AUTHOR: Kevin A. Poston (Fojiao2)
DISCLAIMER: I own none of the characters used here and am not profiting by them at all. They are the sole property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and anyone else Joss okays.
SPOILERS: Up through "Older and Far Away" (Season Six)
SUMMARY: Spike can't speak because of a bet with Buffy, but it just allows her to hear his heart even clearer. Unrepentantly sappy and mushy!
FEEDBACK: You are all SO KIND for reviewing the first part of my story when I was stupid enough to not even ask for it. Yes, please, give me any and every bit of feedback you can, my ego needs to be drawn up from the dry well of reality on a daily basis.
DEDICATION: This is for Lisa Y. Drexel, because her "Bet" series of stories were just wonderful. And I want to thank David Lynch for making the word "Silencio" have a power that I'll never really get over.
Two more weeks wrapped in his cloak of silence saw even
greater changes in Spike. He found that he
spent a lot more time thinking when he couldn't circumvent
his thinking processes with a shouted
"Bloody hell!" He turned problems over and over in his
head, sleeping a lot less but getting more
done. He cleaned both floors of his crypt every other
day, so that it was all in better condition
than Buffy had ever seen it. He only wished that she'd
visit it and register that fact. He could do
the same for Buffy's place if she'd let him. She didn't
have the money for home improvement, but he
knew enough to hang her front door correctly, and repair
some damage that that old house's walls
had collected over the years. If he really thought about
it, he could even build some furniture for
her. It would take supplies he couldn't very well get
until he could speak once again, but he still
spent wakeful days making grand plans.
Thinking about Buffy forced him to think about Dawn. He
considered ways to make her schoolwork
easier, ways to get her more friends, ways to teach her
that stealing was wrong (not that he
believed that himself, but he could put the fear of God
into her whenever she considered swiping
something, sure enough). And that made him think about
Buffy's friends. About what he could do to
help with the wedding. About how he could help Tara and
Willow relate better. About the various
ways he could teach them all to REALLY eliminate the
demon element in Sunnydale.
It was crazy, all of it. HELP the Scoobies with their
pathetic little problems? This useless pack
of mortals who'd barely scraped past their second decade?
As he'd noted already, if he could just
shout at himself and hear his voice echoing from the
walls this line of thought would be broken.
But he couldn't do that. Even drinking couldn't give
him sufficient release, since he couldn't sing
to himself anymore. The same with his punk rock music--if
he couldn't sing along, what was the
point? He'd been trapped in a wheelchair for months and
it hadn't had such a huge impact on his
spirit as this eternal silence was having.
He stumbled across an idea for locating the Nerds of Doom
and wrote it as a note to leave at
Buffy's house. On the way over, though, he considered
that Buffy might not appreciate it at all.
She normally reacted with hostility whenever she perceived
that he was telling her how to be a
Slayer. Someone else, then. He walked around Buffy's
house and selected a new tree to climb to the
second floor. While climbing, he thought of a few more
useful notes he might leave.
*******************************************
Willow woke up groggy and ill-tempered--situation normal
for the once-perky redhead these days. The
morning sun was always the worst, like cold water dashed
in her face. She just wanted to rest in
the comforting darkness, let the dark carry her like
waves, let it sink into her, filling her heart, her blood, her eyes--
And then she remembered. Can't let that happen anymore.
It was a bitter, bitter way to start the
day and it happened every single morning. One day at
a time, my ass, she thought. Funny how those
words never even crept into her thoughts in the old days.
Now she could work up a string of curses
in her head that would make Spike blush. If dead people
could blush.
She finally dragged herself up into a sitting position
and swung her legs off the bed. Her first
action every morning was to cross to the window and close
the curtains, blocking out the sun for
just a few more minutes. Just as it was her last duty
every evening to make sure those curtains were
open, because by then she'd remember again how necessary
that hard morning slap of sunlight was in
driving away the seductive dreams of magic that filled
her sleep.
Willow took a curtain in each hand, preparing to close
them like usual, when she noticed something
out of place. This morning there was a note taped to
the window, something definitely not routine.
And it was taped to the outside! Someone must have climbed
a tree or walked on the roof to put it
there! Leaning down, she read the brief message.
The last time I saw the Nerds
in their HQ
they had lots of gaming material.
Won't
these guys have a Dungeonmaster
somewhere?
==Spike
The fact that it was a message from Spike kept her from
understanding what it said. She had to read
it three times before the importance of the words rang
within her. And then she was suddenly very
awake and moving like lightning to get ready for the
day. It was a Saturday so the gang should have
been gathered at the Magic Box. Now they had a real lead!
Hours later at the Magic Box Buffy and Xander were researching
at the table while Anya argued with
someone on the phone in what sounded like Fiyoral. Finally
she slammed the phone down and shouted,
"Victory!"
It was her first word of English in an hour. Both Xander
and Buffy looked up. Anya was only too
eager to explain.
"I got this note this morning from Spike and--"
"Whoa, whoa," said Xander. "A note from Spike? I thought he didn't even know where we lived."
"Apparently he does. Now--"
"But I've made specific insults on the basis that he doesn't
know where we live!" said Xander. "And
now you're telling me that he could find me at any time
while I'm all asleep and vulnerable? Oh,
this is no good."
Buffy reached across to take his hand. "Jeez, calm down.
It's not like he's invited into your home
or anything." She looked to Anya speculatively. "He's
not invited in over there, is he?"
"Oh no, of course not. He taped the note to our car window," Anya explained.
"He knows my car?" Xander squeaked. He looked at Buffy
imploringly. "Please, tell me that Deadboy
doesn't know where I live."
"If you mean Angel, no, he doesn't. I'd be surprised if
he could find his way to my house after all
this time," Buffy replied, with more than a little bitterness
in her voice.
"Does anyone want to hear my story?" Anya complained.
"Of course, baby," Xander said, taking her hand and drawing
her to a seat at the table. "So what
did Spike threaten in this note?"
Anya rolled her eyes. "He didn't threaten anything," she
said. "He left a suggestion about the
catering, which has been plaguing me for some time, let
me tell you. Apparently there's this
half-demon caterer who's been serving the demon community
for a few months, but he's also trained
for human food. So I just spoke to him, and you'll never
believe the deal we've gotten! It's the
same amount of food at half the actual outlay of cash!
He'll accept a third of his pay in kittens!
Isn't that wonderful?"
Both Buffy and Xander sat frozen. "Wonderful?" Xander whispered.
"Of course! Monetarily speaking, buying a few dozen cats
and kittens from the pound will be much
less expensive than the money we would have been spending.
Oh, Xander, I'm so happy! The wedding is
finally going to be a reality!" She leaned forward and
wrapped her arms around Xander, kissing him
as if the room held no one else.
Which isn't a bad idea, Buffy thought. She quietly slipped
away from the table and went to the
training room, leaving the door open in case anyone needed
her. Dawn was on the room's couch, her
nose buried in a small paperback book. Now Buffy could
spend time with Dawn and avoid the spectacle
of Xander and Anya groping each other. Two positives
in one little room-shift, she told herself.
"Hey Dawnie, what's up?"
The teenager didn't appear to even hear her--her eyes
were flying back and forth over the pages in
her hand. Curious, Buffy leaned down to see the title
from the cover. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony
Burgess. Buffy had to put her hand over the open pages
to get Dawn to look up.
"Are they making freshmen read this these days?" Buffy asked.
Dawn looked down, clearly embarrassed. "Um, it's not required. Someone suggested I should read it."
Sometimes Buffy was quicker than usual. "Let me guess. A note on your window."
Dawn looked up with wide eyes. "How'd you know?"
"It seems Spike is fast becoming everyone's good samaritan."
"Uh, whatever. He just wrote that I should read this.
So I checked it out from the library this
morning."
"And you like it?"
"Are you kidding? I can't keep my rookers off it!" She
pulled Buffy down onto the couch next to
her. "It's about this kid Alex, see, like my age, in
England. They have their own slang, which is, like, Russian.
And he and his buds like to wreck stuff and beat people
up and even rob them when they can get
away with it. They're just-- they're angry at everything
around them, and they don't have the power
to change it, so they'd rather destroy it all. But they're
so stupid, Buffy! It's like they don't
have anything to believe in and no fight to join, so
they're fighting whatever's in front of them!
It--" She stopped her rambling for a moment to look down
at the book in her hands and then caught
Buffy's eye again. "It sort-of makes me see how stupid
I've been. I mean, I know that evil exists,
I've seen it up-close and personal. I know that there
are real good guys out there who I can join,
and that we can actually make a difference. I don't have
Alex's excuse," she said, waving the
book. "I've been stealing and blaming everyone else for
how I'm feeling. When all the time I've got
a real-life hero living right across the hall. One who
wasn't always living, but who I was lucky
enough to get back in my life."
The sisters hugged each other tight, burying their leaky
eyes on each others' shoulders. How many
moments of real love had Buffy and Dawn expressed since
she came back to life? Too few, obviously.
But that was among the things that Buffy was going to
make sure she stayed on top of from now on.
As well as giving Spike an extra-special thank-you tonight.
Then they heard the sound of the store's front door bell
and a cry of "Victory!" from the other
room, this time obviously Willow's voice. It seemed to
be the word of the day. Buffy and Dawn wiped
their eyes and rushed into the next room to see what
was happening.
Willow was already at the table, opening her laptop and
connecting it to the store's phone line.
She was excitedly babbling, and started over when she
saw Buffy come in. "Buffy! I got this note
from Spike this morning, it was like it cleared everything
out of my head! It said that the Nerds
of Doom did role-playing games, so they had to have a
Dungeonmaster around to run games for them.
And that reminded me of--"
"The Dungeonmaster!" Xander exclaimed, and Willow nodded
at him, grinning, already typing something
into her laptop.
"Uh, explanations please?" Buffy asked.
"Oh yeah, you probably never met him," Xander said. "Listen,
Buffy, if you can imagine it, there
was this guy in high school who was so dorky even Willow
and I wouldn't be caught dead with him."
"Wow," said Dawn. "He must compete at the Nerd Olympics."
Xander gave her a momentary glare, then continued. "Anyway,
everybody just called him The
Dungeonmaster. A tubby kid with bad skin and thick glasses
and a head full of useless info, you
know the type."
"I think I work next to him at the Palace every day. But continue."
"Let me," said Willow. "We lost track of him since high
school, that was understandable. But I knew
I'd seen him around campus, so I got his real name and
tracked him down. Sure enough, he works as
an R.A. in Kingston Dorm, and he's still 'one with the
twenty-sided dice.' When I asked him about
Jonathan, he said sure, Jonathan and Warren and Andrew
played with him every week. He didn't have
the location of their new place, but he had their phone
number. I'm looking them up as we speak."
"Wow!" Buffy sat down, grinning at Willow. "You mean we
could find them tonight?" She made a fist
and imagined plowing it into Warren's smug face.
"No problem," Willow said. "They may have put up some
tricks to hide themselves, but I'm a hacker
of the first rank, y'know."
"Yeah," Dawn said, "and Warren invented the Buffybot."
"Dawn!" Buffy lightly slapped her arm.
"Sorry. Just trying to be realistic here."
"Not the best attitude on the Hellmouth, I've found," Xander said.
After typing furiously for a half hour Willow looked up
from her screen to see three
still-expectant faces. She sighed heavily, any hint of
a smile having fled long ago. "Guys, this is
not gonna happen right now. Warren seems to have covered
their tracks really well. I have some
stuff on ZIP disks at home, so I'll go back. Dawnie,
wanna come with me?"
Dawn shrugged. "Sure, since it's already dark."
"Yeah, I guess I'll patrol," Buffy said. "Do you think you'll have it by morning, Wils?"
"I have to decrypt a few things," Willow said. "I'm lucky
there's just one number and it's in one
area code. I'm also working within the parameters of
this ZIP code. But if they're outside of
Sunnydale it could take a lot longer. If I stay up all
night I should have it sometime before
noon."
"We appreciate it, Willow," Buffy said, happy to see her
friend perk up at the compliment. "Look, I
have to do the ten-to-six shift at the Palace tomorrow
and I just pray that they won't double-shift
me. So how about I get home, take a shower to remove
my daily layer of grease, we collect Spike at
his crypt, then we all go take down the SuperNerds."
"Spike?!" said Xander. "Why do we need him?"
"Hey!" said Willow. "If not for his idea we wouldn't have found this number!"
"No duh!" Dawn joined in. "I'd certainly want him in a fight before you, Xan-man."
"Even though they're human and could beat him easily?" Xander countered.
"So we won't use him that way," Buffy said. "They've always
gotten away in that van. I was thinking
of having him steal it before we even go into the house
so they can't escape."
Xander looked silently at the women around the table.
Then he looked to Anya, but she just watched
the scene with her arms crossed, finding some pleasure
in Xander's discomfort. He sighed and
admitted, "You're right. That is a good plan."
As Buffy walked to the front door she waved at everyone
behind her. "I'll be on patrol. Willow, Dawn, see ya
tonight. Anya, Xander, see ya tomorrow."
TO BE CONTINUED--Next chapter is definitely the last one!
I'll update tomorrow morning.
It was a Scoob-centric chapter, I know, but I just couldn't
finish this as one huge chapter last night.
Sorry to make you wait one more day.