CHAPTER TWO
She continues to stare at him in disbelief as many minutes clock by. She cannot see his face in the darkness, but she senses a slow, satisfied grin spreading across his lips. She is aware that every minute she is standing there, he could be gearing up for the kill. She can't let that happen. Not in the alleyway of the Bronze and her shift only half over.
Without saying a word, her fist flies at his face and he flails awkwardly to steady himself. She throws another punch, this time to his jaw. He counters with a jab to her left cheek, which she in turn counteracts with a blow to his right cheek. She has forgotten his power and his stamina, how unrelenting he can be when engaged in battle. Though she has beaten him many, many times before, he's almost had her in his deadly clench as well. But she senses tonight he is not going for the knock-out. He is reintroducing himself into the ring. This is his comeback.
She won't let up, not for a moment. He is trading blows with her, matching the force, matching the precision. They've always fought well. Here, when engaged in battle, they understand each other most of all.
"So is this why you came back?" Buffy pants out, delivering another punch to his chin. "To kill me?"
"No," he grunts out as she returns a blow to his stomach. "The chip may have left my head, but the love I have for you in my heart remains intact."
She's had enough of the jabs and changes tactics, grabbing him by he arm and flinging him against the wall. She bends his arm across his back, twisting until she can almost hear bones breaking. Almost. She can hear him wheeze, hear him weakening. Relief builds in her shoulders. It's almost over, she says to herself.
Now what?
"Then you came back to sire me? Do what Dru did to you? Make me your little love slave for all eternity?" she breathes into his ear.
He ushers a sickening, growling laugh through his parted lips. "I've already done that, love."
Oh, you dead, dead bastard, she thinks as her head thunders with new fury. In one move, she grabs him by the arm and pitches him to the pavement. There is moonlight on his face now. She can see him, clearly, for the first time in six months.
She doesn't let any sentimental thoughts betray what she has to do next. She straddles him before he can scuttle away like a wounded crab and produces her stake. She lets it hover over his heart, not quite making contact. The executioner wants her prey to see the weapon that's going to send him out of this world and make him someone else's problem.
"You're out of practice, Spike," she announces. "This was too easy."
"I know," he says. "I wasn't really trying there at the end. I just wanted to feel you on top of me again." His hands creep up her backside and she turns crimson at his touch. "Feels just as I remember."
"Does this feel just as you remember?" she says, jamming the stake closer to him, piercing the leather of his black duster.
"Definite familiarity there," he says in mid-groan.
The moonlight reveals that his features have now left the realm of smugness and assuredness and are now hovering somewhere over fright and apology. She digs the stake through the duster, endeavoring to drill right through his tee-shirt, right through his skin.
"Wait, Slayer!" he pleads, exhaling sharply at the touch of the stake. "Slayer, don't do this. Not until you hear what I have to say. Not until I've had a chance to explain my whereabouts for these past six months."
"I don't want to know," she says through gritted teeth. "You were gone and you came back and for some dumbass reason you thought I'd be all, 'You got your chip out! Great! Here's my jugular as a reward for being such a good sport while you couldn't kill anyone.'"
"Just let me tell you where I've been, what I've been doing."
"I'm sure it's an epic story, Spike. And it ends here." She raises the stake in the air.
She's got him so surely, so squarely certain. His life is in her hands. His death is in her precise aim at just the right spot in his chest. Her heart is racing. This is the moment of the kill. The hairs stand up on the back of her neck. There is always an odd arousal about this that goes beyond the sexual. It's a rush, a demon-drip of adrenaline that courses through her veins and makes her feel her power through every atom of her being. Her skin tingles from the sensation. She raises the stake over its intended target.
But before the weapon can come down for its fatal plunge, she sees his face break out into panic and for a moment she is terrified for him. And in this brief moment in time that she allows herself to connect with him, she feels just as vulnerable as he must feel, pinned under her, awaiting death. He's not a nameless vamp scrambling from a grave for his first kill. He's not a skunky demon out for a night of prowling and vengeance. He was once her greatest enemy and she has tried so many times to get him just where he is now. He is completely helpless now. And all she can think about is how much she wants to wipe the look of fear from his face and pull him to safety.
"Slayer," he whispers. There is a plea in his voice. For mercy? Understanding? Pity?
She is no longer sitting on top of her long-time foe. She is straddling her former lover. The arms that are pinned under her legs once held her. She has taken this creature to her bed. She has allowed him to touch her, to put his lips to her lips, to her skin. And she has touched him as well. She knows the curves of his bold, strong pecs. She knows the firmness of his abdomen. She has defined it with her hands, with her mouth. She knows his heart. And in that heart is his love for her.
Her hand falls to her side.
Buffy doesn't move for several minutes. Spike remains prone and still. In his eyes there is gratitude. She doesn't graze over that look to long.
As she lifts herself off him, she mutters in a tone that she hopes doesn't sound as defeated as it feels to say, "Get up."
He scrambles to do just that, hopping up straight into the air. She doesn't turn her back to him. She wants to make sure he is completely gone before she can turn her back.
"Get out of here. Now!" she intones.
He reaches out to her, "Buffy," he begins.
She catches his hand as it's about to go for her shoulder. "Get out of here and don't ever come around me again." She is avoiding his eyes. She is training her look somewhere between his chin and his mouth.
"Buffy, just hear me out this one time. Just this once."
She decides to give him a listen. The stake hasn't left her hand.
"I know I hurt you, love. I know I've been perfectly awful to you. I am aware that these six months have had a terrible toll on you. And I'm to blame for the lot of it."
"Don't flatter yourself," she says.
He raises his hands to shush her. "Buffy, if you just let me explain. I've been to a lot of places in the past year. A lot of places on the globe, a lot of places in myself I didn't know existed. But I came back to you, love. I told you when I left you I was going because I knew we couldn't make this work. But I know something now. Something I should have known then, but was too cowardly to accept." His hand is now caressing her cheek. And she is not moving away. "I've got to make things work with you because it's the best thing I've ever had and will ever have for that matter. You are why I exist, Buffy. You are the love of my life."
She is now looking into his eyes. There is truth there. And pain. And love. He is not mocking her. He is not ingratiating himself for an apology. He is stated the facts, purely and simply.
She is not standing in the alleyway of the Bronze now. She is at the doorway of her house, trying to say good-bye to him, trying to let him go. But she can't. He's too much a part of her. He's too much in her soul. He has made her feel his love for him and she returns it in full measure.
Then why is he saying good-bye?
Just then, the side door of the Bronze comes open. An angry, booming voice bounces off the walls.
"Buffy! If your ass isn't in here in five seconds, you can turn in your apron and forget you ever had a job here!"
His hand is still on her cheek, cold, yet comforting.
"I've got to go," she says.
"I know," he says.
Now she turns away. He remains where she left him as she heads for the door, tucking her stake back into her apron.
"Buffy!" he calls to her before her hand is on the door. "The playground by the school," he says. "Will you meet me there after your shift?"
She nods her consent without even thinking as she fiddles with the sharp tip of the stake.
"I'll be there," she says.
Now why am I doing this again?
It's almost four o'clock in the morning as Buffy walks across town to the designated place. Ass he walks by silent house after silent house, she realizes sleep is taking place all around her and she keenly feels the fatigue in her bones and the aches in her muscles.
Tonight she has fought with Spike for the first time in years and for a while it felt like old home week. Sometimes when they fought she was made more aware of her place in the world, her role in this life. She was placed here to kill. She has been trying to kill Spike for the past four years and with his finality so firmly in her grasp, she had let him go. Why?
She couldn't stand to see that look in his eye. That hurt. That plea. Don't kill me, my love. You'll regret it for the rest of your life, he seemed to be saying to her there at the end. She knows why she let him go. She had been in that position before, with a different lover, a different vamp. She killed Angel just after his soul was restored and that action has haunted her, nearly hurled her into insanity's clutch. When she was holding that stake above his heart, when she was so much in control that it seemed she had the power of every empire that ever ruled the world, she knew she was making a big mistake. Spike came back for a reason. It wasn't to kill her. It wasn't to sire her. What was it?
She had to know. And that is why she finds herself in a playground a little after four in the morning on a Friday.
He is there waiting, by the swings. He is pacing, smoking a cigarette. She doesn't even have to announce her presence. When she arrives, he knows. And he comes to her.
As he approaches her, his arms are open and she feels herself wanting to go into them. Oh, hold me…she's thinking to herself. I've missed you…He is returning these thoughts to her. He is leaning his face to hers, the intention of a kiss coming nearer and nearer. But just as he's about to make contact, she stiffens. This is not the right time. There are apologies that need to be made and dissected for their validity. He knows this too and temporarily abandons hope for the touch of his lady love's lips on his, again with a smile. He does everything with that smug, self-satisfied grin, whether he's endeavoring to murder someone or make someone a victim in another way entirely.
"So we're not quite ready for the kiss and make-up bit yet," he drawls. "I understand, love. But you're here. That's half the battle won, I suppose."
"Spike, I'm tired and right now all I want to do is crawl into bed for the next fourteen hours. You better make this quick."
"Now, now, Slayer. I've been gone for six months. And what I've been through can't exactly be illustrated on the head of a pin. You came here to find out where I've been and I'm here to tell you. So sit down and wipe that petulant, I don't wanna be here look off your face. We have to have a talk."
There's a bench on the playground. When school's in session, this is probably where the teachers sit while waiting out recess. School won't start for another two weeks or so. Preparations are being made for the students' return. There's a bucket of paint by the teeter totter. Buffy imagines that somewhere in Sunnydale children are counting down the days. Summer's almost over. And when school starts, this is where they will come to play and run around between learning ABC's and long division.
Spike is leaning his elbows on his thighs. His hands are folded together, almost in prayer. He takes a breath and exhales in a blast of cold air.
"I never thought I'd come back here," Spike says. "When I left you that morning, I thought I was turning my back for good. I remember looking at everything as though I were seeing the place for the last time. Felt all sentimental, a little sad. But I had to go. There was no question. And for a while I didn't know where I was going. I just wandered from place to place, traveling by night. In Flagstaff I found an abandoned car, hot wired it, and drove for the longest time. I would find these long stretches of highway where I was completely alone for miles and miles and then, all of a sudden, another motorist would pass and I'd realize I wasn't alone. It's odd, when you get it in your head that you're the only person in the world and then you see that other people do exist. Other people with lives, other people who know other people who you will never know or encounter. Or maybe you have and just don't know it." He sighs. "Well, enough of my treatise on loneliness. On one of those highways, I found out why the car had been abandoned. It was a piece of shit car that made me wish that Yugoslavia had never learned how to build motor. It broke down on me. It was a little bit before dawn. I had been heading for a hotel that promised good accommodations, a fair price, and a swell continental breakfast in the morning. I didn't quite make it. And for a while, I didn't think I was going to make it at all. The sun was coming up over the hills. And I was in the bleeding desert. I thought about starting off the in the direction of the hotel. I grabbed the blanket, the one you have me. But the sun was bursting on the horizon and I felt myself weakening. I knew I was about to feel a kinship with the desert sand that you humans know nothing about. I had to keep moving, though. Moving targets are harder to hit, I kept reminding myself. But eventually, it was too much for me, and I fell to the ground. 'Well this is it,' I told myself. 'This is where it all ends for William the Bloody, out in the desert, all alone.' But then something happened. I felt myself in a stranger's grasp. I was being lifted. I found myself being slung across the back of a horse and being carried rapidly away. I thought this was rather amusing. Old Spike being rescued by a knight in shining armor. I must have passed out or something because I don't remember anything until I woke up on a tweedy sofa in the living room of someone's house. There was an old man there, an old Indian. Scared the piss out of me when I first saw him. He was just sitting there, staring at me from across the room. There was something brewing on the fire and he got up and spooned some in a mug for me. He tried to feed it to me, but I refused. I told him I needed blood. He muttered something under his breath and I asked him what it was. He told me, 'you are the one that stalks the night and knows no soul.'" I said, 'Spot on, Geronimo. Now get me some blood.'
"Now, when most people learn that they have a vampire in their home, they're not exactly hospitable. I was expecting the old man to grab something phallic and wooden and try to dust me right there, but he couldn't have been nicer. In a short time, he did find me some blood---buffalo's blood. Not as tasty and spicy as the wings, but quite satisfying. So I drank and he talked."
And the night got deathly quiet and his face lost all expression/Said if you're going to play the game boy, you gotta learn to play it right…Buffy thinks tiredly.
"So you wandered into a really bizarre Kenny Rogers movie of the week and found yourself in a wigwam," Buffy says.
"It wasn't a wigwam, Slayer. It was a house. With walls and brick and everything. Even a telly."
"So why didn't the Indian kick you out of the house when he found out you were a vampire?"
"He suspected I couldn't kill. He wanted to know why. I told him all about the job the government chaps did on Old Spike's noggin. He could sympathize. Apparently he had seen his share of ill treatment from the government as well. He explained his tribe had once numbered in the thousands. He and about a dozen others were all that was left. They had originated from Tennessee and were sent west in the early eighteen hundreds. Those who could adapt flourished, and those who couldn't died. His great great grandfather had been a medicine man, he said. Once a devastating fever went through his tribe and he saved everyone with a combination of herbs and desert flowers. But he was killed by some cavalrymen out for a game of spook the Indians. He said many of his fellow tribesmen, the ones that were left, were scattered about. Some of reservations, some in the suburbs. He kept his homeplace there in the desert. He had lived alone for the better part of his seventy-odd years.
"He wanted to know the nature of the chip. What it did to me. I told him about the pain, the excruciating pain every time I tried to even make a fist at another human being. He told me that was nonsense. The machinery in my head had nothing to do with the fact that I couldn't kill or defend myself if attacked. If I couldn't extract the chip from my head I had to live with the consequences of my violent actions. And I thought, well, duh, that's what I'd been doin' all along. But then he told me something. He said that I had been giving too much credence to the control the chip had over my actions. He taught me a little trick that his people had used when they were tortured by the bloody soldiers who invaded the plain with their eyes on Manifest Destiny. He told me that I had to pull myself out of my body to endure the pain. I had to leave my body if I wanted to let go of what was hurting me. Sounded like a lot of rubbish to me. Until he demonstrated it to me. He went over to the fire and put his hand right in the flames and held it there for minutes. I could smell the odor of burning flesh and hair. I could hear the sizzle of his skin giving away to blisters and blood. But he just stood there, calmly, watching me. He removed his hand from the flame. There was nothing but pulp there at the end of his wrist. He prepared a potion of medicinal herbs and simmered it over the fire for the rest of the evening. And when applied, the salve restored his flesh. He cured himself. I thought I had met the most invulnerable human being I would ever meet. And for a moment, I was terrified, because I knew there was nothing I could do to this man to hurt him."
Spike rises from the bench. He is now pacing slowly, stubbing the toe of his boot into the ground, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"I had to learn how to do this. I wanted him to teach me. He cautioned me that spirituality is what brings the calm, and my spirit was long gone. But I wanted to give it a try anyway. He told me that I had to imagine that I was heading for the sky. That the skies were opening for me. That I had the freedom of flight and that I could embrace the heavens. I had to steal a part of the sun, which made me uneasy. But it turned out, all I had to do was envision the sun and its beams, not actually go near it. I hadn't felt the warmth of the sun in ages, but I did as instructed and an amazing thing happened. I did feel the sun. I did feel warmth on my skin. Almost in my soul…" he trails off. It sounds like his voice is breaking. "I felt as brilliant as a diamond. I took a swing at the Indian. And I did not feel anything but my fist connecting with his face."
He is not looking at her as he is speaking. It is as though he has forgotten that she is there, listening to his monologue. On the stage alone, the actor has forgotten his audience.
"Now, this is the sort of thing that takes practice, takes time. It's an acquired art. So I tried to be patient. Every day I worked on drawing myself out of my body. At first it took nearly five minutes. A long wait for someone about to engage himself in battle. But eventually I got it down to seconds. I couldn't believe how well it worked. And neither could the Indian."
There is a look now on Spike's face of bitter remembrance. Buffy knows instantly what this is.
"You killed him, didn't you?"
He studies her for a minute, trying to gauge what her reaction will be when he tells her the truth.
"Well…yeah," he says. "It was the desert and I was a bit parched. Then I stole his horse and rode away. So now it can truly be said that I've been through the desert on a horse with no name. Although I think this one did. Can't remember what it was, though."
Now she doesn't know why she has come at all. And she doesn't know why he is so happy about revealing to her that he is a killer again. There has to be something else, she tells herself. She had him at death's door earlier that night and it wouldn't take much to drag him back to that threshold again.
"So let me guess, after you discovered you could kill again, you went on a big spree and eliminated a good chunk of California's populace," she says.
In a sudden movement that takes her aback, he is on his knees in front of her. His hands are on her thighs, rubbing gently. His face is right before hers. On his breath is flesh and blood and she breathes it in with disgust.
"One would think. But that didn't happen. I found that I could use to same tactics the Indian taught me to alleviate my pain to ward off my urge to kill. I didn't have to kill. I only have to kill when I need to."
"That still makes you a killer," she says.
"But I don't have to be," he says. "It's all up to you. All you have to do is say four little words, love." He leans into her, searching for her ear. He is dangerously close to her neck, she realizes. But she doesn't feel teeth there. Only his breath mingled in a sigh. "I want you back."
He is letting his lips linger by her ear, broadcasting his longing for her in harsh, violent breaths. He is smelling her hair. His hands are in her hair now, stroking the long locks from scalp to tips. He is bringing her face to his. But there's not a kiss yet. He wants it. He knows she wants it. But there's more to say. He wants her to hear everything, to know everything.
"Sometimes at night," he says softly. "I'd wake after dreaming about you. I could feel you right there with me. And when I came back into consciousness, and realized you weren't there, I ached with desire for you. You were so far away. I had been with you, you were so close. I wanted to feel that closeness again. I nearly howled at the unfairness of it all. I'd clutch the empty space beside me, wanting so much to feel your body there. I wanted you beside me, under me. I wanted to touch you so badly. I couldn't torture myself any longer. I had to come back to you. Right or wrong, I needed what we had. The memory of that night was too potent. I wanted it all back. I wanted to be with you again. So I came back."
Without thinking, she has parted her legs and his is embracing her. She has not yet found the courage to hold him. Her arms remain at her side. His hands are all over her back. Now she does feel his kiss, right by her ear. Then on her cheek. Hips lips are moving quickly. Soon they will be on her mouth. She knows this and her heart begins to pound. Now they are kissing. And she is holding him. Her arms do this without her consent. His touch is too much of a reminder of that one night. She wants it. She wants it badly enough that she is saying his name as she pulls him close.
His hands are going down her back, discovering the brevity of her tee shirt. He raises it slowly as his fingers glide under her bra strap.
"You remember this?" his voice curls seductively into her ear.
She does. Too well.
His hands are fully under her bra now. She has allowed enough space for him to maneuver his hands around to the other side. He squeezes and releases her bare breasts and she moans. Her tee shirt is up around her shoulders now. The night air is prickling her nipples as he tastes them with his mouth and leaves them damp and exposed.
Now his hands are gliding down her stomach. She feels his fingers playing with the elastic on her underwear. They find easy access once the snap of her jeans is undone and the zipper is lowered. He is caressing her inner flesh, eliciting moans from her that she has been storing for months.
"And you remember this, too?"
Oh, she remembers. She lets her head fall back. But as she does this, cold air rushes against her neck. His mouth! She thinks instantly. No, it's not there. But it is enough of a scare to wake her, to snatch her from the clutches of this erotic dream made real by the presence of her former lover and foe.
Her hands push against his shoulders. In one shove, he is on the ground in front of her, looking stunned.
She rearranges her shirt, tucking everything in where it should be.
"Yeah, I remember," she says. "But I also remember the last six months."
And with that, she walks away.