Title: Away (The Evil Within - Chapter 14)
Author: Nimue
Rating: PG -13
Pairing Buffy/Spike. Most major characters included.
Feedback: Yes, please
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN,
Fox... Just Borrowing. (with, of course, the exception of Emma, who
belongs to Buffy and Spike)
Summary: Spike returns to find that Buffy failed to conquer the
demon and has to live with the consequences of his decision. Buffy
awakes away from her life. But where is she and who will she come
across in her journey? The snake in the garden is revealed and it
is time for Quentin to seek his revenge for what happened at the
First.
Away
Tara sat cross-legged on the living room floor, a candle glowing bright in front of her. Cyrus watched as she chanted, a swirl of silvery light growing around her. Her voice was quiet, soothing, lulling him into security as she wrapped the spell around them, around the house. The room slipped out of focus and stilled. It wasn't until he heard the distant word 'Frozen' that he realized it.
This wasn't a protection spell at all.
The Evil was within.
Tara hopped to her feet, strolling towards the staircase, humming merrily as she went. Cyrus ordered his body to move, to leap, to throw his life down to protect the child and that for which she stood. But he could not move. His limbs were lifeless. Doll-like. Heavy as lead. His body was anchored to the chair as if he were strapped tightly in a glass box. His mind processed it. His eyes watched it happen. But there was nothing he could do to stop her.
Nothing.
Tara wandered up the stairs with a pleased grin on her sweet face and a song on her pretty, full lips.
*****
"Buffy, please!" Spike pleaded as he held her against him. She was so tiny. How could the Powers have expected someone this small to handle all they had charged her with?, Spike thought. His tears covered her face, but she didn't flinch. Not when he traced the livid welts on her pale skin, her coral lips. Not when he shook her, as if trying to rouse her in the morning when she'd been working way too late. Not when he spoke to her or tried to reach inside her mind. Her body was alive. Warm. Pumping blood at a dangerously slow pace that thumped in his ears like a wind up toy running low. But her soul, his soul, had drifted off like a balloon set free by a child.
"Don't go, Pet," Spike whispered, tracing her face with his fingers, letting his lips brush softly against hers. He could taste her blood. Feel the heat from the horrible wounds. "We've got work to do. Emma... Emma needs her mum. Time to rest later." He knew she could not hear him. She wasn't there to hear his pleas, but he felt he had to try. The thought of living again without her... of explaining to her friends that he had left her there. Explaining it to Dawn. Having to tell Emma what her mum had been like before her father had let her die...
"No!" he roared into the sky, clutching Buffy against him. "No. No. No." His body quaked with sorrow and guilt and anger, but she was still. Those pretty doe eyes still gazing blankly at him.
At least this time he could hold her.
*****
The door to Emma's room creaked open and the light flickered to life. Dawn shook her head, the puppy mirroring her.
"Tara?" Dawn asked.
"Frozen," Tara repeated. Dawn was still, propped upon her elbows on the floor.
Anya stirred, staring up at the Witch. Emma began to fuss in the background, her slumber shattered by light and noise. "Tara?" Anya asked, looking sleepily at her friend. "What's wrong?"
Tara extended a hand to Anya, pulling the startled woman from the recliner. "Nothing," Tara answered, winking slyly.
"But Dawn..."
"Is not your concern," Tara snapped, pushing Anya hard against the wall and pinning her. She pressed her lips hard to the former demon, sucking in her breath. Blowing out the evil. Crumpling to the floor in a frozen heap as Anya took a deep breath and rocked back on her heels.
The wheel had been set in motion once again.
*****
It would have been easier to have taken her into the crypt. To have laid her down in the bed that they had shared in secret for so many nights. But it didn't seem right, Spike thought. To take her there and know that, eventually, he would have to leave her once again to retrieve Emma. Besides, the crypt was not her home. It wasn't his either. It never had been. Merely refuge in the storm. I can't leave her again, he thought. As long as her heart still beats in her chest, as long as she still... is... I won't leave her.
Softly, Spike slid his hand under her knees, scooping her up and slowly standing. She was so fragile now. Like she might break from his touch. As if everything about her that had been the Slayer; his fierce warrior, his passionate lover, had blown away in the breeze or been swallowed by the stars. Spike blinked, barely noticing the steady stream of tears still slipping down his cheeks.
"My fault," he choked as he moved slowly like a man on his wedding aisle, or a funeral procession. "My fault, Love. I should've never left you. Shoulda known that Harris could have handled her what with all the others hanging about. Shoulda helped you first, Pet. Never leaving again. Never walking away. If it takes me forever to get you back, or forever to lose you, I will stay." His words were choked by sobs as he walked. Her pretty green eyes stared still. He wanted to close them. To make her stop... staring that dead stare. But he was afraid. Afraid that if his fingers slid over her eyelids, hiding her, he would never see her again. Like closing a window. So he watched her brilliant, blank, stare with every step.
"I'll get you home, Pet. Fix you up," Spike whispered, brushing blood-matted hair from her battered face. She was so beautiful to him. Even covered in the wounds of a battle lost, her features barely recognizable, she was still the most lovely creature in the world. Spike realized that it would not have mattered what she looked like anymore. He loved her so completely that her beauty was deep inside of him. Of them.
And now she stared blankly into his eyes. Empty inside.
"My fault," he whispered again, sobbing into spun gold hair, clutching her frail frame ever closer. "C'mon, Pet. Forgive me once more. I need you. Emma. Don't leave her behind. She needs her mum. I don't blame you. I understand if... sod it, Love. I'll leave if you want. Give it up. Everything. If you come back. Or stay. Or whatever the bloody hell you want just don't leave us. Alright, Pet?" Spike rambled, madness taking control. He was losing it. Losing her. Losing himself. Losing everything.
He closed his eyes, still walking, plodding towards their home. Spike took a breath, trying to still his mind. Have to keep it together. Not like before, he thought. Niblet was old enough to understand. To give me time and space for selfish rampages and hopeless tears. Emma can't. Have to be strong. Have to get her home. Clean her up. Set about making this right.
Life would be well again once he could think. Could find his way to bring her back. Needed to get her home. Tuck her into their bed. Wrap her round her tot. She'd come back then. Won't leave Emma alone.
A horrible thought crossed his mind just as hope had tried to enter. What if she couldn't come back? Worse yet, what if she did not want to?
*****
"Spike?" Buffy called out, bleary eyed. She was laying in the grass, her hands rubbing her smooth cheeks. "Hunh," she mumbled to herself. "Could have sworn it got me across the face."
Her eyes adjusted and she realized it was daylight. Puffy, blue clouds rolled across a cerulean sky like one of those time lapsed videos on the Discovery Channel. She shook her foggy head, trying to grasp her surroundings. No crypt. No headstones. Just a meadow. Smooth and lush and decidedly non-buggy. A grove of fruit trees stood in the distance. The smell of the sea. The feel of warm sun on her skin.
Buffy surveyed herself. She was barefoot, dressed in a yellow sundress with tiny forget-me-nots embroidered along the silk. Not Slayer wear. Not Slayer territory. Not in Sunnydale anymore, Toto, she thought. Not sure where.
"Spike?" she called again, pushing herself up on decidedly rested legs. She felt amazingly well except for an ache in her belly and a sort of loneliness that she couldn't really place. "Spike?" But there was no answer. "Emma?" she called. Worth a try. The Peacemaker had found her every time she had been lost since... well, since she'd carried her. But nothing. Only the tranquil sound of the distant ocean and the rustle of wind in leaves.
She began to walk towards to grove, trying to figure out where she was and where she was supposed to be. It seemed unlikely that a slimy, gray, tentacly thing would kidnap her to a meadow full of daisies. That's not what demons did to Slayers. Well, except maybe Spike, but he hadn't been very good at the demon-y end of things since they'd met. It seemed much more plausible that she'd hopped dimensions. 'Ha,' she chuckled as she strolled through the soft grass. More believable that I passed into another dimension than was dropped off two towns over in a field. Only in our lives, she thought. Ours. Spike.
A pang of loss and sorrow crashed into her. Spike's alone. We promised no more alone. And Emma. Did he get her in time? Need to get back, she thought, her resolve steeling, her stride quickening although where she was headed seemed uncertain.
Suddenly, a voice rang out from the distance. A familiar, welcome, sweet voice. "Buffy? Buffy is that you?"
Buffy spun on one bare foot and stared at the little alcove in the tree line. What she saw broke her heart and mended it.
"Mom?"
*****
The fire blew plumes of acrid smoke at the roof of the cave. It was rhythmic, entrancing Giles. Hypnotizing him. Paralyzing his mind. The raven-haired beauty stood next to the blaze, tossing what looked like jewels into the endless heat. Little, twinkling jewels.
Like stars.
Footsteps snapped Giles back into the game. The sound of hard-soled dress shoes clicking against stone. Slowly, he lifted his hanging head and looked across the cavern at Quentin. His boss. His mentor. The embodiment of all evil past and all that was to be.
Even in his defeat, there would always be another evil.
"It is time," Quentin said flatly to the woman as he brushed past her. The woman nodded, falling to her knees in submission, her form shifting yet again. The hag slumped over the stone wall surrounding the fire. Chanting. Bobbing. Stretching her hands into the blaze.
"Enjoying the show, old friend?" Quentin asked, sidling up next to Giles. Only he wasn't Quentin anymore. His body was the same, but the blackness beneath, the horrible endless darkness crawled under his skin as if his blood had been replaced by tar. His soul by emptiness.
"We are not friends. We were *never* friends," Giles replied, swallowing against the heinous smell, the arid feel of his throat.
Quentin chortled in response. "Don't suppose we were," he answered, lighting a cigar, slowly, luxuriating in its rich taste, the feel of the smoke curling against his skin. "You were the Ripper. And then you reformed to become Daddy dearest to an orphaned ragamuffin. How dear of you? To sacrifice your own life for her meaningless contentment."
"I will gladly sacrifice it if you stop this, Quentin. If anything good or decent is left in your black heart, you won't harm the child."
"Sorry to say, old man, but there is not. Nothing *you* would label good or decent. Not in your utopic world of black and white. You used to see the gray, Rupert. But the Slayer changed you. Not for the better, I might add." The former Watcher took a long draw from his cigar, letting the smoke curl around Giles' defenseless face. "Besides, the child is not a *child*. Just as you are not simply a Watcher, nor your Slayer, nor her Vampire... None of us are what we walk around pretending to be. The girl is older than us all, and a force more powerful than even the One.."
"A force for good," Giles countered.
"As you see it. She is ... not so... to me."
"She is a *baby*," Giles pleaded. "A little girl, Quentin. Even at your worst... butchering an innocent?"
" I will gladly kill you all," Quentin responded flatly, taking another inhale from his smoke. "But *she* is my prize. Not an innocent at all, really. She's an extension of the Powers. That which created you and your merry band of buggereds, but also that which created *me*. It's Cain and Abel. A biblical justice."
"No religion condones... this," Giles commented, shaking his head, wanting to break free and rid the world of this plague.
"I am my own religion," Quentin continued. "To put it simply, as your brain seems to be sorting information at a dangerously lethargic rate, I make the rules here. I force fate to comply..."
A noise interrupted Quentin's latest tirade as the flames shot up, licking the roof of the cavern. Quentin squealed in almost a childlike joy as the fire receded, leaving only the imprint of a star smoldering against the cold stone ceiling.
"It has begun."
*****
Anya stood stock still, her mind reeling, eyes adjusting to the now dark room. Where she stood seemed distant, yet she could feel her bare feet in the thick carpet and the cool air from the window brushing her hair from her cheeks. She extended her arms in front of her, staring at her hands.
It seemed as if they had been set ablaze and she winced instinctively, shaking her palms as one would after pulling wet dishes from the sink. But there was no pain. No hurt. No anything.
The flames subsided and she stared once again at her smoldering palms. All that was left was a faint glow. A small star still painlessly ablaze in her left palm. Anya studied it, her mind focusing, but not processing the information. As if she knew what but not why. A mindless automaton, as Spike liked to complain.
Why?
Anya noticed another faint glow in the dark. She walked towards it, finding only a small child laying quietly, a warm brightness emanating from the back of her neck. The Star. Anya reached into the cradle, allowing her palm to touch against the brightness. To mingle with it. To feel the child come to her, cuddling warmly, willingly, against her chest. Tiny, soft breaths caressing the former demon's cheeks. Anya closed her eyes, but what was behind them was more than she could bear.
A dagger hung weightlessly in the air before her. The handle was ivory, an eye meticulously carved into the stone. Around the eye, a dragon, coiled, its eyes glowing red. A voice inside of her spoke. An old voice.
"The Key."
To be contd.
Away
Tara sat cross-legged on the living room floor, a candle glowing bright in front of her. Cyrus watched as she chanted, a swirl of silvery light growing around her. Her voice was quiet, soothing, lulling him into security as she wrapped the spell around them, around the house. The room slipped out of focus and stilled. It wasn't until he heard the distant word 'Frozen' that he realized it.
This wasn't a protection spell at all.
The Evil was within.
Tara hopped to her feet, strolling towards the staircase, humming merrily as she went. Cyrus ordered his body to move, to leap, to throw his life down to protect the child and that for which she stood. But he could not move. His limbs were lifeless. Doll-like. Heavy as lead. His body was anchored to the chair as if he were strapped tightly in a glass box. His mind processed it. His eyes watched it happen. But there was nothing he could do to stop her.
Nothing.
Tara wandered up the stairs with a pleased grin on her sweet face and a song on her pretty, full lips.
*****
"Buffy, please!" Spike pleaded as he held her against him. She was so tiny. How could the Powers have expected someone this small to handle all they had charged her with?, Spike thought. His tears covered her face, but she didn't flinch. Not when he traced the livid welts on her pale skin, her coral lips. Not when he shook her, as if trying to rouse her in the morning when she'd been working way too late. Not when he spoke to her or tried to reach inside her mind. Her body was alive. Warm. Pumping blood at a dangerously slow pace that thumped in his ears like a wind up toy running low. But her soul, his soul, had drifted off like a balloon set free by a child.
"Don't go, Pet," Spike whispered, tracing her face with his fingers, letting his lips brush softly against hers. He could taste her blood. Feel the heat from the horrible wounds. "We've got work to do. Emma... Emma needs her mum. Time to rest later." He knew she could not hear him. She wasn't there to hear his pleas, but he felt he had to try. The thought of living again without her... of explaining to her friends that he had left her there. Explaining it to Dawn. Having to tell Emma what her mum had been like before her father had let her die...
"No!" he roared into the sky, clutching Buffy against him. "No. No. No." His body quaked with sorrow and guilt and anger, but she was still. Those pretty doe eyes still gazing blankly at him.
At least this time he could hold her.
*****
The door to Emma's room creaked open and the light flickered to life. Dawn shook her head, the puppy mirroring her.
"Tara?" Dawn asked.
"Frozen," Tara repeated. Dawn was still, propped upon her elbows on the floor.
Anya stirred, staring up at the Witch. Emma began to fuss in the background, her slumber shattered by light and noise. "Tara?" Anya asked, looking sleepily at her friend. "What's wrong?"
Tara extended a hand to Anya, pulling the startled woman from the recliner. "Nothing," Tara answered, winking slyly.
"But Dawn..."
"Is not your concern," Tara snapped, pushing Anya hard against the wall and pinning her. She pressed her lips hard to the former demon, sucking in her breath. Blowing out the evil. Crumpling to the floor in a frozen heap as Anya took a deep breath and rocked back on her heels.
The wheel had been set in motion once again.
*****
It would have been easier to have taken her into the crypt. To have laid her down in the bed that they had shared in secret for so many nights. But it didn't seem right, Spike thought. To take her there and know that, eventually, he would have to leave her once again to retrieve Emma. Besides, the crypt was not her home. It wasn't his either. It never had been. Merely refuge in the storm. I can't leave her again, he thought. As long as her heart still beats in her chest, as long as she still... is... I won't leave her.
Softly, Spike slid his hand under her knees, scooping her up and slowly standing. She was so fragile now. Like she might break from his touch. As if everything about her that had been the Slayer; his fierce warrior, his passionate lover, had blown away in the breeze or been swallowed by the stars. Spike blinked, barely noticing the steady stream of tears still slipping down his cheeks.
"My fault," he choked as he moved slowly like a man on his wedding aisle, or a funeral procession. "My fault, Love. I should've never left you. Shoulda known that Harris could have handled her what with all the others hanging about. Shoulda helped you first, Pet. Never leaving again. Never walking away. If it takes me forever to get you back, or forever to lose you, I will stay." His words were choked by sobs as he walked. Her pretty green eyes stared still. He wanted to close them. To make her stop... staring that dead stare. But he was afraid. Afraid that if his fingers slid over her eyelids, hiding her, he would never see her again. Like closing a window. So he watched her brilliant, blank, stare with every step.
"I'll get you home, Pet. Fix you up," Spike whispered, brushing blood-matted hair from her battered face. She was so beautiful to him. Even covered in the wounds of a battle lost, her features barely recognizable, she was still the most lovely creature in the world. Spike realized that it would not have mattered what she looked like anymore. He loved her so completely that her beauty was deep inside of him. Of them.
And now she stared blankly into his eyes. Empty inside.
"My fault," he whispered again, sobbing into spun gold hair, clutching her frail frame ever closer. "C'mon, Pet. Forgive me once more. I need you. Emma. Don't leave her behind. She needs her mum. I don't blame you. I understand if... sod it, Love. I'll leave if you want. Give it up. Everything. If you come back. Or stay. Or whatever the bloody hell you want just don't leave us. Alright, Pet?" Spike rambled, madness taking control. He was losing it. Losing her. Losing himself. Losing everything.
He closed his eyes, still walking, plodding towards their home. Spike took a breath, trying to still his mind. Have to keep it together. Not like before, he thought. Niblet was old enough to understand. To give me time and space for selfish rampages and hopeless tears. Emma can't. Have to be strong. Have to get her home. Clean her up. Set about making this right.
Life would be well again once he could think. Could find his way to bring her back. Needed to get her home. Tuck her into their bed. Wrap her round her tot. She'd come back then. Won't leave Emma alone.
A horrible thought crossed his mind just as hope had tried to enter. What if she couldn't come back? Worse yet, what if she did not want to?
*****
"Spike?" Buffy called out, bleary eyed. She was laying in the grass, her hands rubbing her smooth cheeks. "Hunh," she mumbled to herself. "Could have sworn it got me across the face."
Her eyes adjusted and she realized it was daylight. Puffy, blue clouds rolled across a cerulean sky like one of those time lapsed videos on the Discovery Channel. She shook her foggy head, trying to grasp her surroundings. No crypt. No headstones. Just a meadow. Smooth and lush and decidedly non-buggy. A grove of fruit trees stood in the distance. The smell of the sea. The feel of warm sun on her skin.
Buffy surveyed herself. She was barefoot, dressed in a yellow sundress with tiny forget-me-nots embroidered along the silk. Not Slayer wear. Not Slayer territory. Not in Sunnydale anymore, Toto, she thought. Not sure where.
"Spike?" she called again, pushing herself up on decidedly rested legs. She felt amazingly well except for an ache in her belly and a sort of loneliness that she couldn't really place. "Spike?" But there was no answer. "Emma?" she called. Worth a try. The Peacemaker had found her every time she had been lost since... well, since she'd carried her. But nothing. Only the tranquil sound of the distant ocean and the rustle of wind in leaves.
She began to walk towards to grove, trying to figure out where she was and where she was supposed to be. It seemed unlikely that a slimy, gray, tentacly thing would kidnap her to a meadow full of daisies. That's not what demons did to Slayers. Well, except maybe Spike, but he hadn't been very good at the demon-y end of things since they'd met. It seemed much more plausible that she'd hopped dimensions. 'Ha,' she chuckled as she strolled through the soft grass. More believable that I passed into another dimension than was dropped off two towns over in a field. Only in our lives, she thought. Ours. Spike.
A pang of loss and sorrow crashed into her. Spike's alone. We promised no more alone. And Emma. Did he get her in time? Need to get back, she thought, her resolve steeling, her stride quickening although where she was headed seemed uncertain.
Suddenly, a voice rang out from the distance. A familiar, welcome, sweet voice. "Buffy? Buffy is that you?"
Buffy spun on one bare foot and stared at the little alcove in the tree line. What she saw broke her heart and mended it.
"Mom?"
*****
The fire blew plumes of acrid smoke at the roof of the cave. It was rhythmic, entrancing Giles. Hypnotizing him. Paralyzing his mind. The raven-haired beauty stood next to the blaze, tossing what looked like jewels into the endless heat. Little, twinkling jewels.
Like stars.
Footsteps snapped Giles back into the game. The sound of hard-soled dress shoes clicking against stone. Slowly, he lifted his hanging head and looked across the cavern at Quentin. His boss. His mentor. The embodiment of all evil past and all that was to be.
Even in his defeat, there would always be another evil.
"It is time," Quentin said flatly to the woman as he brushed past her. The woman nodded, falling to her knees in submission, her form shifting yet again. The hag slumped over the stone wall surrounding the fire. Chanting. Bobbing. Stretching her hands into the blaze.
"Enjoying the show, old friend?" Quentin asked, sidling up next to Giles. Only he wasn't Quentin anymore. His body was the same, but the blackness beneath, the horrible endless darkness crawled under his skin as if his blood had been replaced by tar. His soul by emptiness.
"We are not friends. We were *never* friends," Giles replied, swallowing against the heinous smell, the arid feel of his throat.
Quentin chortled in response. "Don't suppose we were," he answered, lighting a cigar, slowly, luxuriating in its rich taste, the feel of the smoke curling against his skin. "You were the Ripper. And then you reformed to become Daddy dearest to an orphaned ragamuffin. How dear of you? To sacrifice your own life for her meaningless contentment."
"I will gladly sacrifice it if you stop this, Quentin. If anything good or decent is left in your black heart, you won't harm the child."
"Sorry to say, old man, but there is not. Nothing *you* would label good or decent. Not in your utopic world of black and white. You used to see the gray, Rupert. But the Slayer changed you. Not for the better, I might add." The former Watcher took a long draw from his cigar, letting the smoke curl around Giles' defenseless face. "Besides, the child is not a *child*. Just as you are not simply a Watcher, nor your Slayer, nor her Vampire... None of us are what we walk around pretending to be. The girl is older than us all, and a force more powerful than even the One.."
"A force for good," Giles countered.
"As you see it. She is ... not so... to me."
"She is a *baby*," Giles pleaded. "A little girl, Quentin. Even at your worst... butchering an innocent?"
" I will gladly kill you all," Quentin responded flatly, taking another inhale from his smoke. "But *she* is my prize. Not an innocent at all, really. She's an extension of the Powers. That which created you and your merry band of buggereds, but also that which created *me*. It's Cain and Abel. A biblical justice."
"No religion condones... this," Giles commented, shaking his head, wanting to break free and rid the world of this plague.
"I am my own religion," Quentin continued. "To put it simply, as your brain seems to be sorting information at a dangerously lethargic rate, I make the rules here. I force fate to comply..."
A noise interrupted Quentin's latest tirade as the flames shot up, licking the roof of the cavern. Quentin squealed in almost a childlike joy as the fire receded, leaving only the imprint of a star smoldering against the cold stone ceiling.
"It has begun."
*****
Anya stood stock still, her mind reeling, eyes adjusting to the now dark room. Where she stood seemed distant, yet she could feel her bare feet in the thick carpet and the cool air from the window brushing her hair from her cheeks. She extended her arms in front of her, staring at her hands.
It seemed as if they had been set ablaze and she winced instinctively, shaking her palms as one would after pulling wet dishes from the sink. But there was no pain. No hurt. No anything.
The flames subsided and she stared once again at her smoldering palms. All that was left was a faint glow. A small star still painlessly ablaze in her left palm. Anya studied it, her mind focusing, but not processing the information. As if she knew what but not why. A mindless automaton, as Spike liked to complain.
Why?
Anya noticed another faint glow in the dark. She walked towards it, finding only a small child laying quietly, a warm brightness emanating from the back of her neck. The Star. Anya reached into the cradle, allowing her palm to touch against the brightness. To mingle with it. To feel the child come to her, cuddling warmly, willingly, against her chest. Tiny, soft breaths caressing the former demon's cheeks. Anya closed her eyes, but what was behind them was more than she could bear.
A dagger hung weightlessly in the air before her. The handle was ivory, an eye meticulously carved into the stone. Around the eye, a dragon, coiled, its eyes glowing red. A voice inside of her spoke. An old voice.
"The Key."
To be contd.