared at the blond vampire for a moment. She saw the lack of malice in his eyes. She saw that his hands were shaking. She saw that the answer to this question was even more important to him than it was to her. And it was very important to her.
"I should, shouldn't I?" she said finally. "But...but you know what? If what I've been taught didn't tell me otherwise, I don't think I'd ever have known it was missing. It just doesn't seem that important to who I am. I'm still me. I haven't changed. Not in the ways that matter." She looked up at him again. "Does that answer your question?"
"Yeah." Spike's cocky grin returned to his face. Only it was genuine this time. "So now that's settled," he said, getting fully to his feet and running his hand through his hair. "Let's get this show on the road."
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TBC