Confrontation (2 of 2)
Rykahna Wil Troi
Rykahna@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Category: A little more than a vignette, not quite a story
Spoilers: "Wrecked"
Disclaimer: Go ahead, sue me--it'll be funny.
Summary: A long-awaited confrontation.
The silence that settles over the crypt is deafening and eternal. It is not, however, punctuated with the slamming of the door as she leaves. He realizes he's waiting for her to do just that, knowing that after the gamble he just took, he's fresh out of cards to play. This could very well be the end of it all for both of them.
"I don't know why I'm here," she says finally, her murmur shattering the silence between them. "I don't know why I do anything anymore. I've spent the last few months just--reacting. All I know is it felt right, talking to you when I got back. Maybe because you'd been on the other side of death, too. You understood where I was coming from. Or maybe because you *are* the other side of death, and that's--that's where I wanted to be. Maybe because you're one of the few people I don't hold responsible for...for what was done to me. And then you told me to stop coming to you..." her voice is accusatory and she folds her arms across her chest again, withdrawing from her unaccustomed openness.
"Sorry, luv," he shrugs with contrived nonchalance. "Maybe a better man than me would be happy to be a convenient soundin' board when you needed one and never ask for anything in return. Maybe that's what the poofter or soldier boy would've done, but as you're so keen on remindin' me, I'm not a man. I'll never be a man, and I can't change what I am. I never made any secret of wantin' you, of being in love with you. Now maybe it somehow confirms for you that I'm the monster you like to think I am that I can't handle havin' you around all the time and not havin' you, but that's the way it is. It hurts. I'd rather be left alone to try to get over this thing than endure that, even if it means leaving you without someone to pour your heart out to. I won't settle, pet. It's not my style."
"Then why haven't you walked away?" she challenged.
"I tried, luv, remember? *You* came after *me*. Twice. Or was I supposed to play the gallant there, too, and deny what you were offerin' because I was somehow supposed to intuit that the next day you'd do a complete turnabout and act like it never happened?"
"Well why not?" she asks defensively. "You're Mr. Percepto-Guy, or so you like to think."
"Yeah, but I'm an evil, disgustin' thing, right? Maybe I was enjoyin' myself a bit too much to give two bits about the whole foresight thing. Maybe I'm holdin' out a wee bit too much hope--a situation, mind you, that you didn't help, seeing as how I need a bloody Buffy/English dictionary these days to translate the mixed signals you're givin' off. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment," he mutters self-derisively.
"Well, Spike, whatever it is, you need to let it go. We both do. This--this *thing* that keeps happening between us--it can't, okay? It just--can't."
"And why the bloody hell not?" his voice rises as he begins to stalk toward her angrily. He stops himself, barely, when he sees her retreat a step backward toward the door. His hands clench into fists at the effort, but his feet remain where they are.
She stares at him in bewildered amazement. "God, Spike--you have to ask?"
"Yeah--yeah, I do, 'cause I don't think you even know why yourself when you stop and think about it."
"It's not like I haven't said it before," she replies, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "You're a vampire, Spike. I'm the Slayer. Hello to the conflict of interest. Not to mention the whole 'ick' thing."
He can't help himself--he smirks, and blurts out his retort injudiciously. "That's not what you were saying the other--"
She holds out a hand to cut him off. "Stop, okay? Please. Just--don't. Don't go there. I need to put that whole fiasco behind me as soon as humanly possible."
"Well, I hate to keep belaborin' a point, Slayer, but again I have to mention--here you are," he spreads his arms in an expansive gesture indicating the crypt around them. "You're sayin' you need to put it behind you, but your actions are tellin' another story, 'cause you just keep coming back for more."
"Which is just judgement of the very *worst* possible kind," she snaps. "Let's pretend for a minute that you're not completely whacked and that maybe--just maybe--you have vaguely resembling a point about me having a death wish...If that's the case, do you really think it's a great idea for me to be around you in *any* capacity? Not just any vampire, but a vampire who has made a name for himself killing Slayers, and who came to town with a major league hard-on to add *my* name to the list of Slayers done in by William the Bloody. Who spent years devising schemes--pathetic schemes at that--to kill me..."
"Pathetic?! Hey!"
"...Who has attacked and terrorized my friends, plotted to kill me even AFTER you got the chip that prevented you from attacking me outright. Whose idea of dating is chaining me to a wall and threatening to kill me unless I told you there was a chance for us and whose idea of basking in the afterglow is bragging about finding an alternative way to add yet another Slayer to your list of conquests. Forgive me for being less that wooed by that bio, okay?"
"So which is it that's botherin' you the most, luv?" he asks with a smug calm he doesn't truly feel. "The history or that I dared to compare you to the other Slayers?"
"C: all of the above! All of it combined to make this whole thing one huge, gift-wrapped package of wrong topped with a big, bright, fluffy bow. That smarmy comment about the other Slayers just hammered home the rest of the bad."
"Uh huh. I see. Rather sucks to be rated based on what you are rather than who you are, doesn't it?"
That stops her cold. "What, so you're going to try to turn this around on me? You said what you said because you were trying to teach me a lesson? Get back at me? Is that what you're saying?"
"You tellin' me from the instant you jumped to your feet and started playing the outraged miss that you weren't just thinking of me as 'a vampire'? That you weren't comparin' me to vampires on the whole and one vampire in particular?" He snorts in disgust. "I said it before and I'll say it again--you're a hypocrite, Summers. Angelus did you and yours a worse turn than I ever dreamed of doin', but you welcomed him back with open arms because you decided his circumstances were special enough to warrant it. Willow could have gotten Dawn killed the other night, but she gets the benefit of the doubt because she feels really bad about it. I can't change what I've done, Slayer, and I'm not going to go 'round sighing and beatin' my breast over it like your bloody Angel. Seems to me all the weepin' and wailin' in the world isn't going to accomplish as much as a genuine intent to not do it again. I have gone against the very nature of what I've been for over a *century* for you, Slayer! The past is the past, it can't change, but *I* can and if you're goin' around making considerations for special circumstances, then at least be bloody consistent about it."
"So, what, I'm supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt?" she scoffs. "I'm supposed to believe that just because you've been physically restrained from killing for a couple years, you're no longer a remorseless predator who would snack out on the locals if given half a chance? That you've seen the light and reformed your ways? Should I stop and take a survey before I slay each vampire? 'Excuse me, can you tell me if you have any extenuating circumstances that might prevent you from going out and killing the next person you come across?' Swell. That will look real great on the headstones of their victims--'she gave him a chance.' Not to mention mine, assuming I'm allowed to stay dead long enough to find out."
"I'm not talking about other vampires. I'm talkin' about me. If I were going to kill again, don't you think I'd start with you?" he asks softly. "I had the chance, luv--a number of times, if you recall. I think I can say your guard was well and truly down the other night, can't I?"
"Only because you wanted something else from me..."
"And that's why I spent the nearly five months you were dead playing demon huntin' games with your mates? Why I watched their backs? Why I looked out for Niblet? Had to impress a corpse, right?"
"Spike, I get it, okay? You helped, you've done good deeds, and if you're looking for thanks, then fine. Thank you. But--you're a vampire. You don't have a soul. You don't have whatever it is that makes us see other people as something more than food. You don't have whatever it is that will keep you from deciding to go all serial killer the moment it's convenient for you to do it."
"I have a choice." He winces, thinking of the woman in the alley the night he suspected the chip had stopped working. He'd been too bloody fixated on salving his wounded pride from the sting of her latest rejection, on proving something to himself, to consider how he was undermining everything he'd been trying to convince her of for months. Any doubts he has entertained that a soulless vampire is capable of feeling remorse and regret are now fully laid to rest. Bloody idiot--what the hell had he been thinking?
On the other hand, it had also been that incident in the alley that made him realize that as much as it was for her that he was trying to overcome the drive inside him that constantly demanded, "Kill! Feed!" it was also she who could infuriate him to the point where he said, "sod it all" and went back to what felt natural. He'd been relieved to find the chip was still working, that he couldn't kill just because Buffy pissed him off enough to ignore his resolve. He doesn't want to know what might happen if he's free to kill before he's reached some sort of peace within himself and with her. One way or another, the standoff has to end. "I have my own bloody free will."
"You have a demon inside you telling you to kill people and eat them--what's free will against that? You don't give a wild predator a 'chance' to decide not to kill someone. You kill it before it kills some harmless bystander whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"An animal doesn't have the ability to make choices, pet. I do."
"I don't believe that," she says, her eyes dropping to the floor. "I can't. I don't believe that change is just as easy as saying 'I won't do it again.' It can't be."
"Then what's Red doin' at home alone with li'l sis right now?"
"That's different--Willow's not a monster. She's human--a human with problems that she's trying to overcome. How many times do I have to say it? You're not human, Spike."
"Look who's callin' the kettle black."
"What I am or am not--assuming you're even right about that--isn't the issue here. We're talking about you--"
"But we're not, are we, Slayer? Let's cut past the excuses to get to the real heart of the matter, which is another vampire entirely."
"Leave him out of this..."
"Why should I? Have you?"
She glares at him. "I am *not* discussing Angel with you."
"The hell you're not. You've been measuring me by his yardstick all along, and we both know it. You can at least do me the courtesy of bein' honest about it. Face it, Slayer--you don't want to believe I'm capable of being more than a monster because you don't like what it tells you about *him*."
"And what would that be?" she demands scathingly.
"That when he went all Angelus, he could have chosen not to kill, that even without his soul, he could have still loved you--and he didn't. You can't accept that it's possible, even theoretically, because you can't accept he wouldn't have done it if he could have."
He expects her to try to walk out again, certain that this time he's crossed a line she will not tolerate, but he's in all the way now. He's the one who wanted to have it out, after all. They might as well have it all out, even though he's fairly certain he won't be happy with what she has to say, providing she does him the courtesy of answering him instead of just staking his ass and having done with it.
He's not prepared for the wounded look she gives him, the turmoil in her eyes. Even as he watches her, she's shuttering it away, sealing it inside again, but just for a moment, he breached her defenses. Strange how he doesn't feel at all victorious.
"You're right," she says at last, pushing herself away from the pillar to stand on her own two feet. Her hands are clenched in fists at her sides, and her voice is ragged. "Maybe you are capable of change, but I'll never know, because I'll never believe it's a possibility, and nothing you can say will change that, because I will never accept that he could have still loved me, but didn't."
Her shoulders slump tiredly and she turns to shuffle toward the door. This is not the theatrical stomping her earlier histrionics had produced. This is just too close to defeat for his comfort. Too close to where she seemed to be that night he tended to her bloodied and shredded hands. Too close to where she was the night he prevented her from dancing to her death. She's shutting down, sealing off the pain and anything else that keeps her alive in the process.
"He did love you, pet," he finally replies, by which time she already has the door open and ready to pull shut behind her. "That's the point."
"I'd like to think I know what love looks like, Spike," she answers without looking back, her head bowed. He's only inches behind her now, but he makes no move to touch her. He can tell by the hunched set of her shoulders, the coiled tension in her posture, that she'll rip his arm off if he tries. "That wasn't it."
"Wasn't it?" he murmurs. "Hate--love. It's all the same in the end."
"Spare me the 'flip sides of the same coin' cliche, please."
"If you insist. I'm just saying that one can't exist without the other. You made him feel human, pet. You made him feel all the things us monsters aren't supposed to feel, to make him think he wasn't what he was, and that's why he wanted to kill you. He hated you because he loved you."
She doesn't react for a long moment--he can't even hear her breathe. Then a painful shudder rips through her body, startling him so much that he jumps back from her. When she turns to face him, the lost, hollow look he's become so familiar with is on her face once more. It's the look she wore on the stairs of her house before they went to their final confrontation with Glory, the one that said she had already unplugged herself from this world. It's the look she wore again on those same steps as she faced him with her hands bloody from clawing her way out of her coffin, and again in the shaded alley behind the Magic Box just a couple days after her return. It's the look she wore in the Bronze as she pleaded with a demon for a reason to live.
"What's your excuse?" she finally asks in a raspy whisper.
It takes him a moment to figure what she means, and then he shrugs with a self-deprecating smirk. "Sheer bloody-mindedness, I s'pose."
"Translate." She breathes as steps forward, toward him, away from the door, and the expression on her face is so focused, so desperately intent that he finds himself retreating from her now.
"Since the night I died, everything I've ever done has been the exact opposite of what I was supposed to do. Existin' for the next insurmountable obstacle, the next all or nothin' gamble, riskin' death at the hands of the Slayer or an angry mob time and again. Throwing all the mystique and drama vampires are supposed to hide behind to the wind and flaunting what I was and what I did...Always after the next challenge, the next convention I could thwart."
She stops her approach, and her face hardens a little, her mouth tightening, and a flicker of something akin to anger animates her eyes for a moment. "So you meant what you said the other morning. It's not about me. It's about attaining the unattainable, about winning a victory." Her lips draw back into a sneer with the last word, and before she's finished, he's shaking his head.
"Bloody hell! No, Buffy, that's not what I'm sayin' at all. It's not what I was sayin' then, either. I'm sayin' that you're everything a monster like me is supposed to despise, not treasure. I loved you...because I hated you." He reaches out a tentative hand to touch her hair and she nearly flinches from the caress. Her dark eyes drill into him mercilessly, and her chest begins heaving as she draws harsh, rapid breaths. Just when he thinks she might hyperventilate, she flings herself at him, pulling his head down to meet her lips.
Her kiss is desperate, hungry, feral...she's devouring him, and he's helpless not to respond, letting her pin him against the pillar and clutching her closer, lips and teeth and tongues mashing and waging war with one another. He's the one without a pulse, but her lips are cold against his, her fingers chilly against the back of his neck where they clutch the base of his skull. Her breathing is still labored, blowing cool against his face and even as his body responds to her passion, even as his hands bury in her hair and claim twin fistfuls of it like trophies of war, he pulls away from her kiss to meet her eyes.
She looks like a caged, wounded animal, the one ready to gnaw off it's own leg because it doesn't know how else to make the pain stop. There's a part of him that doesn't care, that wants to go with it, let her use him to alleviate the pain, that will enjoy every second of it and wake up in the morning singing. But that's also the part of him that will want to go out and kill something--maybe even her--when she wakes up deciding it was all a mistake and feeling the need to put him back in his place. It's the part that will eventually destroy him--and possibly her.
She's reaching for him again, pulling him back to her, and he has to grab her wrists to break her grip in his head, ducking from her questing lips. "Buffy, luv--stop."
"No," she pants softly, still trying to reach him. "Spike...please..."
He grabs her shoulders and gives her an abrupt shake. "Slayer, stop! There's only ever goin' ta be one animated corpse between the two of us, and I got prior claim, you got that?" he growls.
Her eyes grow huge, nearly bulging, her face draining of blood then flushing a vivid red an instant before her fist flashes out at him. He's too close--she doesn't have enough momentum behind the punch to move him or break his grasp on her. In a split second, he has her spun around with her back to him, one hand clenched in her hair, pulling her head to the side and the other around her shoulders, pinning her back against the front of her body. To further insure her immobility, he shoves her forward into the pillar, driving the breath from her and trapping her body between his and the hard granite.
He can feel her quivering with fear and rage and the need for battle, and he feels the demon within him respond, trying to rise up and claim its victory. "Is this what you want, Slayer?" he hisses in her ear as his face transforms, his hand grabbing her jaw roughly as the other jerks her head aside even harder by her hair. "I could snap your neck here an' now, you know I could." His lips move from her ear to her throat as he nuzzles the artery there, feeling the blood pulsing rapidly beneath the surface of the fine, scarred skin. "Or I could bite you, suck the life from you the same way you're trying to suck the death from me. Is that how you want it? 'Cause I can do it! Hell, I'd even enjoy it." He stops, pulling his mouth away from her vulnerable neck and shudders with the effort of forcing down the demon.
When his mouth touches her ear again, his face is smooth, his fangs gone. This time the nuzzle is a caress, not a sampling of the aromas of the available feast. "But I won't do it. I choose not to. I won't let you use me that way. You want to feel alive, and you think by shaggin' me or fightin' with me or both, you can get a taste of it all, life an' death and everything in between. All the fire you think you're missin'. It's the only thing that keeps you from completely wantin' to die. But it's not enough, Slayer. I don't want you dead, or half-alive. I want you living, and I'm not going to settle for less."
He kisses the side of her neck lightly, letting his tongue touch her flesh, tasting her in the way of a lover rather than a predator. He hears her mewl lightly, can smell her surge of arousal, and backs away enough to pull her around to face him. When his hands slide into her hair, they do so leisurely, savoring the silk and gold of her. Her eyes are closed and her lips open, her expression hovering somewhere between pain and anxiety and rapture. He lets his lips brush hers in a whisper-soft kiss and she grabs for him, hands clenching on his biceps, mouth opening, trying to suck him into another desperate kiss. He pulls back, just out of her reach until she settles, then dips his head back to hers.
Something in him lightens, and he fills with elation at the knowledge that this is the first time he's kissed her, and that she's allowing it, responding to him. His lips slide across hers, parting them, tongue swiping across them lightly. His hands cup her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. He pulls away after a second with a sense of wonder, only now realizing that in over 120 years, this is the closest he's come to touching absolutely purity.
Her eyes are open, surprised and troubled, but somehow more alive and aware than they had been before. Was this how Prince Charming felt, he wondered, when he awoke Sleeping Beauty from her hundred-year sleep with a kiss?
"I--I have to go," she says softly, backing away from him slowly. He relinquishes his hold on her with only a little regret and nods his acceptance.
"I can't be here--with you--until I have this worked out," she says as he continues to watch her move toward the door. "I know you get that."
"I get it," he replies gruffly. "But you need to know--I'm done chasin' after you, Slayer. I won't do it anymore."
Her eyes snap shut and he thinks he can see her shudder again. "Are you saying you're leaving?" she asks with what appears to be an effort.
A loud guffaw escapes him before he has the opportunity to restrain it. Her eyes begin to blaze with anger again while he chuckles, "Not a chance, pet. I'm not goin' anywhere. Ever." It only takes a second for him to compose himself again. "I'll be here when you come looking for me," he promises. "I'll even be here to help when Dawn needs rescuin' again or there's some nasty you can't fight alone. And when you've got this--" he gestures back and forth between them with a careless hand, "--worked out, well, then I'll still be here."
She nods in acceptance of this, gnawing on her lip a little, before she finally turns and walks out of the crypt, shutting the door behind her. Only when she is gone does he allow himself to slump against the pillar, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with trembling hands.
"Soddin' Prince Charming, indeed," he mutters scathingly, shaking his head in amused disgust. He casts one more yearning glance at the door, then flings himself back into the chair before the television. "Huh! Not bloody likely."
END
Rykahna Wil Troi
Rykahna@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Category: A little more than a vignette, not quite a story
Spoilers: "Wrecked"
Disclaimer: Go ahead, sue me--it'll be funny.
Summary: A long-awaited confrontation.
The silence that settles over the crypt is deafening and eternal. It is not, however, punctuated with the slamming of the door as she leaves. He realizes he's waiting for her to do just that, knowing that after the gamble he just took, he's fresh out of cards to play. This could very well be the end of it all for both of them.
"I don't know why I'm here," she says finally, her murmur shattering the silence between them. "I don't know why I do anything anymore. I've spent the last few months just--reacting. All I know is it felt right, talking to you when I got back. Maybe because you'd been on the other side of death, too. You understood where I was coming from. Or maybe because you *are* the other side of death, and that's--that's where I wanted to be. Maybe because you're one of the few people I don't hold responsible for...for what was done to me. And then you told me to stop coming to you..." her voice is accusatory and she folds her arms across her chest again, withdrawing from her unaccustomed openness.
"Sorry, luv," he shrugs with contrived nonchalance. "Maybe a better man than me would be happy to be a convenient soundin' board when you needed one and never ask for anything in return. Maybe that's what the poofter or soldier boy would've done, but as you're so keen on remindin' me, I'm not a man. I'll never be a man, and I can't change what I am. I never made any secret of wantin' you, of being in love with you. Now maybe it somehow confirms for you that I'm the monster you like to think I am that I can't handle havin' you around all the time and not havin' you, but that's the way it is. It hurts. I'd rather be left alone to try to get over this thing than endure that, even if it means leaving you without someone to pour your heart out to. I won't settle, pet. It's not my style."
"Then why haven't you walked away?" she challenged.
"I tried, luv, remember? *You* came after *me*. Twice. Or was I supposed to play the gallant there, too, and deny what you were offerin' because I was somehow supposed to intuit that the next day you'd do a complete turnabout and act like it never happened?"
"Well why not?" she asks defensively. "You're Mr. Percepto-Guy, or so you like to think."
"Yeah, but I'm an evil, disgustin' thing, right? Maybe I was enjoyin' myself a bit too much to give two bits about the whole foresight thing. Maybe I'm holdin' out a wee bit too much hope--a situation, mind you, that you didn't help, seeing as how I need a bloody Buffy/English dictionary these days to translate the mixed signals you're givin' off. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment," he mutters self-derisively.
"Well, Spike, whatever it is, you need to let it go. We both do. This--this *thing* that keeps happening between us--it can't, okay? It just--can't."
"And why the bloody hell not?" his voice rises as he begins to stalk toward her angrily. He stops himself, barely, when he sees her retreat a step backward toward the door. His hands clench into fists at the effort, but his feet remain where they are.
She stares at him in bewildered amazement. "God, Spike--you have to ask?"
"Yeah--yeah, I do, 'cause I don't think you even know why yourself when you stop and think about it."
"It's not like I haven't said it before," she replies, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "You're a vampire, Spike. I'm the Slayer. Hello to the conflict of interest. Not to mention the whole 'ick' thing."
He can't help himself--he smirks, and blurts out his retort injudiciously. "That's not what you were saying the other--"
She holds out a hand to cut him off. "Stop, okay? Please. Just--don't. Don't go there. I need to put that whole fiasco behind me as soon as humanly possible."
"Well, I hate to keep belaborin' a point, Slayer, but again I have to mention--here you are," he spreads his arms in an expansive gesture indicating the crypt around them. "You're sayin' you need to put it behind you, but your actions are tellin' another story, 'cause you just keep coming back for more."
"Which is just judgement of the very *worst* possible kind," she snaps. "Let's pretend for a minute that you're not completely whacked and that maybe--just maybe--you have vaguely resembling a point about me having a death wish...If that's the case, do you really think it's a great idea for me to be around you in *any* capacity? Not just any vampire, but a vampire who has made a name for himself killing Slayers, and who came to town with a major league hard-on to add *my* name to the list of Slayers done in by William the Bloody. Who spent years devising schemes--pathetic schemes at that--to kill me..."
"Pathetic?! Hey!"
"...Who has attacked and terrorized my friends, plotted to kill me even AFTER you got the chip that prevented you from attacking me outright. Whose idea of dating is chaining me to a wall and threatening to kill me unless I told you there was a chance for us and whose idea of basking in the afterglow is bragging about finding an alternative way to add yet another Slayer to your list of conquests. Forgive me for being less that wooed by that bio, okay?"
"So which is it that's botherin' you the most, luv?" he asks with a smug calm he doesn't truly feel. "The history or that I dared to compare you to the other Slayers?"
"C: all of the above! All of it combined to make this whole thing one huge, gift-wrapped package of wrong topped with a big, bright, fluffy bow. That smarmy comment about the other Slayers just hammered home the rest of the bad."
"Uh huh. I see. Rather sucks to be rated based on what you are rather than who you are, doesn't it?"
That stops her cold. "What, so you're going to try to turn this around on me? You said what you said because you were trying to teach me a lesson? Get back at me? Is that what you're saying?"
"You tellin' me from the instant you jumped to your feet and started playing the outraged miss that you weren't just thinking of me as 'a vampire'? That you weren't comparin' me to vampires on the whole and one vampire in particular?" He snorts in disgust. "I said it before and I'll say it again--you're a hypocrite, Summers. Angelus did you and yours a worse turn than I ever dreamed of doin', but you welcomed him back with open arms because you decided his circumstances were special enough to warrant it. Willow could have gotten Dawn killed the other night, but she gets the benefit of the doubt because she feels really bad about it. I can't change what I've done, Slayer, and I'm not going to go 'round sighing and beatin' my breast over it like your bloody Angel. Seems to me all the weepin' and wailin' in the world isn't going to accomplish as much as a genuine intent to not do it again. I have gone against the very nature of what I've been for over a *century* for you, Slayer! The past is the past, it can't change, but *I* can and if you're goin' around making considerations for special circumstances, then at least be bloody consistent about it."
"So, what, I'm supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt?" she scoffs. "I'm supposed to believe that just because you've been physically restrained from killing for a couple years, you're no longer a remorseless predator who would snack out on the locals if given half a chance? That you've seen the light and reformed your ways? Should I stop and take a survey before I slay each vampire? 'Excuse me, can you tell me if you have any extenuating circumstances that might prevent you from going out and killing the next person you come across?' Swell. That will look real great on the headstones of their victims--'she gave him a chance.' Not to mention mine, assuming I'm allowed to stay dead long enough to find out."
"I'm not talking about other vampires. I'm talkin' about me. If I were going to kill again, don't you think I'd start with you?" he asks softly. "I had the chance, luv--a number of times, if you recall. I think I can say your guard was well and truly down the other night, can't I?"
"Only because you wanted something else from me..."
"And that's why I spent the nearly five months you were dead playing demon huntin' games with your mates? Why I watched their backs? Why I looked out for Niblet? Had to impress a corpse, right?"
"Spike, I get it, okay? You helped, you've done good deeds, and if you're looking for thanks, then fine. Thank you. But--you're a vampire. You don't have a soul. You don't have whatever it is that makes us see other people as something more than food. You don't have whatever it is that will keep you from deciding to go all serial killer the moment it's convenient for you to do it."
"I have a choice." He winces, thinking of the woman in the alley the night he suspected the chip had stopped working. He'd been too bloody fixated on salving his wounded pride from the sting of her latest rejection, on proving something to himself, to consider how he was undermining everything he'd been trying to convince her of for months. Any doubts he has entertained that a soulless vampire is capable of feeling remorse and regret are now fully laid to rest. Bloody idiot--what the hell had he been thinking?
On the other hand, it had also been that incident in the alley that made him realize that as much as it was for her that he was trying to overcome the drive inside him that constantly demanded, "Kill! Feed!" it was also she who could infuriate him to the point where he said, "sod it all" and went back to what felt natural. He'd been relieved to find the chip was still working, that he couldn't kill just because Buffy pissed him off enough to ignore his resolve. He doesn't want to know what might happen if he's free to kill before he's reached some sort of peace within himself and with her. One way or another, the standoff has to end. "I have my own bloody free will."
"You have a demon inside you telling you to kill people and eat them--what's free will against that? You don't give a wild predator a 'chance' to decide not to kill someone. You kill it before it kills some harmless bystander whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"An animal doesn't have the ability to make choices, pet. I do."
"I don't believe that," she says, her eyes dropping to the floor. "I can't. I don't believe that change is just as easy as saying 'I won't do it again.' It can't be."
"Then what's Red doin' at home alone with li'l sis right now?"
"That's different--Willow's not a monster. She's human--a human with problems that she's trying to overcome. How many times do I have to say it? You're not human, Spike."
"Look who's callin' the kettle black."
"What I am or am not--assuming you're even right about that--isn't the issue here. We're talking about you--"
"But we're not, are we, Slayer? Let's cut past the excuses to get to the real heart of the matter, which is another vampire entirely."
"Leave him out of this..."
"Why should I? Have you?"
She glares at him. "I am *not* discussing Angel with you."
"The hell you're not. You've been measuring me by his yardstick all along, and we both know it. You can at least do me the courtesy of bein' honest about it. Face it, Slayer--you don't want to believe I'm capable of being more than a monster because you don't like what it tells you about *him*."
"And what would that be?" she demands scathingly.
"That when he went all Angelus, he could have chosen not to kill, that even without his soul, he could have still loved you--and he didn't. You can't accept that it's possible, even theoretically, because you can't accept he wouldn't have done it if he could have."
He expects her to try to walk out again, certain that this time he's crossed a line she will not tolerate, but he's in all the way now. He's the one who wanted to have it out, after all. They might as well have it all out, even though he's fairly certain he won't be happy with what she has to say, providing she does him the courtesy of answering him instead of just staking his ass and having done with it.
He's not prepared for the wounded look she gives him, the turmoil in her eyes. Even as he watches her, she's shuttering it away, sealing it inside again, but just for a moment, he breached her defenses. Strange how he doesn't feel at all victorious.
"You're right," she says at last, pushing herself away from the pillar to stand on her own two feet. Her hands are clenched in fists at her sides, and her voice is ragged. "Maybe you are capable of change, but I'll never know, because I'll never believe it's a possibility, and nothing you can say will change that, because I will never accept that he could have still loved me, but didn't."
Her shoulders slump tiredly and she turns to shuffle toward the door. This is not the theatrical stomping her earlier histrionics had produced. This is just too close to defeat for his comfort. Too close to where she seemed to be that night he tended to her bloodied and shredded hands. Too close to where she was the night he prevented her from dancing to her death. She's shutting down, sealing off the pain and anything else that keeps her alive in the process.
"He did love you, pet," he finally replies, by which time she already has the door open and ready to pull shut behind her. "That's the point."
"I'd like to think I know what love looks like, Spike," she answers without looking back, her head bowed. He's only inches behind her now, but he makes no move to touch her. He can tell by the hunched set of her shoulders, the coiled tension in her posture, that she'll rip his arm off if he tries. "That wasn't it."
"Wasn't it?" he murmurs. "Hate--love. It's all the same in the end."
"Spare me the 'flip sides of the same coin' cliche, please."
"If you insist. I'm just saying that one can't exist without the other. You made him feel human, pet. You made him feel all the things us monsters aren't supposed to feel, to make him think he wasn't what he was, and that's why he wanted to kill you. He hated you because he loved you."
She doesn't react for a long moment--he can't even hear her breathe. Then a painful shudder rips through her body, startling him so much that he jumps back from her. When she turns to face him, the lost, hollow look he's become so familiar with is on her face once more. It's the look she wore on the stairs of her house before they went to their final confrontation with Glory, the one that said she had already unplugged herself from this world. It's the look she wore again on those same steps as she faced him with her hands bloody from clawing her way out of her coffin, and again in the shaded alley behind the Magic Box just a couple days after her return. It's the look she wore in the Bronze as she pleaded with a demon for a reason to live.
"What's your excuse?" she finally asks in a raspy whisper.
It takes him a moment to figure what she means, and then he shrugs with a self-deprecating smirk. "Sheer bloody-mindedness, I s'pose."
"Translate." She breathes as steps forward, toward him, away from the door, and the expression on her face is so focused, so desperately intent that he finds himself retreating from her now.
"Since the night I died, everything I've ever done has been the exact opposite of what I was supposed to do. Existin' for the next insurmountable obstacle, the next all or nothin' gamble, riskin' death at the hands of the Slayer or an angry mob time and again. Throwing all the mystique and drama vampires are supposed to hide behind to the wind and flaunting what I was and what I did...Always after the next challenge, the next convention I could thwart."
She stops her approach, and her face hardens a little, her mouth tightening, and a flicker of something akin to anger animates her eyes for a moment. "So you meant what you said the other morning. It's not about me. It's about attaining the unattainable, about winning a victory." Her lips draw back into a sneer with the last word, and before she's finished, he's shaking his head.
"Bloody hell! No, Buffy, that's not what I'm sayin' at all. It's not what I was sayin' then, either. I'm sayin' that you're everything a monster like me is supposed to despise, not treasure. I loved you...because I hated you." He reaches out a tentative hand to touch her hair and she nearly flinches from the caress. Her dark eyes drill into him mercilessly, and her chest begins heaving as she draws harsh, rapid breaths. Just when he thinks she might hyperventilate, she flings herself at him, pulling his head down to meet her lips.
Her kiss is desperate, hungry, feral...she's devouring him, and he's helpless not to respond, letting her pin him against the pillar and clutching her closer, lips and teeth and tongues mashing and waging war with one another. He's the one without a pulse, but her lips are cold against his, her fingers chilly against the back of his neck where they clutch the base of his skull. Her breathing is still labored, blowing cool against his face and even as his body responds to her passion, even as his hands bury in her hair and claim twin fistfuls of it like trophies of war, he pulls away from her kiss to meet her eyes.
She looks like a caged, wounded animal, the one ready to gnaw off it's own leg because it doesn't know how else to make the pain stop. There's a part of him that doesn't care, that wants to go with it, let her use him to alleviate the pain, that will enjoy every second of it and wake up in the morning singing. But that's also the part of him that will want to go out and kill something--maybe even her--when she wakes up deciding it was all a mistake and feeling the need to put him back in his place. It's the part that will eventually destroy him--and possibly her.
She's reaching for him again, pulling him back to her, and he has to grab her wrists to break her grip in his head, ducking from her questing lips. "Buffy, luv--stop."
"No," she pants softly, still trying to reach him. "Spike...please..."
He grabs her shoulders and gives her an abrupt shake. "Slayer, stop! There's only ever goin' ta be one animated corpse between the two of us, and I got prior claim, you got that?" he growls.
Her eyes grow huge, nearly bulging, her face draining of blood then flushing a vivid red an instant before her fist flashes out at him. He's too close--she doesn't have enough momentum behind the punch to move him or break his grasp on her. In a split second, he has her spun around with her back to him, one hand clenched in her hair, pulling her head to the side and the other around her shoulders, pinning her back against the front of her body. To further insure her immobility, he shoves her forward into the pillar, driving the breath from her and trapping her body between his and the hard granite.
He can feel her quivering with fear and rage and the need for battle, and he feels the demon within him respond, trying to rise up and claim its victory. "Is this what you want, Slayer?" he hisses in her ear as his face transforms, his hand grabbing her jaw roughly as the other jerks her head aside even harder by her hair. "I could snap your neck here an' now, you know I could." His lips move from her ear to her throat as he nuzzles the artery there, feeling the blood pulsing rapidly beneath the surface of the fine, scarred skin. "Or I could bite you, suck the life from you the same way you're trying to suck the death from me. Is that how you want it? 'Cause I can do it! Hell, I'd even enjoy it." He stops, pulling his mouth away from her vulnerable neck and shudders with the effort of forcing down the demon.
When his mouth touches her ear again, his face is smooth, his fangs gone. This time the nuzzle is a caress, not a sampling of the aromas of the available feast. "But I won't do it. I choose not to. I won't let you use me that way. You want to feel alive, and you think by shaggin' me or fightin' with me or both, you can get a taste of it all, life an' death and everything in between. All the fire you think you're missin'. It's the only thing that keeps you from completely wantin' to die. But it's not enough, Slayer. I don't want you dead, or half-alive. I want you living, and I'm not going to settle for less."
He kisses the side of her neck lightly, letting his tongue touch her flesh, tasting her in the way of a lover rather than a predator. He hears her mewl lightly, can smell her surge of arousal, and backs away enough to pull her around to face him. When his hands slide into her hair, they do so leisurely, savoring the silk and gold of her. Her eyes are closed and her lips open, her expression hovering somewhere between pain and anxiety and rapture. He lets his lips brush hers in a whisper-soft kiss and she grabs for him, hands clenching on his biceps, mouth opening, trying to suck him into another desperate kiss. He pulls back, just out of her reach until she settles, then dips his head back to hers.
Something in him lightens, and he fills with elation at the knowledge that this is the first time he's kissed her, and that she's allowing it, responding to him. His lips slide across hers, parting them, tongue swiping across them lightly. His hands cup her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. He pulls away after a second with a sense of wonder, only now realizing that in over 120 years, this is the closest he's come to touching absolutely purity.
Her eyes are open, surprised and troubled, but somehow more alive and aware than they had been before. Was this how Prince Charming felt, he wondered, when he awoke Sleeping Beauty from her hundred-year sleep with a kiss?
"I--I have to go," she says softly, backing away from him slowly. He relinquishes his hold on her with only a little regret and nods his acceptance.
"I can't be here--with you--until I have this worked out," she says as he continues to watch her move toward the door. "I know you get that."
"I get it," he replies gruffly. "But you need to know--I'm done chasin' after you, Slayer. I won't do it anymore."
Her eyes snap shut and he thinks he can see her shudder again. "Are you saying you're leaving?" she asks with what appears to be an effort.
A loud guffaw escapes him before he has the opportunity to restrain it. Her eyes begin to blaze with anger again while he chuckles, "Not a chance, pet. I'm not goin' anywhere. Ever." It only takes a second for him to compose himself again. "I'll be here when you come looking for me," he promises. "I'll even be here to help when Dawn needs rescuin' again or there's some nasty you can't fight alone. And when you've got this--" he gestures back and forth between them with a careless hand, "--worked out, well, then I'll still be here."
She nods in acceptance of this, gnawing on her lip a little, before she finally turns and walks out of the crypt, shutting the door behind her. Only when she is gone does he allow himself to slump against the pillar, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with trembling hands.
"Soddin' Prince Charming, indeed," he mutters scathingly, shaking his head in amused disgust. He casts one more yearning glance at the door, then flings himself back into the chair before the television. "Huh! Not bloody likely."
END
