TITLE:
Darkest Before Dawn #6 "history lesson'
AUTHOR:
Nmissi
PART: 6/?
DISCLAIMER: I own Nothing and No one. Especially not Spike. If I did,
what makes you think I'd share him with you?
DISTRIBUTION: Anybody, just credit me and let me know where it's
going.
Feedback: Please. Nmissi@aol.com
SUMMARY: The way the world would work if I wrote the Buffyverse.
Dawn watched as the leggy brunette exchanged words with Angel in the doorway. He looked over at her, then bent his head back to his visitor.
" I guess he told her about my Mom," thought Dawn, as Cordelia shot her a pitying gaze from the entryway.
She hated them, those knowing glances that people meant to be comforting. They always made her feel like a science exhibit.
Cordy entered, a whirl of pastel paisley in white sandals, clicking their way across the room She stopped directly in front of the disheveled teenager, and smiled at her.
"Hi Dawn."
She was trying to be friendly, Dawn knew that. But somehow she just didn't have it in her to smile back when she spoke.
"Hey Cordy."
Angel broke in.
"Dawn, I have to get some sleep. Cordy's going to take you home with her, right now, and I'll be over later to get you when the sun sets."
He turned to his co-worker, taking her elbow gently as he steered her out of Dawn's hearing.
"Listen, Cordy. I want you to try to get her to call Buffy. I know she'd be going out of her mind if she knew Dawn came all the way over here all alone. If she's tried to call her dad's house she could be really worried."
Cordy's confusion was obvious.
"Why can't we just call her then?"
"I don't think it's a good idea. She specifically asked me not to call Buffy. I don't want to go behind her back. If Dawn feels she can't trust us she may run… I don't think I need to remind you what the streets are like in this town."
They both spared a moment to think about the kids over at Anne's shelter house, and shuddered. Then Cordelia squared her shoulders and walked back to her charge.
"Listen, honey, think you feel like breakfast?"
"I'm not hungry," came the listless reply.
"Oh- Okay. We'll just get drive-thru then."
She waited expectantly. Dawn got to her feet slowly and with great reluctance. She liked Cordy, she always had. But Cordelia Chase came in two modes: Chirping Cheerful and Biting Bitch. Neither one really appealed right now.
Angel watched them leave the hotel, then went upstairs to bed.
" I can see your mother's influence here."
Buffy looked at Spike quizzically.
"How do you mean?"
He fixed her with his gaze.
"The style. The art."
He stretched his arms out, indicating the entire room.
"I'll bet she found most of these gems for him, didn't she?"
She looked away quickly.
"I wouldn't know."
They were in her father's Los Angeles apartment, a corner penthouse in a stylish modern high-rise.
Spike sat down on the white leather couch. They had been here about ten minutes, and still she hadn't really spoken. She was walking around the fashionably appointed living room. Occasionally she would stop to look at a picture, or to examine some nicknack. He wasn't sure what she was doing. How would any of this help find her sister?
"Pet? Shouldn't we be looking for clues, or something?"
Buffy looked up from a nice piece of mayan pottery had been inspecting. For a minute she'd forgotten he was here.
She put
the pot down.
"Sorry. I got distracted."
He got up off the couch and came to her.
"Maybe you should go lay down for a bit. You drove half the night, and didn't sleep much this morning when I took over. I don't mean to be rough, slayer, but you look like hell."
"I can't, Spike. I just can't. Not right now."
She paced over to the fireplace, her eyes on her sister's framed portrait on the mantel.
"She needs me. She needs me to find her."
He understood her need for action. She'd been manic for weeks, every since the funeral. But she was haggard and worn out. She wasn't at the top of her game, and he was worried about her safety.
"Love, let me do some of the work. I'll make a few calls, and come nightfall we'll hit the streets and search. Meantime, you lay down, and I'll search the apartment for clues."
He said this as he gently tried to steer her toward the couch, to convince her to lie down. But she balked, and he watched as she walked down the hallway towards what he presumed was Dawn's room.
Entering behind her, he found he was half-right. It was a guest room, suitable for a teenage daughter, or for someone else if the occasion warranted. Tastefully age-neutral, the lilac walls picked up the floral accents in the bedspread, and the pictures on them were suitably pastel and impressionist. Their white frames harmonized with the wicker furnishings. But the room had no personal touches, nothing in it said "I'm Dawn's (or Buffy's) room."
Except the smell- He could smell her in here, on the bed linens. He knew her scent, that unusual mixture of Baby Soft perfume, fabric softener, and bubblegum. For a moment, he felt oddly better, comforted by the fact that she'd been in this room.
He hadn't realized how much he had missed her.
"I can smell Bite-size in here, fairly recently," he offered.
Buffy opened the closet, but it was empty.
"She took her suitcase, I guess."
Spike opened the drawers of the dresser, finding each empty.
"Looks as if she never unpacked."
Buffy sank down on the bedspread, and the tears came. She sat there and wept brokenly, her breathing ragged and her sobs hiccoughing.
"I don't know what's wrong with me," she sniffled, " I'm – I'm usually stronger than this. I – I don't just cry. But seems like its all I do anymore."
He stood there, powerless in the face of her despair. His hands worked at his sides, clenching and unclenching, as he shifted from one foot to the other. He ached to reach out to her, wanted to enfold her in his arms and hold her tightly. But he hesitated. Might she take it amiss? She was feeling weak and helpless already- He didn't want to reinforce that idea by trying to cuddle her. No, she might mistake Cuddle for Coddle and she might not take it kindly.
Cautiously, he approached, and sank down onto the bed beside her. She didn't repel him, so he put an arm around her shoulders.
"You're just tired, is all. You get some rest, and maybe you'll feel better when you wake up."
She pulled free of him, and he knew he'd somehow said the wrong thing.
"What do you know about any of it?" She said angrily.
"You've never mourned anybody in your entire life. You're a killer, Spike, it's what you do. I don't expect you to understand. You're not capable of loving, and mourning. You've no idea what Dawn is going through right now, how she feels, what she's lost. You've never missed anybody like she misses my mom. And you don't know how I feel right now, worried about my baby sister. You don't have family, you can't possibly understand."
That hurt more than it should, he reckoned. She was pissing him off.
"How do you know what I can feel, Slayer? You and your self-righteous pain. You think you're the only person who ever buried a parent? Or worried about a sister? I can tell you tales, girl. Death for you is so sanitized, so far removed from "real life" …I'll bet your mum was the first one you've ever seen, that you weren't directly responsible for. Or all the corpses in your life- Grandparents, friends of the family, whatever- I bet they were all primped and pretty in their coffins by the time you saw 'em, eh? Nice to look at, like they're asleep. All clean and tidy, and not stinking of their own shit and vomit. Dressed up for church and looking all peaceful."
She was watching him now. Her anger had shut off her tears, and she was paying attention. He was glad. He wanted to tell her, all of a sudden, wanted to talk about things he hadn't discussed with anyone, before.
"My father died of the pox, Slayer. It's a painful, disfiguring disease. It ate up a handsome face and made it grotesque. For years the boogeymen in my nightmares all wore m' father's bloated face. Pox'll do that, make y' bloat up like that, afore you're even dead. And it drove him mad too, in the end, making him to shout obscenities and hurl insults at us children. I was seven, and had four sisters. We took turns at the bedside. If we'd had more money we could have farmed him out, or hired help, but we didn't. So the work fell to us kids…cleaning him, feeding him, treating his condition. We all knew he'd got it off the local whore, and how he'd shamed our mother, but still- You take care of your own, even if your own's a miserable bastard."
Her eyes stayed on him, but he didn't notice, now lost in his reverie.
"When he expired, I was relieved. It was so awful in the last stages, you see- We all just prayed to God to end it. Then it was over, and there was more work to be done. Ma Mere washed the body, and Polly went to get the neighbor's boys to help bury him. We couldn't have a proper wake, not with him in the condition he was- the whole neighborhood knew our disgrace. Laetitia stitched up a hole in his good suit. I was sent to find guineas for his eyelids, I remember, and I remember resenting wasting good money like that. Then me mum sent me out with the neighbor's boys to help dig the grave in the family plot."
He stopped for a moment, trying to remember the sequence of events.
"Anyway, we put him in the ground by that evening, in between his own da and a couple of my dead brothers. The babies, I think. Stephen would've been on the northside, if I recall correctly"-
He broke off, and looked back over at her a little sheepishly.
"Sorry. I wandered off the point there a little. But what I am getting at is this; I buried four brothers, two sisters, and my father before I was Turned. I understand grief, pet. I always have. I know how you miss your mum, Buffy. It's been over a century and I still miss mine."
She took that in. Spike with a Mother. Spike Had A Mother. Wow- weird concept. Then she thought about Angelus, and she had to know…
"How did she die, Spike?"
Her eyes told him what her words didn't spell out directly. And the accusation cut him to the quick.
"I'm not Angelus. I never have been,"
His tone was hard and cold, but he continued.
"My mother died in a housefire in 1890, along with my youngest sister, Emily."
She sagged in visible relief.
"What about your other family members? What about your other sisters?"
"I coughed up a respectable amount of money to settle on each of them."
His brow furrowed, and a moment of pain passed through his eyes.
"What? What are you thinking about?"
He
shook his head.
"Nothing. Nothing that
matters now, anyway."
She could see how this whole conversation had unsettled him, and found herself reaching out for his hand.
"What is it?" she pressed.
He sighed, and squeezed her hand.
"I don't like to think about them, Buffy. They're all gone. Long gone. I miss them. I couldn't be part of the family, you know, after I died. That was the hardest part, I think. ..Knowing they all grieved for me and missed me, and I could never go home to them. If Angelus had any idea where they were- I Knew his cruelty, I knew what he would do. And he was my Sire, he made me, raised me, trained me….He would have killed them outright, or might've tried to make me do it. I would've been hard pressed to do anything about it."
"What happened to them? Your sisters, I mean. The ones that lived. Did you ever see them again?"
"My sisters Letty and Polly went to London, for their first season. I'd amassed a nice fortune in my first decade, and I spent it all to buy them husbands. They thought it was a bequest I'd left them, when the money came. I hired a proper solicitor to handle it, so it all looked legit. And I watched them at their balls, from a distance. I never dared to approach them, But I watched. Watched as they snared the biggest prizes of the season….A Marquis and an Earl."
He smiled then, but the smile wasn't happy.
" Not bad for the daughters of a debt-ridden, baronet who died in disgrace."
"I think you did good by them , Spike," she offered softly.
He snorted.
"There's where you're wrong, Slayer…My ill-gotten gains bought 'em titles, husbands. But I
wasn't there for them. Didn't see their children. Didn't know them, didn't see how their lives went…"
There was more to this tale, she was sure of it. Something he wasn't saying, something ugly.
"What happened to them, Spike?"
After a moments silence, when she'd decided to let the matter drop, he finally answered her.
"Polly's husband beat her to death when she gave him another daughter…The fifth, I think. Supposedly he went mad with disappointment and killed her by accident. Truth of the matter, though, was I think he wanted a new wife, one 'could give 'im an heir. Very practical."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Letty didn't fare much better. Her Marquis turned out to have a thing for young boys. He shamed her til she could not show her face in public. She… she never had any children."
He said that last like it was tragic.
She reached over to him, and held him. He buried his face in her hair.
"I'm sorry about your Mum, Buffy. Truly I am. If I could do anything to fix it I would. It's not right that it happened, It's not fair and it makes no goddamned sense. You still need her, Dawn still needs her, and it's all just Wrong."
She released him, pulling away and meeting his gaze.
"It's always wrong, Spike. It's just wrong to you now because you knew her."
She could see the wetness on his cheeks, and knew he'd been crying.
"Slayer, You don't get it yet. You don't get it at all."
"Then help me understand."
He wrenched himself away from her, and stood up.
"Buffy, It's not 'cos I "knew her". It's 'cos I loved her. I loved her, like I love you, like I love your sister… Your mum is the first person I've had to grieve for in hundred years! And so I'm doing it all wrong. I know that. But I don't bloody remember what I'm s'posed to do. And so help me, I hate it, Hate feeling this way, I hate hurting and watching you hurt and worrying about the Nibblet til it chokes me. It's wrong, I'm not supposed to have to feel these things!"
Buffy glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to ten. Maybe he was right. Maybe she'd feel better if she lay down.
She lay back on the bed, and he turned to look at her. She reached her hand out for him.
"Come lay down with me."
He shrugged off the duster and crawled onto the comforter alongside her. She turned her back to him, and his heart sank. But then she scooted up against him, and he turned over, spooning her.
"We'll get up in an hour or so and see if my head's any clearer," she announced.
"Good girl," he said, throwing an arm around her and hugging her close.
He kissed the side of her neck, and whispered as she fell asleep.
"We'll find her, love. We'll find her and we'll keep her safe. I promise."