Absolution in Vein
By Moirae
E-mail: moirae_13@hotmail.com
Rating: R
Disclaimer: In Joss we trust. They don't belong to me. Please don't sue.
Spoilers: Season 5, post "Blood Ties." Riley is gone, but Spike hasn't made any admissions of love to Buffy.
Description: B/S Buffy wrestles with inexplicable dreams while she and Spike are trapped together.
Feedback: Would love it! Thanks for the reviews I've already received. Keep it up--they make me write faster. ^_^
**** Severe angst warning in this one! Implied character deaths. You have been warned.****
Chapter 3: Heaven's Soldiers
Nothing would ever be the same.
Buffy pondered this for the millionth time as she stared across the expanse of the cavern. Minutes had trickled into hours and still neither broke the silence. Outside, the world carried on--humanity lumbered about its business and the sun made its steady ascent across a cloudless sky--but inside their shadowy crypt, time stopped. The memory of their transgression hovered like an unwanted guest, tainting the atmosphere with tension and assaulting their thoughts with its unbelievable implications.
What was I doing? Why did I respond to him like that? Buffy knew the answers to the litany that looped incessantly through her head but evaded them as if even thinking about the truth behind her burst of passion would make her actions too real. As if I could take any of it back now...
She wanted him. It was wrong, stupid, and impossible.
Yet undeniable.
She wanted him, and Spike had used that against her. He had made it a game. Like everything else. He had torn her dignity from her and turned her into a simpering, sex-hungry idiot. He made her feel wanted and so *god-damned HOT* for the first time in ages. And then he had walked away-- leaped away was more like it --and shown her that Buffy Anne Summers was once again a huge fool for trusting him.
Spike couldn't believe what had happened--what he had done. He had destroyed their unspoken code of contempt and decimated their safe distance. And it was bloody wonderful!
And he would probably get staked for it. She had lost herself in the moment--had been overcome with passion for someone she barely tolerated.
But maybe he had been wrong about her feelings for him. Maybe all her bickering and hostility was just a mask of an underlying desire for him. Maybe she wasn't thinking about you at all, mate. You're beneath her, remember? There was the possibility that her response had just been misdirected lust, the desire for her sodding Angel, or her boytoy Riley--and he had been a handy substitute in a moment of weakness. But Spike suspected it was otherwise.
For the sake of his sanity, he *hoped* it was otherwise...
The first few hours after their...indiscretion...had passed in a death-like quiet. Spike leaned against the far end of the cavern, fidgeting with unspent energy, while Buffy crouched close to her makeshift bed from the night before, lost in contemplation. Spike's beloved duster lay unmoved, an abandoned casualty of war.
At mid-afternoon, Spike smoked his last cigarette and Buffy began to notice the first pangs of hunger. Her meditation momentarily turned to her companion's mounting bloodlust and she shuddered at what they might both have to endure in the hours to come. She steadied herself against the pain and returned to her former reverie.
As evening approached, Spike found himself haunted by different thoughts. He pictured their escape from Glory two nights ago: Buffy was slung over his shoulder as he dodged for this cave in the hills just outside Sunnydale. The demented god was fast upon them, an he prepped himself for the coming battle. But instead of attacking, she halted at the mouth of the cave. Donning a garish red dress, a halo of wild hair, and a maniacal gleam, she paused a moment to consider them.
A sickening grin infected her face. "Sweet dreams, you two," was all she said before she retreated. Then, the opening of the cave was closed off and Spike was left with a broken slayer in his arms.
It was odd to say the least. Why did she just leave us here? Why didn't she finish us off when there was the least chance for escape? What was the advantage of closing us in together? The predator in him could not fathom it.
It struck him with sickening clarity.
There *was* no chance for escape. No Scoobies would be coming to make a valiant rescue, just in the nick of time, this go around. At this moment, everything and everyone Buffy knew and loved was hopelessly annihilated. The psychotic bitch would spare none in the quest for her precious key--maim and destroy who she might--and once she had slaughtered the catalogue of Buffy's friends and family, she would have found Dawn and it would all be over.
And if the two of them ripped each other apart in the mean time...bonus.
Two days. An eternity for a god. The poor fools never had a chance. Even Buffy's strength had proven inadequate against the beastie slag, and those sods had nothing but a few magic tricks and solidarity to see them through.
A creeping sense of loss assailed Spike as he envisioned the bloodied corpses of his former foes. Instead of reveling in the thought of their gore-splattered bodies (their haunted faces frozen in anguish) he felt a tremor of grief. It would have once seemed impossible for him to mourn the death of any human, but he had learned that given enough time, everything changes--even demons. No joke, mate. Over the last year this unlikely group of monster-hunters had become the only family he had known--an estranged and bizarre family--but family nonetheless. And if it hurt him to think of their loss, it would kill Buffy.
But I guess we're both dead already.
"What?"
He didn't realize he had said the words aloud until it was too late.
Spike grimaced and shifted on his heals. He couldn't look at her. For the first time in his long life, William the Bloody was at a loss for words. "Uh..."
"Did you say something?" Buffy waited for an answer, but silence filled the cavern. "Did you say 'we're dead already?'" Anger twisted her voice into a growl.
"I was just thinking out loud," he offered, defensively. "Sorry. Didn't mean to disturb you." He braved a glance at her and regretted it immediately. She could have cut metal with the look she was aiming at him.
"Why were you even thinking that? You think we're going to die? You just want to roll over and give up?" She hadn't wanted to break the silence, but now that it was done, she was grateful to gain a reprieval from her inner monologue of regret. And arguing was definitely on the "approved" Buffy-Spike activity list.
"Look, it was just a thought." He observed her defiant scowl and knew he would have to come up with something better than that. "I don't want to die any more than you do, but pretending that everything is roses is not going to help. It's been two days and I don't know about humans, but if I go much longer without feeding, I will become a very cranky baby."
Buffy stood, her glare softening slightly. She didn't want to admit that he was right, didn't want to tell him she had been having the same thoughts just moments before. "Well, if you can handle a little self-control, I am sure that we will get out of here just fine. Giles and the others are sure to be looking for us," her voice hesitated, "They're going to find us any minute now."
"What do you mean 'self control'? Are you talking about earlier? 'Cause that, little missy--"
"Whoa! Hey! I wasn't talking about anything besides your disgusting little blood habit." Talking was fine, but talking about kisses and...other things...was definitely not.
"That 'disgusting little habit' is how I live, alright?" Not willing to ease her obvious discomfort, Spike continued with a malicious gleam in his eyes. "And if I recall correctly, you didn't seem too put off by it when you were sucking face with Angel...or with me, for that matter." His lips curled into a lecherous sneer.
"Stop speaking! Why can't you stay focused?!" Buffy was ready to die of embarrassment. If he said another word, she was sure to combust.
"Come on, Buffy! Stop running away. We're going to have to talk about this sooner or later."
"No, no, never talk about this. As far as I'm concerned, 'this' never happened. *Nothing* happened. There is *nothing* to speak of." Her words were rattled off desperately.
Spike knew it wasn't smart to get into it, but taunting her was just too much fun. "That is called denial, luv. Something most *definitely* happened between us and I'm not going to let you pretend it didn't."
"Why are you doing this? It was a mistake. It was wrong," she stammered, "and... and *you* kissed *me*!"
Oh, yeah. You tell him, Slayer.
A memory flickered through Spike's brain.
~~Buffy sauntering up to him in the Bronze. Buffy pressing herself to him like a bitch in heat.
"I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up. I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you until you popped like warm champagne, and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more. And you know why I don't?"
A silky pause while his cock stirred and an inexplicable longing overcame him.
"Because it's *wrong*."~~
Oh, yes payback was a bitch.
"I was not the only one doing the kissing, pet."
"You had me pinned down. I couldn't go anywhere. I wake up from a dream, and suddenly you're on top of me." It was a blatant distortion of the facts, but Buffy just couldn't let him see how much he had gotten to her.
Something twittered in the back of Spike's mind but he couldn't grasp it. He continued her torture. "That's quite a selective memory, Buffy. But in *this* reality you were just as willing a participant as I. More so, if I remember correctly. All moaning and needy."
"Shut up! I was not moaning!"
"So you're saying I didn't excite you at all?" He prowled towards her.
"No. Not at all." She backed into a wall.
"And you've never thought about me and you..." He left the thought hanging, unfinished, as he moved closer.
"Never."
Still, something plagued his mind. Something she had said earlier, but he couldn't place it and continued, "So I could come over there and kiss you, and you would feel nothing?"
The unyielding wall pressed into her back. She tried to reign in her rapidly increasing breath and frenzied heartbeat as her brain screamed Do not fall for another trap! When she spoke, it was barely a whisper. "Nothing."
What was it? Spike's mind raced. Without breaking his stride, he moved towards her. The dream, she was talking about her dream. "Then why are you trying to get away from me, luv?"
He had almost reached her now--was close enough to touch her. She looked like a prey about to be devoured and he smiled inwardly. The dream...the dream...what about the dream?
He caged her against the wall, his hands pinned to the stone on either side of her head. Buffy prepared herself for his kiss--she couldn't help it. She knew she should push him away, hit him, run--*anything*--but her limbs weren't listening to her. As much as she tried to deny it, she wanted this. It felt right. Spike was her worst enemy, her most dangerous foe, and recently, her most useful ally. And, God, he was beautiful! All this flashed warp-speed through her head as his lips dipped down...
When it suddenly hit him.
'Sweet dreams, you two.'
"Oh, bugger!" Spike pulled away from a shocked--and slightly disappointed--Buffy.
"What?" Confusion was evident in her small squeak.
Spike paced in front of her. He had been so stupid. It wasn't just an expression. She was trying to tell him something. "What did you dream, Buffy? Glory said something about dreams."
Buffy was shocked to the present. He wasn't going to kiss her; he was just toying with her, as usual. Why do I let him get to me?!
She didn't give herself time to answer before familiar rage settled in her bones and she thrust her fist forward, connecting to Spike's nose with a brutal right hook. The crunching sound sent a smile to her face even as the vampire's cries echoed through the cavern.
"Bloody Hell, Slayer!!"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Buffy! This could be very important. Glory wasn't just making pleasant conversation; she had something in mind when she talked about dreams." Spike was getting nowhere with the petit slayer. After the pain in his nose subsided, he had attacked her with a barrage of questions regarding her dream. They had gone round and round the topic for over ten minutes and still Buffy refused to talk about it.
"But they had nothing to do with us!" Buffy paced the room, desperately trying to change the subject.
"'They'? You had more than one dream, then? You didn't say anything about that."
"Yes! I had more than one dream. And neither of them featured you, me, Glory, the gang, or anyone else in this town! I don't even remember them that well. They were just dreams!"
It was a lie. She could recall with blinding clarity the sights, smells, and tastes from both dreams at any given moment--and they were more potent than any prophesy dream she'd had to date. When she woke from the first one, she had been too preoccupied with being trapped to give it much thought, but after having the second, and seeing that they were obviously connected, she started to wonder what it all meant.
But that didn't mean she wanted to share. I tell him I'm dreaming about Christ and I'll never hear the end of 'Second Coming' jokes. "I'm not going to give you a personalized tour through my head, Spike, so just forget about the dreams."
"You are being so daft! This could be the only way for us to get out of here!" He was seething now. How could he make her see how important this was to them?
"I don't know why you're so worried. Giles and the others are coming. Willow's probably got a locator spell on us right now. They're going to be here any minute." She didn't know who she was trying harder to convince--Spike or herself.
"Buffy, join reality. Your friends are dead." He regretted the words before they left his mouth.
"What? What did you just say?"
He tried to backpedal, though he knew eventually she would have to face the truth. "Nothing. It was stupid. I'm just blowing off steam." He could have bitten his tongue off.
"No, you meant something. What did you mean?" Blind panic edged in on her. Without considering her next words, she let them slip. "Did you do something to them?"
The question was like a knife sliding into his flesh. "How can you say that after everything I've done for you? Of course I didn't *do* anything to them!" He knew he should leave it at that, but impulse control was just one of those attributes Spike was lacking. His existence was a landscape painted in flesh and blood, betrayal and retribution, and right now he wanted to slash a crimson river of pain across her breast.
"What do you think Glory is doing out there while we're trapped in here? Think about it. She locked away the only two people with any shot of fighting her, so that she and your friends could have a private party." He pushed the knife home with a silky breath. "But I don't think it's the kind of party any of them are going to walk away from."
Her head spun. The world was crumbling around her and Buffy could feel pieces of herself breaking off with it. "No... no, no, no, NO! They are fine. Giles will keep them safe." A child's singsong voice hummed in the back of her mind as Buffy paced the cavern.
~Never gonna wake. They're all gonna die.~
She tried to ignore it. "There are protection spells. There are ways to fight her. They are fine! Don't you say they're not!" She didn't know if she was talking to Spike or the haunting voice in her head.
~Got them in their sleep. Now they're gonna fry.~
Her head was pounding now. Spike looked on uneasily as Buffy unraveled. She was losing it and he knew he was the cause.
~She put them in a pan! She cooked them up real nice!~
~The slayer and her friends! A bunch of little mice!~
Her body shook uncontrollably. She fought the hopeless--reasonable--utterly truthful--thoughts raging in her brain and dug her nails into fleshy palms until she drew blood. The child's voice squealed with delight.
~NEVER GONNA WAKE! THEY'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
GOT THEM IN THEIR SLEEP! NOW THEY'RE GONNA FRY!~
Buffy roamed the cave aimlessly, drowning the haunting voice by throwing the cave's plentiful supply of rocks against its stone walls. Her words became a mantra--a prayer--to fight her creeping insanity.
"They're fine. They're fine. They're fine They're fine They're fine..."
The crash of stone against stone marked each of her desperate affirmations. Still, the voice filled her senses, forced its way through her composure. Her conviction faltered and her own voice whispered the truth of her friends' chances. They're helpless. Buffy exploded with a violent shriek, punctuating her fury with a fist-sized rock as she hurled it to the ceiling with every ounce of her slayer strength.
"THEY'RE FINE...!!!!"
Her scream echoed through the cavern as the rock punched through stone and topsoil, sending shards of granite and clumps of earth raining down.
Silence fell with the settling dust.
Her rage-driven fit left a gaping wound in the dome above them, and Spike looked through it to the now-dimming sky. The first hint of stars twinkled like beacons to other, distant, shining worlds.
Buffy stood immobile, locked between denial and despair. In a trance, her mind battled against events she could not control, grappled with the knowledge of her impotence. Spike looked on, frozen with fear, at the ghost in front of him. It was Buffy's frame that stood before him, but nothing remotely human looked out from those haunted eyes. Buffy was gone. In her place, a broken shell.
Finally, after agonizing minutes trapped in indecision, Spike saw the young woman awaken. Her eyes snapped into focus and her body sagged, as if yielding to an unseen weight, before she dropped to the floor with a muffled sob.
"Oh, God..."
Spike rushed to her side.
"They're dead, aren't they?"
He didn't know what to do. He had started this and now she wanted answers. He could lie. He could pretend things would be okay. But he had never denied her the truth--even when her beloved friends and family could not find it in their hearts to give it to her. His respect for her demanded his brutal honesty...
Tenderly, he offered, "Looks that way, luv."
She sat in a crumpled heap--tears streaming salty paths down her face--and she reached out for him. Quicker than light, he was on the floor, taking the broken girl into his arms.
With a tear-filled squeak, she mouthed, "I should have been there." Her tortured voice sent a guilty jolt through his body, and Spike wondered if maybe it wouldn't have been better to lie to her just this one time. He ran a shaky hand over her golden locks and pressed her against his chest.
"It isn't your fault." He didn't know what else to say.
She melted into his embrace. "It is. I'm the slayer. I should have been there to protect them." Her limbs were numb. She could feel herself disappearing, crumbling to ash and drifting away on a breeze.
"Buffy, nothing could have protected them. If she didn't get them like this, she would have gotten them some other way. She's a God. Slayers aren't built to fight Gods."
She heard his voice through a fog and swallowed the urge to howl in rage. This wasn't fair! They deserved more! She wanted to FIGHT! KILL! DESTROY! She wanted to rend Glory limb from limb--decimate the creature that could demolish her life so carelessly.
...or maybe she just wanted to die.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around Spike's lean frame and rocked against him with muffled sobs. All grievances between the former enemies were forgotten in their embrace. Buffy didn't care that the arms around her belonged to a vampire, that he had planned her demise half a dozen times, that he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds--perhaps thousands--of people, or that he was the last man she should let herself get close to; all that mattered as her life came crumbling down around her was the knowledge that he was the closest thing to friend she now possessed and that he cared enough about her to try to make this impossible horror bearable.
They sat like that for a lifetime, the slayer taking comfort in the least likely man, the vampire giving comfort to the least likely girl. Sometime during the night (neither of them realized when) the two laid down in a tangled embrace and fell into exhausted sleep as a million stars twinkled overhead.
TBC...
By Moirae
E-mail: moirae_13@hotmail.com
Rating: R
Disclaimer: In Joss we trust. They don't belong to me. Please don't sue.
Spoilers: Season 5, post "Blood Ties." Riley is gone, but Spike hasn't made any admissions of love to Buffy.
Description: B/S Buffy wrestles with inexplicable dreams while she and Spike are trapped together.
Feedback: Would love it! Thanks for the reviews I've already received. Keep it up--they make me write faster. ^_^
**** Severe angst warning in this one! Implied character deaths. You have been warned.****
Chapter 3: Heaven's Soldiers
Nothing would ever be the same.
Buffy pondered this for the millionth time as she stared across the expanse of the cavern. Minutes had trickled into hours and still neither broke the silence. Outside, the world carried on--humanity lumbered about its business and the sun made its steady ascent across a cloudless sky--but inside their shadowy crypt, time stopped. The memory of their transgression hovered like an unwanted guest, tainting the atmosphere with tension and assaulting their thoughts with its unbelievable implications.
What was I doing? Why did I respond to him like that? Buffy knew the answers to the litany that looped incessantly through her head but evaded them as if even thinking about the truth behind her burst of passion would make her actions too real. As if I could take any of it back now...
She wanted him. It was wrong, stupid, and impossible.
Yet undeniable.
She wanted him, and Spike had used that against her. He had made it a game. Like everything else. He had torn her dignity from her and turned her into a simpering, sex-hungry idiot. He made her feel wanted and so *god-damned HOT* for the first time in ages. And then he had walked away-- leaped away was more like it --and shown her that Buffy Anne Summers was once again a huge fool for trusting him.
Spike couldn't believe what had happened--what he had done. He had destroyed their unspoken code of contempt and decimated their safe distance. And it was bloody wonderful!
And he would probably get staked for it. She had lost herself in the moment--had been overcome with passion for someone she barely tolerated.
But maybe he had been wrong about her feelings for him. Maybe all her bickering and hostility was just a mask of an underlying desire for him. Maybe she wasn't thinking about you at all, mate. You're beneath her, remember? There was the possibility that her response had just been misdirected lust, the desire for her sodding Angel, or her boytoy Riley--and he had been a handy substitute in a moment of weakness. But Spike suspected it was otherwise.
For the sake of his sanity, he *hoped* it was otherwise...
The first few hours after their...indiscretion...had passed in a death-like quiet. Spike leaned against the far end of the cavern, fidgeting with unspent energy, while Buffy crouched close to her makeshift bed from the night before, lost in contemplation. Spike's beloved duster lay unmoved, an abandoned casualty of war.
At mid-afternoon, Spike smoked his last cigarette and Buffy began to notice the first pangs of hunger. Her meditation momentarily turned to her companion's mounting bloodlust and she shuddered at what they might both have to endure in the hours to come. She steadied herself against the pain and returned to her former reverie.
As evening approached, Spike found himself haunted by different thoughts. He pictured their escape from Glory two nights ago: Buffy was slung over his shoulder as he dodged for this cave in the hills just outside Sunnydale. The demented god was fast upon them, an he prepped himself for the coming battle. But instead of attacking, she halted at the mouth of the cave. Donning a garish red dress, a halo of wild hair, and a maniacal gleam, she paused a moment to consider them.
A sickening grin infected her face. "Sweet dreams, you two," was all she said before she retreated. Then, the opening of the cave was closed off and Spike was left with a broken slayer in his arms.
It was odd to say the least. Why did she just leave us here? Why didn't she finish us off when there was the least chance for escape? What was the advantage of closing us in together? The predator in him could not fathom it.
It struck him with sickening clarity.
There *was* no chance for escape. No Scoobies would be coming to make a valiant rescue, just in the nick of time, this go around. At this moment, everything and everyone Buffy knew and loved was hopelessly annihilated. The psychotic bitch would spare none in the quest for her precious key--maim and destroy who she might--and once she had slaughtered the catalogue of Buffy's friends and family, she would have found Dawn and it would all be over.
And if the two of them ripped each other apart in the mean time...bonus.
Two days. An eternity for a god. The poor fools never had a chance. Even Buffy's strength had proven inadequate against the beastie slag, and those sods had nothing but a few magic tricks and solidarity to see them through.
A creeping sense of loss assailed Spike as he envisioned the bloodied corpses of his former foes. Instead of reveling in the thought of their gore-splattered bodies (their haunted faces frozen in anguish) he felt a tremor of grief. It would have once seemed impossible for him to mourn the death of any human, but he had learned that given enough time, everything changes--even demons. No joke, mate. Over the last year this unlikely group of monster-hunters had become the only family he had known--an estranged and bizarre family--but family nonetheless. And if it hurt him to think of their loss, it would kill Buffy.
But I guess we're both dead already.
"What?"
He didn't realize he had said the words aloud until it was too late.
Spike grimaced and shifted on his heals. He couldn't look at her. For the first time in his long life, William the Bloody was at a loss for words. "Uh..."
"Did you say something?" Buffy waited for an answer, but silence filled the cavern. "Did you say 'we're dead already?'" Anger twisted her voice into a growl.
"I was just thinking out loud," he offered, defensively. "Sorry. Didn't mean to disturb you." He braved a glance at her and regretted it immediately. She could have cut metal with the look she was aiming at him.
"Why were you even thinking that? You think we're going to die? You just want to roll over and give up?" She hadn't wanted to break the silence, but now that it was done, she was grateful to gain a reprieval from her inner monologue of regret. And arguing was definitely on the "approved" Buffy-Spike activity list.
"Look, it was just a thought." He observed her defiant scowl and knew he would have to come up with something better than that. "I don't want to die any more than you do, but pretending that everything is roses is not going to help. It's been two days and I don't know about humans, but if I go much longer without feeding, I will become a very cranky baby."
Buffy stood, her glare softening slightly. She didn't want to admit that he was right, didn't want to tell him she had been having the same thoughts just moments before. "Well, if you can handle a little self-control, I am sure that we will get out of here just fine. Giles and the others are sure to be looking for us," her voice hesitated, "They're going to find us any minute now."
"What do you mean 'self control'? Are you talking about earlier? 'Cause that, little missy--"
"Whoa! Hey! I wasn't talking about anything besides your disgusting little blood habit." Talking was fine, but talking about kisses and...other things...was definitely not.
"That 'disgusting little habit' is how I live, alright?" Not willing to ease her obvious discomfort, Spike continued with a malicious gleam in his eyes. "And if I recall correctly, you didn't seem too put off by it when you were sucking face with Angel...or with me, for that matter." His lips curled into a lecherous sneer.
"Stop speaking! Why can't you stay focused?!" Buffy was ready to die of embarrassment. If he said another word, she was sure to combust.
"Come on, Buffy! Stop running away. We're going to have to talk about this sooner or later."
"No, no, never talk about this. As far as I'm concerned, 'this' never happened. *Nothing* happened. There is *nothing* to speak of." Her words were rattled off desperately.
Spike knew it wasn't smart to get into it, but taunting her was just too much fun. "That is called denial, luv. Something most *definitely* happened between us and I'm not going to let you pretend it didn't."
"Why are you doing this? It was a mistake. It was wrong," she stammered, "and... and *you* kissed *me*!"
Oh, yeah. You tell him, Slayer.
A memory flickered through Spike's brain.
~~Buffy sauntering up to him in the Bronze. Buffy pressing herself to him like a bitch in heat.
"I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up. I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you until you popped like warm champagne, and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more. And you know why I don't?"
A silky pause while his cock stirred and an inexplicable longing overcame him.
"Because it's *wrong*."~~
Oh, yes payback was a bitch.
"I was not the only one doing the kissing, pet."
"You had me pinned down. I couldn't go anywhere. I wake up from a dream, and suddenly you're on top of me." It was a blatant distortion of the facts, but Buffy just couldn't let him see how much he had gotten to her.
Something twittered in the back of Spike's mind but he couldn't grasp it. He continued her torture. "That's quite a selective memory, Buffy. But in *this* reality you were just as willing a participant as I. More so, if I remember correctly. All moaning and needy."
"Shut up! I was not moaning!"
"So you're saying I didn't excite you at all?" He prowled towards her.
"No. Not at all." She backed into a wall.
"And you've never thought about me and you..." He left the thought hanging, unfinished, as he moved closer.
"Never."
Still, something plagued his mind. Something she had said earlier, but he couldn't place it and continued, "So I could come over there and kiss you, and you would feel nothing?"
The unyielding wall pressed into her back. She tried to reign in her rapidly increasing breath and frenzied heartbeat as her brain screamed Do not fall for another trap! When she spoke, it was barely a whisper. "Nothing."
What was it? Spike's mind raced. Without breaking his stride, he moved towards her. The dream, she was talking about her dream. "Then why are you trying to get away from me, luv?"
He had almost reached her now--was close enough to touch her. She looked like a prey about to be devoured and he smiled inwardly. The dream...the dream...what about the dream?
He caged her against the wall, his hands pinned to the stone on either side of her head. Buffy prepared herself for his kiss--she couldn't help it. She knew she should push him away, hit him, run--*anything*--but her limbs weren't listening to her. As much as she tried to deny it, she wanted this. It felt right. Spike was her worst enemy, her most dangerous foe, and recently, her most useful ally. And, God, he was beautiful! All this flashed warp-speed through her head as his lips dipped down...
When it suddenly hit him.
'Sweet dreams, you two.'
"Oh, bugger!" Spike pulled away from a shocked--and slightly disappointed--Buffy.
"What?" Confusion was evident in her small squeak.
Spike paced in front of her. He had been so stupid. It wasn't just an expression. She was trying to tell him something. "What did you dream, Buffy? Glory said something about dreams."
Buffy was shocked to the present. He wasn't going to kiss her; he was just toying with her, as usual. Why do I let him get to me?!
She didn't give herself time to answer before familiar rage settled in her bones and she thrust her fist forward, connecting to Spike's nose with a brutal right hook. The crunching sound sent a smile to her face even as the vampire's cries echoed through the cavern.
"Bloody Hell, Slayer!!"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Buffy! This could be very important. Glory wasn't just making pleasant conversation; she had something in mind when she talked about dreams." Spike was getting nowhere with the petit slayer. After the pain in his nose subsided, he had attacked her with a barrage of questions regarding her dream. They had gone round and round the topic for over ten minutes and still Buffy refused to talk about it.
"But they had nothing to do with us!" Buffy paced the room, desperately trying to change the subject.
"'They'? You had more than one dream, then? You didn't say anything about that."
"Yes! I had more than one dream. And neither of them featured you, me, Glory, the gang, or anyone else in this town! I don't even remember them that well. They were just dreams!"
It was a lie. She could recall with blinding clarity the sights, smells, and tastes from both dreams at any given moment--and they were more potent than any prophesy dream she'd had to date. When she woke from the first one, she had been too preoccupied with being trapped to give it much thought, but after having the second, and seeing that they were obviously connected, she started to wonder what it all meant.
But that didn't mean she wanted to share. I tell him I'm dreaming about Christ and I'll never hear the end of 'Second Coming' jokes. "I'm not going to give you a personalized tour through my head, Spike, so just forget about the dreams."
"You are being so daft! This could be the only way for us to get out of here!" He was seething now. How could he make her see how important this was to them?
"I don't know why you're so worried. Giles and the others are coming. Willow's probably got a locator spell on us right now. They're going to be here any minute." She didn't know who she was trying harder to convince--Spike or herself.
"Buffy, join reality. Your friends are dead." He regretted the words before they left his mouth.
"What? What did you just say?"
He tried to backpedal, though he knew eventually she would have to face the truth. "Nothing. It was stupid. I'm just blowing off steam." He could have bitten his tongue off.
"No, you meant something. What did you mean?" Blind panic edged in on her. Without considering her next words, she let them slip. "Did you do something to them?"
The question was like a knife sliding into his flesh. "How can you say that after everything I've done for you? Of course I didn't *do* anything to them!" He knew he should leave it at that, but impulse control was just one of those attributes Spike was lacking. His existence was a landscape painted in flesh and blood, betrayal and retribution, and right now he wanted to slash a crimson river of pain across her breast.
"What do you think Glory is doing out there while we're trapped in here? Think about it. She locked away the only two people with any shot of fighting her, so that she and your friends could have a private party." He pushed the knife home with a silky breath. "But I don't think it's the kind of party any of them are going to walk away from."
Her head spun. The world was crumbling around her and Buffy could feel pieces of herself breaking off with it. "No... no, no, no, NO! They are fine. Giles will keep them safe." A child's singsong voice hummed in the back of her mind as Buffy paced the cavern.
~Never gonna wake. They're all gonna die.~
She tried to ignore it. "There are protection spells. There are ways to fight her. They are fine! Don't you say they're not!" She didn't know if she was talking to Spike or the haunting voice in her head.
~Got them in their sleep. Now they're gonna fry.~
Her head was pounding now. Spike looked on uneasily as Buffy unraveled. She was losing it and he knew he was the cause.
~She put them in a pan! She cooked them up real nice!~
~The slayer and her friends! A bunch of little mice!~
Her body shook uncontrollably. She fought the hopeless--reasonable--utterly truthful--thoughts raging in her brain and dug her nails into fleshy palms until she drew blood. The child's voice squealed with delight.
~NEVER GONNA WAKE! THEY'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
GOT THEM IN THEIR SLEEP! NOW THEY'RE GONNA FRY!~
Buffy roamed the cave aimlessly, drowning the haunting voice by throwing the cave's plentiful supply of rocks against its stone walls. Her words became a mantra--a prayer--to fight her creeping insanity.
"They're fine. They're fine. They're fine They're fine They're fine..."
The crash of stone against stone marked each of her desperate affirmations. Still, the voice filled her senses, forced its way through her composure. Her conviction faltered and her own voice whispered the truth of her friends' chances. They're helpless. Buffy exploded with a violent shriek, punctuating her fury with a fist-sized rock as she hurled it to the ceiling with every ounce of her slayer strength.
"THEY'RE FINE...!!!!"
Her scream echoed through the cavern as the rock punched through stone and topsoil, sending shards of granite and clumps of earth raining down.
Silence fell with the settling dust.
Her rage-driven fit left a gaping wound in the dome above them, and Spike looked through it to the now-dimming sky. The first hint of stars twinkled like beacons to other, distant, shining worlds.
Buffy stood immobile, locked between denial and despair. In a trance, her mind battled against events she could not control, grappled with the knowledge of her impotence. Spike looked on, frozen with fear, at the ghost in front of him. It was Buffy's frame that stood before him, but nothing remotely human looked out from those haunted eyes. Buffy was gone. In her place, a broken shell.
Finally, after agonizing minutes trapped in indecision, Spike saw the young woman awaken. Her eyes snapped into focus and her body sagged, as if yielding to an unseen weight, before she dropped to the floor with a muffled sob.
"Oh, God..."
Spike rushed to her side.
"They're dead, aren't they?"
He didn't know what to do. He had started this and now she wanted answers. He could lie. He could pretend things would be okay. But he had never denied her the truth--even when her beloved friends and family could not find it in their hearts to give it to her. His respect for her demanded his brutal honesty...
Tenderly, he offered, "Looks that way, luv."
She sat in a crumpled heap--tears streaming salty paths down her face--and she reached out for him. Quicker than light, he was on the floor, taking the broken girl into his arms.
With a tear-filled squeak, she mouthed, "I should have been there." Her tortured voice sent a guilty jolt through his body, and Spike wondered if maybe it wouldn't have been better to lie to her just this one time. He ran a shaky hand over her golden locks and pressed her against his chest.
"It isn't your fault." He didn't know what else to say.
She melted into his embrace. "It is. I'm the slayer. I should have been there to protect them." Her limbs were numb. She could feel herself disappearing, crumbling to ash and drifting away on a breeze.
"Buffy, nothing could have protected them. If she didn't get them like this, she would have gotten them some other way. She's a God. Slayers aren't built to fight Gods."
She heard his voice through a fog and swallowed the urge to howl in rage. This wasn't fair! They deserved more! She wanted to FIGHT! KILL! DESTROY! She wanted to rend Glory limb from limb--decimate the creature that could demolish her life so carelessly.
...or maybe she just wanted to die.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around Spike's lean frame and rocked against him with muffled sobs. All grievances between the former enemies were forgotten in their embrace. Buffy didn't care that the arms around her belonged to a vampire, that he had planned her demise half a dozen times, that he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds--perhaps thousands--of people, or that he was the last man she should let herself get close to; all that mattered as her life came crumbling down around her was the knowledge that he was the closest thing to friend she now possessed and that he cared enough about her to try to make this impossible horror bearable.
They sat like that for a lifetime, the slayer taking comfort in the least likely man, the vampire giving comfort to the least likely girl. Sometime during the night (neither of them realized when) the two laid down in a tangled embrace and fell into exhausted sleep as a million stars twinkled overhead.
TBC...