Chapter 10
"Is it me? Do I have to die? Again?"
The silence answered her more pointedly than any words could have done. At length Giles looked up at her, and when he spoke, his voice was so heavy she felt it drag across to her.
"The only way the ritual can be stopped is if the power is channelled into a source strong enough to conquer it. A source that holds its own power; power great enough to defeat it."
"Like Slayer strength, for example?"
Spike loved her for that, for the clear, steady gaze that locked into his own, stricken eyes, and the quiet calm in a voice that refused to break.
"Like Slayer strength, for example." Giles echoed her words dully, his eyes, with his words, on the floor.
Buffy thought for a moment. "You're saying if I took Elizabeth's place I could withstand it, this dark power?"
"Not exactly." He looked across at her. "To fight this evil you would have to call on the ultimate source of your power."
Buffy allowed herself the scarcest hint of a smile. "Please, not the First Slayer. Not again. She's scary."
"The First Slayer is not the source of your power."
Love is pain, and the Slayer forges strength from pain. Love will bring you to your gift. Death is your gift.
"I know." She walked over to the window, and when she spoke again her remark seemed addressed more to the gathering dusk of clouds than to anything else. "Love is my strength; death is my gift." She swung round suddenly, a strange, bright smile on her face. "Spike, what do you get when you cross love with death? Three guesses."
He said nothing, only looked at her, and wanted her, more than he could say.
"Sacrifice. Am I right, Giles?"
He assented, soberly. "It is the greatest manifestation of love. It is in sacrifice that you make your strength complete."
A great, shaking sob suddenly rocked the doorway, and two small arms clutched, desperately, at the Slayer's neck.
"Buffy, you can't. I won't let you."
Buffy reached out and stroked her hair, as she pulled her sister close to her. "Dawnie, it's all right. I'm not going to leave you."
Dawn looked up at her through hard, hot tears. "But Elizabeth? We can't stand by and let her die."
"And we won't, Dawnie, we'll find a way." Buffy glanced across the room over the top of the trembling head nestled against her. "Giles, there must be a way."
And the voice cut across the quiet like a searchlight reaching out to her across the gloom. "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
"Spike, why do you keep saying that?"
"It's what you said. Sacrifice. The greatest manifestation of love."
"Spike, I think we've established that. Try and keep up." Giles gave vent to a well of emotion in that one, small moment of exasperation.
Spike persisted. "So why does it have to be the Slayer that dies?"
"Did you catch the bit about Slayer strength, by any chance?" Giles spoke in the voice of a man dangerously close to the edge.
"But you said it yourself, the Slayer's strength would not be enough to defeat it. Only a sacrifice could render enough power to overcome it."
"What are you saying, Spike?"
"Exactly what you think I'm saying. I have three weeks to live. I live three weeks, and I die an anonymous death at the end of it. Or I die tomorrow, and achieve something I never achieved in the whole of my life. Think it over, Watcher, the offer's there."
Buffy was looking at him with something that could almost have been relief, and as much as he did this for her, it tore him in half to think that his death could ever give her joy.
"Would it work, Giles?"
Every wall in the room, every room in the house, every house in the street, craned to hear the reply.
"I believe it would. Spike – "
"Don't say it. If I can get to the end of my life without you bloody fawning over me I will count myself a lucky man."
There was a strange, uneven silence, and the room throbbed with unspoken thoughts.
Giles spoke, eventually. "We still need to work out where this ritual is taking place."
Buffy thought back to that afternoon, in the churchyard, so very far away.
"No we don't. We already know."
Spike stood by the window long after the sun had set, and long after the others had left the room. He stood, and waited, because everything told him that she would come, that she had to come. It was one night, just one night and he couldn't believe that she would leave him to spend it alone. He did not want to believe it. He did not want to die doubting the one thing that, just for that one, rain-consecrated moment that afternoon, he had believed.
But he stood, and waited, and she did not come.
One sunrise. One last sunrise. Spike looked on the silent world, the great, soaring sky arched over the sleeping sea. It was a broken sunrise, light splintered over the horizon, opalescent under the thin shroud of cigarette smoke. He leaned out of the window, the early morning air rushing to his head.
And he would have given it all up: the vast white expanse that was the sky; the whole shimmering mass that was the sea; the very air that he breathed; just to feel her hands threaded around him as he could almost believe they were now; just to feel her heart racing his as he could almost believe it did, there, against him. She moved, and it was only then that he knew it, that her breath on his neck was real.
Her face was turned towards him. "I love – "
"Don't."
"What?" She looked up at him in astonishment.
"The impending-death-situation love declaration. It's not what I want from you. It's never been what I want from you."
"You remember?"
"No I don't remember. I know."
They stood in silence for a moment, watching a world that watched them back. She smiled, suddenly, as she turned to face him.
"You're not going to die."
"That's my girl. Positive thinking will get you everywhere."
She was still smiling at him, straight at him. "You're not going to die."
"Of course, there's a fine line between positive thinking and denial."
It was there, from the crown of her head to the tilt of her chin, bright, escalating joy. "You're not going to die."
"You listening to me, Slayer?"
Was it just the sun haloed on her face, or was she actually shining?
"No, you listen to me." She put both her hands into his, and stood facing him. "You are not going to die."
"Since when?"
"Since always."
His face fell, because for one, mad moment he had thought she meant it. "Nice try, pet." God, how much had happened since he had first uttered those words to her, that night in London not more than a week before.
"OK, since about an hour ago."
He still did not dare believe her. "Don't tell me, Giles had an attack of the conscience, decided three weeks would be pushing it for him, too, and volunteered to take my place. I gotta thank the guy, but really, Slayer, I've got this one. He can take the next assignment. I would aim for an easy staking, though. The bloke looks out of practice."
"Will you listen to me? Giles has nothing to do with this."
"OK, please don't tell me you've made some Faustian pact with the Devil here because I had you down for one of the good guys, Slayer, and I'd like to hang onto that illusion for the few hours I've got left, if you don't mind."
"Spike. Shut up. If you don't stop talking I will just have to kill you here and now."
"At which point Giles would have to step in. Between you and me, Slayer, I'm not sure he's cut out for this sacrifice stuff. I mean, can you see him as all-conquering hero guy?"
"That is it. You can die for all I care. I refuse to spend the rest of my life with a man who will not let me get a word in edgeways."
"What did you say?"
"At last, I have your attention."
"Can we go back to the bit about you spending the rest of your life with me?"
"Spike, if you were listening, you might have picked up on an 'I refuse to' in there somewhere."
He smiled. "And if I promise to let you speak?"
"Let me speak and I'll let you know." She smiled back at him. "Listen, I just spent the entire night reading every book Giles owns and battling the fax machine to get through to Willow in order to save your life, so listen to me here. Nobody has to die to save Elizabeth."
"How d'you work that one out?"
"Only the sacrifice of a soul will save her." She paused, watching to see his reaction. "My soul is all that I am, Spike, if I surrendered my soul I'd surrender everything. I'd be nothing. But you – "
He looked at her, only half-believing that she could be saying what he dared to think she might be saying.
"Don't you see? You bargained with the gods for a soul that was already yours; if they took it back you'd be nothing less than what you were before."
"What was I before?"
Buffy looked straight at him, her gaze unfaltering. "Everything you are now."
He thought for a moment. "It's good, Summers, it's good, but there's one thing I want to know."
"What?"
"If you knew all this an hour ago why did you stand here with me all this time before you thought to tell me?"
"Because you've never really seen the sun rise until you've looked at it and thought it was your last."
She had said it with mock gravity, but she saw the realisation cloud his face.
"It was my last."
It hit her too, then, and she said nothing.
"I dared to hope that one day this might work, Slayer, you and me. I wasn't counting on being a vampire again."
"It doesn't change anything, Spike."
"It changes everything."
She could not look at him, then, because she knew they had had the conversation twice before: once on her doorstep, the day she had shut him out of her home and believed she had shut him out of her life; and once as they walked, together, in search of Dawn, the day after the night she had told herself a thousand times she could pretend had never happened.
She looked up at him, slowly, and pressed her hand against his chest.
"Nobody can take this away from you, Spike. What you feel – here – it's real. It always will be. I felt it, Spike, back there on the pier." And her voice was very quiet, as she added, "I'll always feel it."
He looked at her in silence as she continued. "You risked everything for me, Spike. So I owe you this. I'm going to do what you needed me to do. I'm going to save your life."
Still, he said nothing, as she went on. "You saved my life. Not when you rescued me from demons and protected me from would-be assassins. But when you sat beside me and said nothing; when you dared to laugh me while everyone else could only smother me with pity; when you were just there for me, always, you saved my life. Because you gave me a reason to go on. You told me it yourself, I live because there are people in this world that give me something to live for."
He was beginning to understand her, and inside he was burning with hope.
"You loved me enough to die for me, Spike. Do you love me enough to live for me?"
His eyes were blue, very blue, as he looked at her, the world spinning before him, and then -
"What's wrong?" Because suddenly he shrank back, recoiling from her as if it was killing him just to look at her. "Spike, what is it?"
To be concluded…