Chapter 8
"OK, I'm gonna have to stop you there." Buffy held up her hand, the gesture dangerously underplayed, her eyes opaque. "C'mon, you want your last words to be quotable, don't you?"
She was all Slayer at that moment, hard and quick and detached. The struggle was short, and the vampire, night-cloaked and black of intent, no match for a girl who had done this a thousand times before. Her grip was iron, vice, and any memory of blood that lingered in his veins was choked out of him.
"Here." She tossed the stake to Spike. "He's all yours."
"What?"
She looked at him, deadpan but for the twitch at the corner of her mouth. "You'll find the heart just to the left of the breast bone. I recommend the pointy end."
But his face had darkened with something more than hesitation. "What is this? Are you testing me?"
"I - Spike, no, I - " Buffy looked up at him, bewildered.
"You don't trust me now?"
The vampire started to twist in her grasp, and she snapped at Spike in frustration. "Will you just get on and do it!"
"You trusted me yesterday. What was that?"
"Spike, please, just – "
"What, you're only prepared to believe me when you're drunk, is that it?" He didn't want to hurt her. But his head was screaming at him that this was all his fault, that she would die and it was all his fault, and there was nothing he could do about it.
"Spike!"
Buffy felt the blood surge to her head as it cracked against the pier rail, the one, last wrench from the vampire sending her crashing backwards. As she fought through the fog in her head she felt him drop against her, crushing the breath from her body. Panic wrapped clammy fingers around her throat as she shuddered under the weight of his breath on her neck. And then he was there. Strong hands that tore the limpet fingers from her hair, her face; strong arms that wrested the vampire off of her; iron will that ground him to ashes. Through the pounding in her head, Buffy was vaguely aware of Spike dropping the stake beside her.
Save her life he might, but ask for her acknowledgment he would not. And as she pulled herself painfully to her feet, the hand he would have offered her was balled so tightly into his other hand that his knuckles were grey.
"Spike, I didn't think – this is it, this is what we do, you and me." Her face softened a little. "We're good, you know. Fastest stake in the west, you 'n' me, partner." But she was talking to the back of his head, and suddenly she couldn't do it anymore; she couldn't be the one standing there making light of the situation when all she wanted was someone to take hold of her hand and tell her it was going to be all right. "Believe it or not, not every vamp I dust prophesies my death, so don't give me a hard time here, OK?"
His eyes were still tracing the horizon as he answered, quietly. "You're having a hard time. I just find out that the whole reason, the only reason Laura was killed was because she was with me."
"She was with you?"
"I told you that."
She knew he had told her, and she didn't know why she'd asked the question.
"I wanted to protect her; I wanted to save her and all I could do was sit there and let her die." His voice was so low she had to strain to catch it. "And I can't, I can't live it all again."
She heard the heady rush of water from the shower, and she felt it, a million unshed tears rising inside her like a great tidal wave. Buffy sat at the mirror in the bedroom, applying concealer to her bruised face so slowly and deliberately that it might have been her last action on earth. As she hid the layers of pain beneath a layer of make-up she remembered the day, not so very long ago but a world away from now, when she had sought comfort in the soft arms and quiet gaze of Tara.
I-it's Spike. He can hurt me
Had he known it? Had he known that he had a hold on her strong enough to wound her more deeply than she could ever have believed possible?
I don't hurt you.
He had offered her more than anyone else dared. He had shouldered her pain when the weight of it had threatened to drown her. And she had looked on a bruised and bloodied face so entirely hers that she thought the guilt would drive her mad.
You always hurt ...the one you love, pet.
But it was all hers. She could hurt and she could hurt and she could hurt and all he could do was take it. All of it. Until then. Until that fatal day. He had thrust his pain on her, and she had felt it. He had forced her to know his pain, and she had been sickened by the knowledge of it.
It was so wrong. It was not supposed to be like this.
The door of the en-suite bathroom clicked open, and he stood there, the white towelling bathrobe clinging to his wet body, his hair curling on his forehead. She caught his reflection in the mirror, and she felt how strange it was to see the scar she knew so well cut through his opposite eyebrow.
"D'you mind if I – " he shook the packet of cigarettes.
"Go ahead."
He did not look at her as he walked over to the window, but he opened it with a gesture so deliberately devil may care that he betrayed himself acutely conscious of his audience. She watched him, and she knew the touch of the fingers that lit the cigarette as well as she knew the dry, heavy smell of the smoke that filtered across to her.
"I'll pack up my stuff in a minute. Sylvia sorted out the room downstairs." She could only assume the remark was addressed to her, so far away from her was his gaze fixed.
The hand resting on the window ledge still bore the graze where she had driven the stake into it the night before. Part of her longed to press her own, tired body against his hard, hurting frame as he stood there, aching with some unspoken thought, at the window. But she didn't know what she was to him anymore. This Spike was not the Spike she needed to forgive. This Spike was not the Spike she needed to forgive her.
It was so hard. It was so hard to have a head full of
memories and to have to face them all alone.
Love is pain, and the Slayer forges strength from pain. Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature.
A great, choking sob welled up inside her as she sat, staring, blankly, into the mirror.
She knew he was there. She could not look at him but she was pointedly aware of him as he crossed the room towards her. She felt his breath rise and fall as he sat down on the edge of the bed in front of her. He didn't speak. But he reached across and cradled her hand in his, and neither of them moved.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Giles looked thoughtfully across at Buffy. "This was the same vampire you took Elizabeth from, in London?"
"Yes."
"And you staked him?"
"Spike took care of that." She glanced across at him, but he was listening intently to Giles.
"And he said that Elizabeth had seen you, with Spike?"
"Yes."
Giles could not help but notice that the subject was as uncomfortable a one for Spike as it was for the Slayer.
"But we know that Elizabeth is blind."
"Unless she has that magic wolfy eyesight thing you talked about yesterday."
"Unless she has that magic wolfy eyesight thing I – no, just as I feared, it didn't gain anything by repetition." Giles hesitated a moment before he continued. "Buffy, there is something we might do. It's a long shot, but it might be worth a try."
The faintest confetti of rain misted the seafront as they made their way through the bright huddle of tourist attractions to the technicolor exterior of the 'Dracula Experience'. The lurid face of a cartoon vampire leered down at them, the lettering above caked with peeling painted blood. Giles enquired briefly at the ticket office, and the steward, his face set with boredom under his mask of greasepaint, motioned them down a passage laced with synthetic cobwebs. Somehow, they had expected to find a room filled with incense and mystical curiosities, and they were more than surprised to find her there, middle-aged and ordinary, sitting in an armchair watching TV, in a room that bore a rather ugly, seventies wallpaper and smelt of air freshener and furniture polish.
"I know why you're here." Her voice was soft, an echo of the rain murmuring against the window pane. "Cake?" She held out a plate of supermarket-fresh French fancies.
Giles declined, politely. "We wondered if you might be able to help us."
She smiled round at them as she reached for the remote and turned off the TV. "You killed their leader. You did well."
"What do you know about Elizabeth – Lycaena?" Spike asked the question, and Buffy caught the rough edge to his voice.
"The girl Lycaena has the Slayer's eyes. She sees the world as the Slayer sees it." Her eyes rested briefly on Spike. "She sees the monster in the man."
"What do you mean?" Buffy asked, her mouth suddenly dry with curiosity.
"You are never alone, dear. Every time you look in the mirror you share your reflection with the one who shares your eyes. Every person you meet, Lycaena meets with you."
She took a mouthful of pink-iced cake before she continued.
"The way to the Slayer is through the Vampire. This Vampire. They knew that, and they killed the girl at his side because they thought all they had to do was find the Vampire and they would find the Slayer. But they were wrong."
The room was strangely quiet, and even the rain seemed lulled into silence.
"The Vampire is indeed the way to the Slayer. It is simple. Break the Vampire and you will break the Slayer. Isn't that so, dear?"
Buffy didn't answer.
"Oh Slayer, pretty Slayer. It is nearer than you think. Look at him, you think he can't touch you? Of course he can. This is the Vampire that bargained with the gods for his soul."
She was looking at Spike, her gaze bright and steady.
"And this is the Man who will die three weeks from now if you will not save him."
As the rain beat its fairy tango up and down the streets Giles steered Dawn home, because right now this was between the Slayer and her long-time sparring partner.
"Where are we going?" Buffy looked across at Spike as she pushed her hair out of her eyes.
The wind whipped up around them as Spike answered. "Up here. This is the Hundred Steps. There's a Church at the top."
"We're going to Church?" In spite of everything she could not resist a smile.
"We have to go somewhere quiet. I can't hear myself think. There's a bloody gale blowing in my head."
Whether it was the steps that were glistening, or the rain in her eyes, she didn't know, but she was lost in a sea that filled her head more than the sound of the waves breaking on the shore below them.
"So you're only human on condition that I save your life? What is this, Beauty and the Beast?"
"Don't flatter yourself, love. You're not that beautiful."
"I am, and the sooner you get your memory back…" She had said it without thinking, and though she cut herself short her mistake burned across her face.
He stopped, and stared at her, because her meaning was unmistakable. "Are you telling me we – bloody hell, what was I thinking?"
She hit him for that, playfully.
"We slept together? Often?" He caught her little fist in both his hands as she swung it towards him again, and his eyes laughed across at her. "You're a liability, that's what you are."
"You, too. I've saved your sorry life one too many times already."
They climbed in silence for a moment, embraced by a wind that wrapped them together as they mounted the cliff face, step by step.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked the question as lightly as she could.
He waited a moment, and when he answered his voice was quiet and his words broken. "I couldn't tell you. I couldn't ever. Not that. It was too much, my life on your conscience. I couldn't live, you having to bear that. Better that I just die. 'About bloody time."
Buffy turned round suddenly. "What did you say?"
He started to repeat it, aware that she was looking at him strangely.
"OK, now stop talking."
And this time there was no rising music, no closing curtain, no falling building, just his mouth, and hers, and a world oblivious to it.
TBC