Coming Through

Chapter Fourteen – Special Cookie

"What do you mean, I look like Spike?"

Clem looked over at the tiny woman curled up on his couch, mentally kicking himself for opening his mouth in the first place, but… Spike's his friend, and… he loves this girl. He cleared his throat and gripped the arm of the loveseat then said quietly, "Spike was a complete mess for a long time after you disappeared. He held it together when he was with Dawnie, but just barely. He'd come over here after patrol and sit there just like you are now, looking broken."

Buffy pushed her hair out of her face and tried to sit up a little straighter, "He did?"

Clem nodded, "Yeah. He wasn't eating much, and was barely getting any sleep because he was at the school with Dawn all day, then patrolling and searching for you half the night. The only thing that kept him going was making sure he kept his promise to you to protect Dawnie. He blamed himself for you being gone."

Buffy shook her head, "It wasn't his fault. That demon could've shown up anytime, there's no way he could've known."

Clem nodded and shrugged, "That's what I tried to tell him, but when he gets an idea in his head…."

Buffy nodded with a rueful smile, "He doesn't let it go. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, Clem." She looked down at her soda and asked quietly, "Tell me what happened while I was gone. To him, I mean. Why is he so different? Does he have a… " she swallowed past a huge lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat and finished in a whisper, "Girlfriend?"

Clem shook his head, "No. There's been nobody since you left… well… there was that one time with Anya…"

Buffy's head flew up and she screeched, "That was Spike?"

Clem shrank back into the loveseat just a little, "Uh… yeah. He told you?"

Her lips pressed into a thin line, "He told me about Anya screwing some guy, but he conveniently forgot to mention the part about the guy being him."

"They were both drunk, Slayer, and it was just the one time. Like I said, he was a mess. I think he was getting close to the end of his tether by then. Did he tell you what Xander did when he found them?"

Buffy's lip started to tremble slightly as that part of their conversation replayed through her mind, "Yeah, he mentioned it. Was it bad?"

Clem looked disgusted and clenched his hands into fists – which looked really strange on the normally passive demon – then he spat the words out like they tasted nasty in his mouth. "It was bad. Xander broke his arm, most of his ribs, and his jaw. Anya told me that Xander got Spike down on the floor and just kept kicking him with his steel-toed work boots. Then he took out a stake, but Anya covered Spike's body with her own and wouldn't let Xander stake him, so instead he started stomping on Spike's… um… you know." He motioned shyly toward his crotch as he blushed furiously, the tips of his floppy ears glowing a bright red. "He only stopped when Spike finally passed out from the pain."

Buffy leaned forward, her soda can sliding out of her suddenly nerveless fingers and dropping to the floor with a small thump. She clamped her hands to her mouth, trying to keep her Double Meat meal from making an encore appearance. When she had her stomach somewhat under control, she picked up the soda can and looked up at Clem, "Spike just let Xander hurt him?"

Clem nodded and the seething anger on his face looked even more out of place than his clenched fists, "He didn't really have a choice, Slayer. He couldn't fight back because of the chip."

Buffy's throat closed up as she tried to choke out, "Oh God."

Clem looked over Buffy's pale and drawn face as she clutched the soda can like a lifeline. He felt bad for causing her pain, but there were still some things she needed to know, "It gets worse, Slayer."

She swallowed hard and looked up at him, her eyes full of anguish, "Tell me."

"Once he healed enough to get around on his own, he started drinking. A lot. He'd leave Dawnie with Tara and go to Willie's, then get completely drunk and pick a fight. He'd let himself get beaten to a pulp, Willie would call me, and I'd carry him back here and try to clean him up so he wouldn't go home to Dawnie all bloody and smelling like booze."

"How long did this go on?"

"About six or seven months. He'd run out of demons to fight after the first few months because none of them would go anywhere near him when he was drinking, so he started picking fights with humans."

"Humans? But he can't fight humans because of the chip."

Clem nodded, "I know, but he'd fight them anyway. He was trying to cause himself as much pain as possible. Said that when he passed out from the pain, it was the only time he didn't think about you… what might be happening to you… or if you were still alive."

"Did Dawn know about any of this? Does she know now?"

"Yeah, she knows now. I think she knew then, too, but she didn't know what to do for him. The last time he went looking for a fight, he'd been gone about three days and she was worried. She called me, but I hadn't seen him, and Willie hadn't called me to come get him, so I went looking and finally found him dumped in a sewer tunnel not far from The Bronze."

"Dumped? What do you mean… dumped? What happened?"

"He'd started a fight with a group of humans and they pounded on him until he passed out from the pain of trying to fight back. He'd never vamped, so when he passed out, they probably thought they'd killed him."

Buffy was looking a little green around the gills when she nodded, "No heartbeat and he probably wasn't breathing, so they dumped the body."

"Yeah. He was in a really bad way when I found him. I've never seen someone that beat up. Even what Xander did to him wasn't that bad. I brought him here and called Dawn. While I was waiting for her to show up, he started having seizures. His chip was malfunctioning from firing so much and started zapping him at random times. It was probably zapping him the whole time he was laying in that sewer tunnel."

Buffy's stomach was seriously considering another revolt, "How did you fix it?"

Clem shook his head, "We didn't. Dawn called Tara and she brought Willow with her. They did a spell to get it out of his head before it killed him or turned him crazy."

Buffy's eyes got huge, "He doesn't have his chip anymore? Does Giles know that? Does Xander?"

Clem nodded, "Yeah, they all know. They were all here and saw how much pain he was in because of the chip and… because of you. He was begging us to just dust him. He even put a stake in Xander's hand then punched him so he'd do it."

Her stomach was mustering the troops and getting ready to advance, "He wanted to die?"

Clem nodded sadly, "Yeah. He couldn't take the pain any more. He'd finally given up. Xander almost did it, too."

Buffy slapped a hand to her mouth and struggled with her stomach for a few seconds, then took a few deep breaths and swallowed heavily to celebrate her victory, "What stopped him?"

Clem grinned, "Dawnie. She threatened Xander with a violent and painful death if he didn't put the stake down. Spike tried to argue with her and told her to just let him go, so she punched him and knocked him out again. That girl packs a hell of a punch, let me tell you. You can tell that she's the Slayer's sister to be able to knock out a vampire – even one as messed up as Spike was. Anyway, after she punched Spike, she told Xander exactly where she was gonna put that stake if he didn't drop it, then she told the witches to get the chip out of Spike. Giles and Xander threw a fit about that, but Dawnie set them straight."

Buffy smiled as the picture of Dawn threatening two men far larger than herself popped into her head. Summers women can be pretty scary when they're pissed and protecting someone they love. She could just see the look of righteous anger on Dawnie's face, then the image of her mom holding an axe and threatening Spike floated to the top of her brain and made her smile just a little bit wider. Her smile soon folded down into a frown though, because one thing was still not making sense. "How did Dawn set them straight about the chip? Knowing Giles and Xander, they would've staked Spike before letting anyone remove it."

"She started out telling them that Spike could be trusted, and that you'd trusted him to take care of her so that should count for something, and she told them that if Spike did anything bad because of the chip being gone that she'd stake him herself. They were still hemming and hawing around until she pointed out that just because Spike couldn't hurt humans himself, that it didn't stop him from getting someone else to do it for him, and he hadn't. That convinced Giles."

Buffy nodded slowly, "She's got a point. He could've had us all killed and he didn't. It's not like there weren't tons of fledges here, and they probably would've followed a master vampire as old as Spike, even with the chip in his head. Once he found out he could hurt demons, he could've taken over a few vamp nests and really made himself a pain in my ass. I guess I never thought of that."

Clem nodded, "So Giles agreed, but Xander didn't, and he said he couldn't stop them, but he'd keep a real close eye on Spike and if he stepped even a little bit out of line, he'd be dusty. Then he said that he couldn't believe Dawnie was sticking up for the piece of shit that let Buffy get taken. He said that they should've staked him the night Dawnie brought him to the house, because obviously he'd done something evil, or you wouldn't have beaten him up."

Buffy's face twisted into an angry scowl, "God, Xander! Spike had nothing to do with me being gone! Nothing! Even if he'd been there, it still might've happened! And he was trying to help me when I beat him up! That whole thing is my fault, not his."

Clem shrank back from the anger rolling off the small woman and nodded quickly, "I know, Slayer, I know. And don't worry; Dawnie didn't let him get away with it. She backed him up against the wall and told him to get out and not to come anywhere near her or Spike until he could, quote… pull his stupid head out of his stupid ass and see that not all demons are evil… end quote. Then she reminded him that the woman he had planned to marry was an ex-demon that had been killing for ten times as long as Spike, and had probably killed a lot more people, and she'd had a soul the whole time. That shut him right up and he left."

Buffy snickered at the image of a tiny, brown-haired girl backing a larger, dark-haired man up to a wall, "And she didn't talk to Xander for what… about six months?"

Clem's look of confused surprise made Buffy laugh harder, "Uh… yeah. About that long. How'd you know?"

Buffy grinned through her giggles, "Spike told me. So what finally made Xander join Team Spike?" The wild roller coaster of emotions she'd been riding the last several hours was starting to make her slightly punchy; hence the giggling. She felt like she'd been awake for almost ever, and couldn't remember ever being so tired.

Clem smiled at the still giggling Slayer, although he was still kind of confused as to why she was giggling. "Um… that's something you're gonna have to ask Xander. I don't know if it was any one thing, I just know that when Dawnie finally let him back in the house, he said he'd tolerate Spike and work with him to fight the First Evil, but that was it. After a while, he just started being a little nicer and they started getting along."

"Ok… so Spike just kind of grew on Xander? Like a vampire fungus?" She giggled again and took a large swallow of soda as Clem nodded slowly, wondering to himself if he had a crazy woman on his couch. She plunked her soda down on the coffee table then laid her head on the arm of the couch and looked sleepily over at Clem. "Now make with the splainy about Master of Sunnydale. What the hell does that even mean?"

Clem shrugged and said, "Spike's the Master of Sunnydale," like that should explain everything.

Buffy sighed in exasperation, "I hear the words, Clem, but I don't know what they mean. How did Spike become the Master or whatever? Was there an election? Did he win a contest? Did he get the special fortune cookie? How?"

Clem chuckled, "He went down to Willie's and announced that he was the Master of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth."

Buffy's mouth fell open, "That's it? He just said it?"

Clem shook his head, "Not quite. After he said it, he had to fight and kill any demon that challenged him. After a few weeks of that, the rest of the demon population accepted him as Master, and it's been nice and quiet here ever since… mostly. There was the whole First Evil thing, but it's been pretty quiet since Faith closed the Hellmouth, and that would've been a lot worse if Spike hadn't ordered almost every demon in Sunnydale to help with the fight."

"Uh huh. And what, exactly, does Spike do as Master?"

"Not much really… anymore. It was pretty rough for the first year or so. Demons would come from out of town to challenge him, or the ones who lived here would be acting up, but he held his place, and now it's basically just maintenance. He holds Court once a month at the mansion. Any demons that want to move here introduce themselves and swear not to cause problems, and anyone having a problem with another demon or a human tells Spike and he handles it."

"How does he handle it?"

Clem shrugged, "Tries talking to them first, but if that doesn't work then he kills them."

Buffy shot to her feet, wobbling just a little, "Spike's killing humans?"

Clem shook his head violently, his ears fwapping back and forth loudly, "No, Slayer! No. Sorry. I should have been clearer. He only kills demons that are causing trouble. If it's a human, he just scares them. He fangs out, and snarls, and threatens, and he might smack them around a little, but he hasn't killed any of them."

Buffy rolled her shoulders and her face cracked into a huge yawn as she sat back down on the couch, "So Spike's kind of like the principal of a really big school where the troublemakers get dead instead of detention?"

Clem laughed, "Yeah, I guess you could say that." He leaned back into the loveseat and smiled over at Buffy, "He loves you, you know."

Buffy looked up at him in surprise, then frowned and shook her head, "He used to. He doesn't anymore. That's why I'm leaving. It's too hard to be around him when I love him and he doesn't feel the same way about me. I'm not strong enough for that." She reached up and scrubbed at her eyes as she yawned again. "I don't know how he was strong enough to stay when all I did was tell him over and over how worthless he was." She leaned her head on the back of the couch and closed her eyes. "I couldn't have done it."

Clem just looked at her for a minute as she yawned again, then said softly, "You should get some sleep, Slayer. I'll get you a blanket. Be right back." He went downstairs as Buffy snuggled herself down into the couch and kicked off her shoes. She was already asleep when he draped the blanket over her and pulled his phone from his pocket.