Chapter Thirty-Seven: Together Apart
Sire and Childe and Slayer and Vamp
The sire vampire strode down the street, barely seeing the people around him, blindly heading for an unknown goal and wanting nothing more than to get there, feeling he'd know it when he saw it. He listened to the sound of his boots hitting the pavement, the creak of the leather in the duster hanging off his shoulders; his fingers twisting the rings they were wearing, one at a time: nervously, though he wouldn't admit it. He was far from calm, but didn't want to acknowledge it, because it would make it worse, this rage inside of him. If he even for a moment pretended it was there, it would spread and no more pretending would be able to make it go away, it would take over. Since he had no one and nothing to aim it at he had no idea what he could do with it, and so he held it down, smothered it with the refusal to recognize it.
He marched into an alley and stopped beneath the sign of the Bronze. He took in the letters forming the name, and then decided against it – there was nothing worse than sitting at a bar counter alone. Well, at least if you weren't hunting. He continued further into the alley and batted away the thoughts of the first time he had ever seen her, the first time he had watched her dancing, something staying with him, haunting him, berating him, mocking and strong in the way it clutched onto him, as though trying to convince him... trying to convince him of...
He shook his head in aggravation, reaching the closed and locked gates of a cemetery and jumping over them, landing gracefully and not stopping, continuing across the wider path and onto the grass, in between graves, between the dead, beginning to slow down at last and finally stopping completely, slowly tilting his head back and looking up at the night sky.
The last time he had observed it in this way he had been with her, on a hill in a city now far away. Left behind. He had spoilt it then, taken that smile she had given him and shown her how ridiculous it had been, how little it meant to him. And here, under the same sky, in a different city, where everything seemed to originate, all he could feel was rage.
x
The Slayer entered the kitchen the most self-conscious that she had ever been around her mother. Joyce was making tea, filling the kettle, already having brought an assortment of flavors out and put them neatly on a tray. Buffy found herself smiling, rather suddenly.
"Got any hot cocoa?" she asked, Joyce turning around with a slight jump. "Oh, I'm sorry," Buffy apologized. "I didn't mean to sneak."
Joyce smiled at her.
"Sneak away," she encouraged, putting the kettle on the stove and turning to Buffy with a warm expression in her eyes. "It's strange to see you with long hair. Feels like ages since you had it really long."
Buffy smiled.
"Ah, but this isn't really long, compared to sixth grade," she remarked.
Joyce returned the smile.
"Are things the same here?" she asked.
"You mean the same as...? Yes, mostly," Buffy answered. "The houses and streets. A few buildings are missing where I'm from, but none that were that important anyway."
Joyce's smile widened and Buffy felt how much she had longed for it, how empty the house had seemed without it.
"Thank you for bringing her home," Joyce said, Buffy shaking her head.
"It was her choice."
"In any case, I'm grateful," Joyce insisted, eyeing her for a moment before she added: "This may sound out of place." She paused, searching for the right words, until finally she said: "I want to tell you that I'm really very proud of you. You're my daughter, even if I didn't actually go through seventeen hours of labor to have you. I feel I need you to know that I'm very proud to be your mother. And it doesn't matter what form you come in." She made a slight pause, resting her gaze in the Slayer's with the honesty of her sentiments in full view before she turned back to the kettle and mumbled: "She's still my Buffy."
"I know," Buffy said.
The kettle declared the water to be boiling and Joyce grabbed it.
"Could you get me the milk?" she asked.
Buffy grabbed it out of the fridge and brought it over to her, Joyce taking it from her and pouring some of it into a pan on the stove, beginning to heat the liquid up as she brought out the box of cocoa powder from one of the cabinets.
"Mom," Buffy said and Joyce met her gaze questioningly. It was Buffy's turn to pause, but she felt she needed to say it, and so she did. "I love you."
Joyce smiled then, stopping her stirring and pulling Buffy into a tight hug, the Slayer closing her eyes at breathing her mother's well-known scent.
"I love you, too," Joyce said.
x
They headed into the living room once the tea and cocoa was prepared, Joyce setting the tray down on the table as Buffy had a seat next to Spike on the couch. Joyce handed the vampiress her cup, placing one in front of the vampire and reaching the one with cocoa out to the Slayer, who took it, but paused as she looked into it.
"Oh," she said, reaching it over to Spike, who was just about to take his off the table, "that's for you," she added, using her free hand to snatch the other one he had been given for herself.
He took the offered cup, seeing its contents and moving his eyes into hers with a widening smirk on his mouth. She smiled a half-smile back before hiding it behind her cup of tea.
"No cookies?" he asked.
"I'm so sorry, we're all out," Joyce replied, his eyes going to hers as his smile widened before he glanced back at the Slayer, who was smiling as well, though she refused to meet his gaze.
"Didn't mean it like that," Spike said to Joyce. "I was told that you never hand out cocoa without a cookie."
"He's not teasing you, he's teasing me, and he's stopping now," the Slayer said, putting her cup on the table before she looked at the vampiress, whose eyes had glazed slightly and she looked like she was very far away.
x
Actually, the vampiress was wondering what it would have been like to have a sister. If the Slayer had been her twin, what would it have been like to have someone to share everything with: every wound, every struggle, every new ending of the world? Being the Slayer had caused extreme isolation within her; donning the leader hat and always making the big decisions had led her down one path while her friends walked another, within arm's reach, but still removed from her, and she felt that at the end of that path there had always been an enormous hurdle which she'd had to – consequently – overcome by herself. She felt she would have liked having someone with her; no matter how many fights they would certainly have had over stupid things that they disagreed on, it would have been nice to have had someone who could and wanted to understand her completely.
She fastened her eyes in the Slayer's and realized that she had been watching her.
"...bloody delicious, what do you put in it?" the vampiress heard Spike's voice ask.
"Well, I never reveal my secrets, but I'll tell you that I always use dark chocolate, gives more flavor, and then I add a bit of vanilla to take away the bitterness," Joyce replied.
The Slayer looked away from the vampiress, turning her gaze on Joyce instead, and the vampiress could see a sudden flash of pain on the other's face.
"Brilliant," Spike said, having another mouthful of the sweet liquid.
"I spoke with your father," Joyce said to the vampiress.
"You told him?" the vampiress wondered.
"Of course I told him, he has every right to know."
"I wasn't going to say he doesn't. It's just... Well, the way he freaked over the 'incident', I'm just not sure if he'd be able to handle it," the vampiress said.
"'Incident'?" Spike asked, the Slayer giving him a look to butt out of the conversation, making him raise his eyebrows innocently.
"I burned down a gymnasium," the vampiress replied, the vampire looking quite shocked. "There were vampires in it," she added, and the shock evaporated.
"But, honey, you have to admit that that reason still sounds a little..." Joyce trailed off in search of the right word.
"Nuts?" Spike offered.
"I was going to go with confused, but, yes," Joyce said. "Buffy, he loves you; he's as worried as I am about you. He just wants to know that you're okay."
"Yeah," the vampiress murmured, Joyce reaching out a hand and gently stroking a lock of hair out of Buffy's face, making her smile a little.
The Slayer rose and everybody looked at her.
"I'm sorry, I need to go," she excused herself, heading into the hallway and grabbing her jacket before walking out through the front door.
The three remaining stared at the empty spot she had just occupied, and then Spike got to his feet, going after her, the door closing behind him as well and the silence of the room seeming perfect for the vampiress to say something, perhaps begin to tell her mother of all the circumstances that had brought her back to Sunnydale, but meeting Joyce's gaze again, she found that she couldn't. Not right now. For now, she wanted to simply be, it was so much like it always had been; it was so much what she needed.
x
Spike hurried in the wake of the Slayer, down the steps of the porch, catching up with her at the curb of Revello Drive.
"Buffy," he said, for the third time, reaching out to grab her arm just as she swirled around to face him, making him retract his hand quickly as her gaze met his. "Buffy," he repeated, this time more softly at the pain on her face.
"What?" she practically exclaimed. "What is it that you want?"
His brow furrowed at her sudden anger, but it only seemed to add stokes to the fire as she glared at him. Then she huffed, shaking her head at him or herself, he couldn't be sure, and then she turned from him, stepping off the curb and continuing into the street. He watched her for a second, and then became aggravated as well.
"What do you think I want?" he called after her and she paused her step again, turning partially to him.
He approached her, stopping before her, observing her features with longing and exasperation battling within him.
"I try not to think about you at all," she sneered and he grabbed her as she made to leave again, making her rest her eyes in his, her scent going to his head, her hands against his chest, her body tensing.
"And yet you bring me cocoa," he remarked, something brief and good humored appearing in her eyes, softening her face, making it look as if ready to bear a smile, before it slowly hardened again. "I see," he murmured. "But you want me to tell you what I want?" he asked, her hands pushing against him, but her head tilted back slowly, as if in expectance.
"I don't want anything from you," she murmured. "Let go."
"You want me to?" he wondered quietly, not able to hold down a smirk and she tore loose, pushing him to take a few steps back. "You want me well enough when it suits you, Slayer," he called after her as she walked away. "Never when it suits me, though," he muttered to himself, glancing back at the house and figuring he was even less wanted in there.
He hesitated, uncertain of which way to choose, before he turned and headed in the opposite direction of her.
x
"'Want me well enough when it suits you'," she mimicked, her irritation growing. "Yeah, because he presumes to know me and all my inner on-goings. Like I want him. Like I want him around. It isn't me, is it? It's this place, you moron!" she yelled to the empty street behind her.
Of course, Revello Drive was even farther behind, and she doubted the vampire would be listening. That doubt made her suddenly angry with him, thinking how he dropped bomb after bomb on her head and didn't even stick around to watch them explode. Wasn't that what he was there for? His entire reason for existing? Watching her go down in flames? And what did he do? He fondled and pulled and tugged like she was something that would break if he was careless. Where had that good, old-fashioned hatred gone?
Maybe it hadn't gone. Maybe it had never rooted itself properly, and had been easily brushed away by new circumstances. Maybe it was the lie, and this was real.
"No," she grumbled, looking up and noticing, a little astonished, that she had entered the fourth cemetery without realizing this had been where she was headed. "There's nothing here that's real."
She slowed her step to a stroll, taking in her surroundings properly and wrapping her arms around her, remembering walking here, not very long ago, feeling as if she was half asleep and shouldn't be, since there was a pounding in her chest which refused to let her relax for even a moment. All the pain she had felt, all that sorrow and grief, longing to go back, if only for one night, to sleep beneath the Earth, to rest, she had somehow seen it reflected in his eyes. For the first time, she had looked into his gaze and actually seen something other than the demon, as if death had brought her to see life where before she had only seen cold and darkness. As if there was something trapped and all she had to do was push on the pin securing the cage door, and release it.
The sound of low moaning made her stop, her ears perking, trying to determine if it was an I-need-help-desperately moan, or another kind all together. Strangely, she thought she recognized it.
She moved up to a small crypt, peeking around the corner and frowning at the sight that met her.
Spike – she quickly determined it wasn't her Spike – lying pinned to the ground under a massive headstone. It was barely a headstone, it was more a head-monolith fit for the grave of Goliath. She couldn't walk away from this without an explanation, no matter how much she may have wanted to leave him there, at least for an hour or two.
Stepping into sight, her eyebrows rising, her arms crossing themselves over her chest, she waited for him to take note of her presence. It wasn't a long wait. He wasn't able to move and look at her, but he did say:
"Bloody hell, you just gonna stand there and watch?"
"Are you so very surprised?"
He was silent for a few moments before he huffed.
"'Spose not," he grumbled, stopping his strenuous and futile attempts at moving the lump of rock on top of him and relaxing, his arms out to the sides in quite a pathetic pose.
"You know," she said, moving closer, stopping at his side so that he could turn his head and look up at her, "this is the first time I think I actually like the sight of you since we got here."
"Funny, that," he cocked an eyebrow, "this is not your best angle."
She narrowed her eyes, unwound her arms and began to walk away.
"Alright, bloody hell! Come back here!"
She smirked, but repositioned herself next to him, squatting down to have a closer look at his bloodstained face.
"Kuwarq demon?" she asked. "Mind telling me how he got spattered all across your cheeks?"
"I didn't fight him," Spike replied.
"He just spontaneously combusted?"
"I didn't challenge him," Spike changed his former statement.
"Ah," she said. "So, he jumped you? That leather – works its magic every time, huh?"
Spike reached his arms out for her, but didn't even grace her, and it produced another smile on her mouth.
"It wasn't my fault. He bloody attacked! I had to defend myself. Wasn't my fault he got hurt, was it?"
"Oh, is this where I reassure you that it wasn't? Because, in my world, killing unfriendly, bloodthirsty demons is a good thing."
"Meaning I, in your eyes, am now guilty of having done a good thing?" Spike shot and she opened her mouth to speak, before smirking again.
"Grows on you, doesn't it?" she asked.
"Oh, will you just help get this thing off me so we can part our merry ways already?" he snapped.
"I'm merry! Very," she smirked, rolling her eyes at the dark glare he directed at her, reaching down and taking a firm hold on the solid rock.
He braced his hands against it as well and they both heaved with all their might, the wider base of the grave-monolith digging into the earth as they shifted its weight off the vampire and pushed it heavily to the side, it landing with a soft thump in the grass.
The vampire splayed himself with a groan on the ground, stretching his body out before relaxing, opening his eyes to look up at the Slayer. She felt quite neutral at his freed state, but there was some sort of rush when his gaze locked with hers, as if she actually felt good about helping him.
"Took you long enough," he muttered, sitting up.
"You're welcome," she replied tartly. "Really. It was my pleasure."
He smirked at that and she gave him a look not to go there before she stood.
He dug around inside his duster, bringing out a flask and having her crinkle her nose as she watched him take a swig. He turned his eyes in hers again, reaching the flask out to her. She was about to shake her head, when she found herself accepting it, sitting back down on the ground with a slight sigh, bringing the flask to her lips and letting the liquid slip over her tongue before it burned its way down her throat, heating up her stomach effectively. She met his gaze as she handed the flask back, and wondered at the sudden recognition she felt at that glint of humor in his eyes.
"So," she said, "come here often?"
He smirked widely, taking a swig of the alcohol and shrugging.
"'S quite nice, innit?" he asked. She had to smile at that. "What?" he wondered.
"No, you just... kind of live here," she answered.
"Kind of as in sometimes you stumble on my sleeping corpse lying about in the grass kind of, or kind of as in nailing bloody pictures to a headstone?" he inquired.
"Why are you getting defensive?"
"I'm not bloody getting defensive, I'm bloody pissed off at the thought that anyone resembling me as much as that git of yours would actually stoop to setting up sun-protection in a sodding graveyard. I hope you're bloody proud of yourself," he spat.
"Me?"
"You think he'd actually do something so undignified unless he was absolutely bloody..."
"Yeah, yeah," she interrupted impatiently.
He eyed her for a moment, having another taste from the flask, offering it to her again, but she declined this time.
"Yeah, yeah?" he asked.
"And what about you?" she countered.
"My yeah-yeah is a kaleidoscope of rainbows and laughter, I thought it was sodding obvious," he quipped.
"Right, and you came here looking for a fight because you're Multi-Colored Joyful Guy," she remarked dryly.
"No, I came here looking for a quiet, dark place where I could drink. Alone. The fight just sort of..."
"...stumbled over your corpse lying about in the grass?" she offered, receiving a look of impatience for the effort. "And what about Buffy?"
"What about Buffy?"
"She might not want to drink alone."
"She's not alone."
"Ever had that feeling when you're in a room with a bunch of people who're having a good time, and you still feel like the loneliest person in the world?"
He cocked an eyebrow.
"No."
The Slayer sighed, looking down at her hands for a few moments, drifting into thoughts.
"So, where is the other me? Shouldn't it be him sitting here in the moonlight getting you drunk?" he smirked, taking another swig of the liquor.
She huffed and got to her feet, brushing the earth off her jeans. She glanced at him before she walked off.
"Was it something I said?" he called after her, but she could her him sniggering to himself: he wasn't expecting a reply.
x
Willow stared hard at the computer screen, scrolling down the list of names and reading them out loud under her breath, wishing she could find one that was on the list Giles had given her. There were not many people – or demons – that could be in possession of an orb of Thesula, and most of them were not exactly listed on the Internet, but Giles had insisted she keep on searching; somewhere, someone might have mentioned one of the names, and even if it was only in passing, it might prove vital if they were to track them down.
Personally, she felt as though she had lost hope the second Buffy had told them that this wasn't the way. She trusted Buffy's judgment more than anyone's – even her own, at times – and if Buffy said there was no point to their search, then odds were against there being even a bluntness to their search, their search probably wouldn't even make a dent in the bigger scheme of things.
"Hold on," Willow mumbled, scrolling back up.
She clicked on the site and felt herself begin to tremble slightly as the homepage came into view, displaying the old-fashioned etching of a handsome man. His eyes had been colored red, though, and she knew immediately that this was really a demon. His name read Flink, and she turned from the computer to the table, where Xander, Oz, Giles and Kendra were sitting – Giles reading through another thick volume, looking more stubborn than ever; while the other three mostly sat waiting.
"Flink," Willow said. "I found him."
Giles was at her side in an instant, leaning closer to the screen, which flickered in protest and made him pull back with an exasperated huff.
"Blooming technology," he murmured tiredly.
"Now, now, be nice, or it might not want to play," Xander warned as he joined them.
"Where is this demon?" Kendra inquired, watching the screen.
"Oh, he's in..." Willow began, reading the text quickly and turning a defeated look on Giles as she finished: "Bolivia. We can't go to Bolivia. Can we?"
Giles smiled weakly, taking his glasses off slowly, but forgetting to polish them as his eyes seemed to get caught on something no one else could see, his forehead wrinkling in thought.
"If he has an orb of Thesula, we will get it here," he then said, replacing his glasses, twirling on one heel and marching into the office of the high school library, picking up the phone. There was a slight pause, and then he asked loudly: "Who wrote the article?"
"John Figarro," Willow answered.
"Does he really think all he has to do is pick up the phone and it'll call this guy, or?" Oz asked, incredulous.
"He knows very many nice and important people," Willow replied. "And, also, the Slayer Council has records on just about everybody. They're a little scary that way."
"I don't know, Will," Xander said quietly. "Maybe it'd be better if he just faced the fact that Buffy's-..."
"Maybe," Willow cut in. "But, what if," she added. "Do you want to quit, if there's a what if?"
"There's always a what if," Kendra remarked.
"Right," Willow gave a nod. "It's almost dawn," she added. "If we haven't got it by then, Giles'll have to face the fact. We all will."
Xander's expression dropped and she realized that he had wanted her to ensure him that Giles was right, rather than agree with his scepticism. But how could she comfort him when she found it so difficult to comfort herself. In a few hours, it would all be for nothing, and Buffy would be gone.