Chapter 11
She watched, helpless, as the colour drained from his face.
"Spike, what is it?"
He fought to fix a mask of composure upon his face.
"Nothing, it's nothing. I'm fine."
But he would not look at her, and she could not believe him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The whalebone arch carved into the clouds high above them as the great, red ball that was the sun
dropped below the cliff edge, draining the light from the sky.
It was all wrong, somehow. Down by the harbour mouth the water thronged with fishing boats; all along the sea front confetti lights flirted with the waves below. It was a world alive, and it was neither the time nor the place for this.
Buffy still had one last hope, one chance that this could all be ended without cost to anyone. If she could somehow force the woman into the archway, to reap her own reward from the ritual she had wrought, they might all be saved.
And suddenly she was there, just as she had been the night before in the Dracula Experience, marked by that same ordinariness. Buffy could almost believe, watching Elizabeth cling to her hand, that Giles was wrong and this was just some game, some stupid misunderstanding. But as she heard the words of the reversal spell Giles was chanting beside her echoed by some, dark, counter-chant, she knew the truth, and she knew she had to act, and act quickly.
Vampire, vampire, vampire. It was nothing to the Slayer, and she fought her way through a sea of dust to Elizabeth, wrenching her from the woman's grasp. But as she clutched at the woman herself, she found she could not touch her, for suddenly she was without form, a wraith of taunting laughter.
"You're too late, Slayer. The ritual is almost complete."
Buffy only knew, then, that she had to stop Elizabeth reaching the archway. She held the little girl tightly against her though she felt the very breath forced out of her body as she did so.
"Spike, quick!"
He did not move.
"Spike, I can't hold on to her much longer. You have to do this."
"I can't."
She looked at him in desperation. "Please, Spike, you have to trust me."
"I can't stop the ritual."
"You can. You have to believe me, Spike."
"It won't work, Buffy, it won't work because my soul isn't…isn't pure." He spat out the word with an ugly twist scarring his mouth.
"What? Spike, nobody's looking for a virgin sacrifice here. More a kind of pure as in not evil. Not about to end the world. Trust me, you'll do."
The pain shot through her like a thousand darts, and all the time she felt Elizabeth drawn, inexorably, towards the arch.
"I remember, Buffy, I remember everything." His voice was flat, and hollow.
"Which is good, right? Because that would go with the your life being saved thing."
She spoke with a quiet evenness, but something like fire was scorching through her body.
"I remember what happened the last time we met. I remember what I did."
There was no time for this conversation, no time.
"What you did, Spike, past tense. It's not what you are."
"Isn't it?"
She couldn't do it anymore, she couldn't keep hold of Elizabeth and she couldn't fight this any more. When she spoke she no longer cared what happened; she only knew that what she said was the truth and she couldn't but say it.
"Listen to me, Vampire, do you know how many times you've forgiven me already?"
She had called him vampire, and it didn't hurt any more; nothing hurt any more.
She continued, although the pain was so much that the words burned in her throat. "How can I hold anything against you when every time I look at you I see the one person in the world who I know will love me whatever I am and whatever I do?"
"You have to say that; you need me to save your life."
"Didn't I tell you that this morning? I always need you to save my life."
Spike looked at her, and he wasn't sure, just then, whether it was pain or emotion that broke her. But he knew she was right, and he knew what he had to do.
He felt it, a bolt of lightning scourging through him as he stood in the archway, the blackness leeching into him, sucking the life from his heart. And somewhere, in the midst of the terror, and the darkness, and the agony, he heard it.
It was the sound of Elizabeth crying.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There was a moon in the sky, and likely as not the same moon that usually occupied that same space in that same sky, but for all anyone noticed it might not have been there at all.
The girl and the vampire stood on the sand, and the sea at their feet thought, perhaps, they had stood there before. But it was a timeless sea, a great, timeless sea, and it had seen an eternity of befores, and if theirs had been one of them it was more than it could remember.
"Buffy." It still felt strange, to sound her name and own it in the same breath.
"Mmm?"
"Close your eyes."
She did, and she felt the sudden hard, wet surface of the rocks beneath her bare feet as he pulled her, gently, towards him.
"Now look."
She looked, and she saw her own face, glimmering up at her in a pool of moonlight.
"What do you see?"
She remembered that day, five weeks before, when she had looked into the mirror and seen his reflection for the first time. And she was grateful for the memory, but this was now, and it didn't matter any more.
"I always see you, Spike." Her reflection smiled back at her as she looked down into the water. "God, if I was blind I would still see you."
"I love that reflection." He reached up and ran his hand through her hair, and she watched her hair lift and fall in the rockpool mirror below her. "I love your reflection."
"Our reflection." She smiled up at him, softly. "What you can see, there, it's yours too."
And the moon turned its head to look in the opposite direction, just for a moment.
She looked up at him, her eyes deep and green and glowing. "Six weeks. Six, beautiful weeks we've had here. Would you do it all again, if you could?"
"Would you?"
"If I could make this moment last forever I might." She reached up and traced the line of his face with her finger. "But I'm glad we're going home."
He smirked back at her. "Yeah, night flight to Sunnydale which, unfortunately, I now remember."
"You know you love it."
"Of course I love it."
And the sea, the great, timeless sea, judged from her reaction that she liked that "of course", more than she could find words to say.
As they turned to go Buffy stopped for a moment, her eyes laughing up at him, because as she thought back across the weeks they had spent in England she could not help but recognise one, inescapable truth. "OK, I don't believe in coincidence so explain this to me. We meet by chance in London, you stay with Giles' friend, you come across Dawn up here, we meet again, here, and we even stay in the same guesthouse. Do you think somebody was trying to tell us something?"
He bit his lip as he thought for a moment. And when he spoke again he was only half teasing. "You think you choose your destiny, Slayer?" He smiled as he shook his head. "It is spelt out in the stars."
The End