TITLE: "Said she'd be back"
AUTHOR: Betty Woo (lwa@rocketmail.com)
RATING: PG, non-specific reference to violence & sex
PAIRINGS: Buffy/Spike. Kinda.
SPOILERS: Starts at close of Episode 7.1, includes season 6 spoilers.
FEEDBACK: Supercalifragiliciousexpialidocous!
DISCLAIMER: Mutant Enemy owns this universe, I'm just taking a non-profit tour.
NOTES: I've decided to try something odd with this story, namely running it alongside the current season 7 episodes. Sort of like an "underplot" - things going on that they don't have time to show in a one-hour episode, although it's going to wind up AU once I get Jossed. I'm assuming there's at least a couple of days before Buffy starts her new job at the school. This chapter will be the last one set between Episode 7.1 and 7.2 - I will update the spoiler warnings as required.
CHAPTER FIVE - Working Late
"Goodness, you certainly are strong for such a tiny thing, aren't you?" Halfrek tittered in that nervous way that made her seem like a centuries-old demon trying to appear girlish. Which, well, she was. Buffy tucked the stake into the belt of her pants and helped the wincing demon to her feet.
"Sharp reflexes too, lucky for you."
"Indeed." Halfrek brushed the dirt off her top and felt through her curly tresses for stray leaves. "Well, no harm, no foul. Goodnight!"
The vengeance demon turned to walk away, but Buffy fell into step beside her. If she couldn't kill something, she could at least distract herself with pointless conversation. "You still haven't answered my question."
"Oh, I'm fine. Takes more than a stiletto in the chest to slow me down."
"I didn't ask how you were. I asked why you were." Buffy glanced around, trying not to look back at Spike's old haven. "Here, I mean."
"Just, looking for someone. You know."
"In a deserted cemetery? At," Buffy paused to check her watch. "Eleven forty?"
"Vengeance is a full-time profession, you know. Plenty of overtime, all of it unpaid I might add." Halfrek straightened the sleeves of her shirt nervously. "I've told D'Hoffryn a thousand times, a little bonus for working late wouldn't go unappreciated, but does he ever listen?"
"You were looking for Spike." It started off as a question, but saying it out loud made Buffy more certain that she was right.
Halfrek stopped and looked at her quizzically. "No. Have you seen him?"
"No." Buffy hoped it sounded convincing, but the way Halfrek wrinkled her nose made her suspect that she'd laid on the conviction just a little too strongly. For the hundredth time, she wished that lying was included in the slayer superpower package.
"Of course not. William wouldn't come rushing back here, now would he?"
"Will..." Before Buffy could finish, Halfrek vanished, leaving Buffy staring at a chipped gravestone. She frowned, trying to recall why that chip seemed so familiar. Right. That K-something demon, the one with the multiple horns. Spike had chipped the gravestone with its shoulder, right before she decapitated it. Good times.
Twelve cemeteries in this tiny town and not one of them that didn't hold memories of Spike. Buffy stared up into the sky. Enough with the procrastination. There were more dangerous tasks than slaying demons ahead of her tonight. Namely, talking with one.
The lead pipe across the back of her head caught her completely off guard.
* * *
Halfrek appeared on the balcony of the Bronze, half in the shadows. A few couples were scattered around the structure, gazing down on the crowd or kissing in the dark. She should really be more careful about teleporting around mortals, she thought, remembering a recent memo from D'Hoffryn about that topic. Still, that was what she loved about Sunnydale. Nobody seemed to notice her little goofs.
Leaning against the railing, Halfrek scanned the main floor for a flash of peroxide. There was plenty of highlight action going on, but none of them were the full-head bleach job she was looking for. Sighing, she tapped her foot impatiently. She honestly hadn't expected to find him here, but then she hadn't expected this little snit of his to last this long either. It was, well, worrying.
The fact that it was worrying also worried her. Halfrek liked to think of herself as a live-in-the-moment kind of demon. You couldn't think too hard about the long-term implications of your actions, not in a job like hers. Get in, do what was requested, and get out.
Still, she was pretty certain that Buffy had been lying, which meant that William was indeed back in town. Given that the Welcome to Sunnydale sign was still standing, he wasn't following his usual arrival pattern either. She'd already checked out the factory, Angel's old place, and now the crypt. If he wasn't in the usual haunts, then he must be somewhere unusual.
The last place she'd expect him to be... Halfrek teleported, without even bothering to step back into the shadows. A second later, she wished that she had. She blinked against the sudden darkness, so sharp it took even her demon vision a moment to adjust. And there he was.
Kind of. He looked a mess, his hair curling out in all directions, scabs of blood across the back of his hands. Mumbling too, so quiet she could hardly make out a word of it, if there were even words being spoken. Halfrek wrinkled her nose at the odor coming from the far corner, something like old meat left out in the sun too long. There was another scent underneath that, one she hadn't smelled for a very long time, so long now that she couldn't quite place the fragrance.
"William?"
He started at the noise, jerking back like a dog that had been beaten one too many times. He was nothing like the swaggering vampire she'd seen in Buffy's living room just a year ago, and she wondered briefly what had happened to transform him so. Then his eyes turned up to look at her, vivid blue against the blood-starved paleness of his skin, and it was her turn to flinch.
"Cicely?" Such a lost voice. "Is this the beginning?"
He was mad, she realized then. She'd driven enough men mad in her time to recognize that look, the piercing stare that could no longer distinguish between the real and the imagined. "What are you doing here?"
"Can't you smell it? Burning away." He laughs, a frantic laugh that found nothing funny anymore. It went on too long. Halfrek started to fidget, twisting her fingers together, waiting for him to stop. "Just the three of us, three little nails all in a row."
"Three?"
"It's coming up through the earth." He turned away and laid his hands on the wall, caressing it like a lover. "Caerulea, carry you low."
Halfrek glanced around, instinctively looking for the door. "Maybe I should get Buffy. Tell her that you're here."
"No!" He shouted, rushing towards her in a flash of fury that dissolved a moment later. "The flowers are like fire. She wouldn't understand." For a moment, she thought he was going to cry. Instead, he knelt, hanging his head before her. "Why did you come back, Cicely? I only let you down."
Her fingers reach out tentatively, brushing through his curls. "Bad poet, name of William. London was full of them. I just thought you should know that, well, it wasn't your fault. Nothing personal. I was just so busy that season and, hey, whoops." She giggled nervously, trying to drown out the little whimpers he made every time she touched him.
"You're wrong. My fault, always my fault." He twisted away, crawling back towards the wall on his hands and knees. Halfrek felt a brief flash of pride in her handiwork, seeing him so broken. It really was quality craftsmanship. His whimpers grew into sobs and his arms gave out, dropping him to the floor.
No, not his arms. The floor had started to tremble. Halfrek tried to steady herself as the rumble swept through the room, sending loose dirt tumbling down around her. Spike had curled up into a fetal position, clutching his knees to his chest as he cried. Perhaps I shouldn't just leave him down here, the vengeance demon thought. The floor shook under her feet again, more violently this time. Without a second thought, she teleported away.
* * *
"You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around."
With a deft spin, Buffy staked the vampire clean through his Marilyn Manson shirt and stepped back swiftly, a trick she'd learned long ago to cut down on the hassle of dry cleaning the vamp dust out of her favorite clothes.
"And that's what it's all..." Her voice trailed off, the exhaustion of the chase finally catching up to her. It wasn't like there was anyone around to appreciate her little joke, anyway. Doubling over, she clutched at her aching side. The first vamp, the one with the lead pipe, she'd taken him down quickly enough, but his pals had made a run for it. She'd caught up with the second one by the edge of the cemetery and polished him off with only a few minutes of trading blows, but the third one had taken almost an hour to track down afterwards.
Buffy tried not to think about the fact that, most nights, she wouldn't have bothered to waste the time hunting a lone and slightly incompetent vampire through the twisting back alleys of Sunnydale. Now she had a stitch from running for so long, and a tear in her new pants as well. Not to mention the tiny fact that it was well after one a.m. and she was supposed to be starting her new job in the morning. Great advice she'd be able to give, half asleep and post-slayage sore. But she'd be at the school, which meant she could just slip downstairs during her lunch break and check in with Spike. Satisfied with her rationalizing, Buffy tucked the stake into her belt and headed for home.
AUTHOR: Betty Woo (lwa@rocketmail.com)
RATING: PG, non-specific reference to violence & sex
PAIRINGS: Buffy/Spike. Kinda.
SPOILERS: Starts at close of Episode 7.1, includes season 6 spoilers.
FEEDBACK: Supercalifragiliciousexpialidocous!
DISCLAIMER: Mutant Enemy owns this universe, I'm just taking a non-profit tour.
NOTES: I've decided to try something odd with this story, namely running it alongside the current season 7 episodes. Sort of like an "underplot" - things going on that they don't have time to show in a one-hour episode, although it's going to wind up AU once I get Jossed. I'm assuming there's at least a couple of days before Buffy starts her new job at the school. This chapter will be the last one set between Episode 7.1 and 7.2 - I will update the spoiler warnings as required.
CHAPTER FIVE - Working Late
"Goodness, you certainly are strong for such a tiny thing, aren't you?" Halfrek tittered in that nervous way that made her seem like a centuries-old demon trying to appear girlish. Which, well, she was. Buffy tucked the stake into the belt of her pants and helped the wincing demon to her feet.
"Sharp reflexes too, lucky for you."
"Indeed." Halfrek brushed the dirt off her top and felt through her curly tresses for stray leaves. "Well, no harm, no foul. Goodnight!"
The vengeance demon turned to walk away, but Buffy fell into step beside her. If she couldn't kill something, she could at least distract herself with pointless conversation. "You still haven't answered my question."
"Oh, I'm fine. Takes more than a stiletto in the chest to slow me down."
"I didn't ask how you were. I asked why you were." Buffy glanced around, trying not to look back at Spike's old haven. "Here, I mean."
"Just, looking for someone. You know."
"In a deserted cemetery? At," Buffy paused to check her watch. "Eleven forty?"
"Vengeance is a full-time profession, you know. Plenty of overtime, all of it unpaid I might add." Halfrek straightened the sleeves of her shirt nervously. "I've told D'Hoffryn a thousand times, a little bonus for working late wouldn't go unappreciated, but does he ever listen?"
"You were looking for Spike." It started off as a question, but saying it out loud made Buffy more certain that she was right.
Halfrek stopped and looked at her quizzically. "No. Have you seen him?"
"No." Buffy hoped it sounded convincing, but the way Halfrek wrinkled her nose made her suspect that she'd laid on the conviction just a little too strongly. For the hundredth time, she wished that lying was included in the slayer superpower package.
"Of course not. William wouldn't come rushing back here, now would he?"
"Will..." Before Buffy could finish, Halfrek vanished, leaving Buffy staring at a chipped gravestone. She frowned, trying to recall why that chip seemed so familiar. Right. That K-something demon, the one with the multiple horns. Spike had chipped the gravestone with its shoulder, right before she decapitated it. Good times.
Twelve cemeteries in this tiny town and not one of them that didn't hold memories of Spike. Buffy stared up into the sky. Enough with the procrastination. There were more dangerous tasks than slaying demons ahead of her tonight. Namely, talking with one.
The lead pipe across the back of her head caught her completely off guard.
* * *
Halfrek appeared on the balcony of the Bronze, half in the shadows. A few couples were scattered around the structure, gazing down on the crowd or kissing in the dark. She should really be more careful about teleporting around mortals, she thought, remembering a recent memo from D'Hoffryn about that topic. Still, that was what she loved about Sunnydale. Nobody seemed to notice her little goofs.
Leaning against the railing, Halfrek scanned the main floor for a flash of peroxide. There was plenty of highlight action going on, but none of them were the full-head bleach job she was looking for. Sighing, she tapped her foot impatiently. She honestly hadn't expected to find him here, but then she hadn't expected this little snit of his to last this long either. It was, well, worrying.
The fact that it was worrying also worried her. Halfrek liked to think of herself as a live-in-the-moment kind of demon. You couldn't think too hard about the long-term implications of your actions, not in a job like hers. Get in, do what was requested, and get out.
Still, she was pretty certain that Buffy had been lying, which meant that William was indeed back in town. Given that the Welcome to Sunnydale sign was still standing, he wasn't following his usual arrival pattern either. She'd already checked out the factory, Angel's old place, and now the crypt. If he wasn't in the usual haunts, then he must be somewhere unusual.
The last place she'd expect him to be... Halfrek teleported, without even bothering to step back into the shadows. A second later, she wished that she had. She blinked against the sudden darkness, so sharp it took even her demon vision a moment to adjust. And there he was.
Kind of. He looked a mess, his hair curling out in all directions, scabs of blood across the back of his hands. Mumbling too, so quiet she could hardly make out a word of it, if there were even words being spoken. Halfrek wrinkled her nose at the odor coming from the far corner, something like old meat left out in the sun too long. There was another scent underneath that, one she hadn't smelled for a very long time, so long now that she couldn't quite place the fragrance.
"William?"
He started at the noise, jerking back like a dog that had been beaten one too many times. He was nothing like the swaggering vampire she'd seen in Buffy's living room just a year ago, and she wondered briefly what had happened to transform him so. Then his eyes turned up to look at her, vivid blue against the blood-starved paleness of his skin, and it was her turn to flinch.
"Cicely?" Such a lost voice. "Is this the beginning?"
He was mad, she realized then. She'd driven enough men mad in her time to recognize that look, the piercing stare that could no longer distinguish between the real and the imagined. "What are you doing here?"
"Can't you smell it? Burning away." He laughs, a frantic laugh that found nothing funny anymore. It went on too long. Halfrek started to fidget, twisting her fingers together, waiting for him to stop. "Just the three of us, three little nails all in a row."
"Three?"
"It's coming up through the earth." He turned away and laid his hands on the wall, caressing it like a lover. "Caerulea, carry you low."
Halfrek glanced around, instinctively looking for the door. "Maybe I should get Buffy. Tell her that you're here."
"No!" He shouted, rushing towards her in a flash of fury that dissolved a moment later. "The flowers are like fire. She wouldn't understand." For a moment, she thought he was going to cry. Instead, he knelt, hanging his head before her. "Why did you come back, Cicely? I only let you down."
Her fingers reach out tentatively, brushing through his curls. "Bad poet, name of William. London was full of them. I just thought you should know that, well, it wasn't your fault. Nothing personal. I was just so busy that season and, hey, whoops." She giggled nervously, trying to drown out the little whimpers he made every time she touched him.
"You're wrong. My fault, always my fault." He twisted away, crawling back towards the wall on his hands and knees. Halfrek felt a brief flash of pride in her handiwork, seeing him so broken. It really was quality craftsmanship. His whimpers grew into sobs and his arms gave out, dropping him to the floor.
No, not his arms. The floor had started to tremble. Halfrek tried to steady herself as the rumble swept through the room, sending loose dirt tumbling down around her. Spike had curled up into a fetal position, clutching his knees to his chest as he cried. Perhaps I shouldn't just leave him down here, the vengeance demon thought. The floor shook under her feet again, more violently this time. Without a second thought, she teleported away.
* * *
"You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around."
With a deft spin, Buffy staked the vampire clean through his Marilyn Manson shirt and stepped back swiftly, a trick she'd learned long ago to cut down on the hassle of dry cleaning the vamp dust out of her favorite clothes.
"And that's what it's all..." Her voice trailed off, the exhaustion of the chase finally catching up to her. It wasn't like there was anyone around to appreciate her little joke, anyway. Doubling over, she clutched at her aching side. The first vamp, the one with the lead pipe, she'd taken him down quickly enough, but his pals had made a run for it. She'd caught up with the second one by the edge of the cemetery and polished him off with only a few minutes of trading blows, but the third one had taken almost an hour to track down afterwards.
Buffy tried not to think about the fact that, most nights, she wouldn't have bothered to waste the time hunting a lone and slightly incompetent vampire through the twisting back alleys of Sunnydale. Now she had a stitch from running for so long, and a tear in her new pants as well. Not to mention the tiny fact that it was well after one a.m. and she was supposed to be starting her new job in the morning. Great advice she'd be able to give, half asleep and post-slayage sore. But she'd be at the school, which meant she could just slip downstairs during her lunch break and check in with Spike. Satisfied with her rationalizing, Buffy tucked the stake into her belt and headed for home.