Chapter 9: Dreams of Reality

Buffy felt everything go completely cold and black. She could feel everything falling, falling, beneath her. And when it felt like the fall was going to be endless, she felt the ground beneath her feet again. Blinking, she's fought to get the darkness out of her eyes. Where am I?

A montage of clipped scenes raced in front of her face feverishly like a nightmare. Buffy running through the graveyard, staking vampire after vampire. Buffy stiffening as the Master overtook her and threw her into the water. Buffy, battling demon after bloody demon. Her eyes became filled by endless darkness, watching her plunge stakes, knives into countless victims. It became a cloud of fast-paced death, pacing her mind so fast that she felt she was about to burst. Suddenly, everything slowed and became blindlingly bright.

When her eyes became accustomed to the light, she found herself in the hospital, watching Dawn and herself crouch and hold to each other's hands tightly. "It's blood," she was saying. "Just like mine. Summers' blood."

She was watching the past. Reviewing the memories. Or rather, Rack was, and he was allowing Buffy to see what he was viewing, deep-rooted in her subconscious.

Later she watched as she breezily entered the house, smiling at an abundance of flowers. She watched as her face turned from casually curious to frightened, stricken. "Mom . . .MOM?! . . . Mommy?"

Standing in front of a roaring fire, she watched herself, sitting in front of a tribal-looking woman, who slithered and shook in the cold desert air. "Death . . . is your gift," the first slayer whispered ominously.

She watched as she knelt, amidst an army of ancient looking knights, flames and rubble. Willow screaming at her to get up. Watching Glory grip Dawn as they fled into darkness. Seeing herself once more, with the same fear-filled look she had when she first saw her mother, lying haphazardly on the couch.

She watched as she stood from the tower with Dawn, garbed in a long, ancient dress. Blood pouring from her sides. Her eyes teary blurred and grasped with the look of deathly fear. Buffy running from her, running into a pool of light, jumping, diving into an abyss of death.

She watched herself form from a skeleton to herself, gasping for air in the tight coffin. Gripping, punching, wrestling with the confining earth, the dense soil. Splitting wood, cotton, silk, her hand erupting from the ground in dreadful triumph.

She watched as she stood in front of her friends at the Bronze, each filled with concern, confusion, then horror when they heard her sing the barely audible line: "I think I was in heaven . . ."

Then all of sudden, watching herself, the look of hurt, pain, coldness as she stared down at him from the staircase, marveling secretly at how beautiful he looked as he gazed back at her in awe and aching wonder. Him tenderly nursing her bruises, counting off the days she had been gone. "147 days . . . would have been 148 today. Except today doesn't count does it?"

She watched them in the alley, practically in the sunlight, yet the both of them so much in the dark that they could see nothing but each other. Then him, a look of shock pass over his face at her words. "They can never know Spike," she was saying softly before creeping away.

She watched as they sat together in the darkness, perched out on the back stoop. "Why are you always here when I'm miserable?"

"Cause that's when you're alone I reckon'."

She watched as they stood, tied to each other, thrashing violently against each other amongst a collapsing house. She watched as they gripped to each other so fervently, so savagely that she felt her whole body blush just by the memory. And as she watched them crash and buck feverishly into each other, hands groping, lips everywhere, she could hear an eerie, yet familiar voice call, "All alone . . . They all ran away from you . . . They always will."

Suddenly she wasn't watching anymore. She was there, in a large bed, amongst silken sheets. "What? What happened?"

"Buffy." Spike was there. He lay beside her, gasping heavily. "What's going on?"

"I think it's Rack. He's . . . inside our heads. He's been looking at my memories."

"Yeah," Spike gasped again. "He's made me watch myself . . . my childhood . . . when Dru turned me. . . . why?"

"I don't know." Buffy was gasping herself now. "How do we get out of here? This is some kind of hallucination that Rack set up."

"I dunno Buffy. This guy is all kinds of powerful." Spike gazed at the ceiling and at the room around them. "Whose mind are we in? Yours or mine?"

Buffy shook her head. "I d-don't know, I---" she turned to look at Spike. Their eyes locked. "I----" She was cut off by the fire she saw burning beneath Spike's eyes. They both tensed.

They rustled among the sheets furiously to get to each other. Their lips met and fused immediately. She plunged and felt the soft sweetness of his tongue and she sucked on it. She moaned and heard him do the same. He roughly grabbed her back and flipped her over, so that he was on top of her. Curling her legs around his waist, she felt this cataclysmic pressure growing in her and she pulled tighter to him, desperate to relieve it. His body stirred and he ground his pelvis against her, prompting Buffy to arch back and moan. Mouths and fingers roamed and grasped, explored. Gripping to his hair and shoulders, she found herself panting with extreme anticipation. He was sinking his mouth deep into the groves of her neck, kissing, stroking, whining softly, "Oh God, Buffy, I love you so much."

"Spike . . . Spike, I love you too." Her eye's flew open at the realization of what she said. He only responded by kissing her deeper, more urgently. She moaned and forgot about all the ramifications or implications of what she had just said and relished in the feel of his body. She clung tighter to him, her fingernails digging into him as she began to feel waves of searing pleasure rip through her body. He thrust into her savagely and was filling her up, bucking, thrashing, taking her over completely. Deeper, higher, faster until-----

Both of them felt an intense explosion, one so powerful that they had never experienced, and then------gone. They blinked away the blinding pleasure as they released and felt everything go black again.