**PART TWO**
CHAPTER NINE:
"So it's a once only deal?" "Yes." Giles clarified, fully leaning into Watcher-mode. "The opening of dimensions has to coincide with a number of astrological occurrences. Glory has but one chance to unleash hell on Earth. By the council's calculations, these phenomena shouldn't be in line for another few weeks yet." Buffy exhaled heavily. "That's good news, right?" "Yes. I-it would appear that the Watcher's Council came through after all." "And what happens when it doesn't work for her? I'm the first person she's gonna be after. I'm really not liking Dawn's idea about the line of dead people leading up to my door." Giles cringed as she had and something inside her squirmed and reassembled into an internal smile. "For once we are one step ahead and we can use the next few weeks to our advantage - plan a strategy and gather some kind of... force to use against her--No one is truly invincible. Everybody has a weak spot - an Achilles Heel. It's just a matter of discovering it." She thought of Spike harbouring the burns of the morning's sun and smiled. "Yeah... they do."
"So, that's it?" She asked standing up and working the knots out of her back with a long stretch of a yawn. "Well there is... there is something else." (Oh no.)
"Spike." The floor leaped and lurched under her feet as her chest heaved around an airless breath. An intense nausea clogged in her gut as her fingernails gripped at the tabletop. "I-I'm sorry, Buffy." "You're sure?" She asked with quick desperation, but she already knew. Knew from Giles' tone of voice when he had said 'there is something else'. Knew from the instinct that uncurled in her with vague yet certain knowledge. Knew from his multiple reminders of his innate nature - a nature she had surely known he wouldn't be able to deny. "I'm afraid so, Buffy. It--they began this week. There can be no other explanation." (No. Of course not.) There was only ever one explanation when it came to her love life: Vampire. She swallowed heavily against the lump in her throat. "I have to go." She stood with an exclamatory scrape back of her chair, her legs taking a few a few moments to recover from the numbness that was threatening to drown her in inertia. On her way to the door something caught her eye and she seized upon it, picking up the black onyx mould and examining it absently in a fruitless search for a price tag. "Tell Anya I'll pay for this... whenever." Her answer was a curt, and sympathetic nod and the pressing together of lips into something that could have been labelled a half-smile under different circumstances. She repeated the gesture and scowled as the bell signalled her exit.
She silently railed at the inevitability of her life, at the sense of foreboding that was always validated in the most sickening ways. And there she was walking home in through slowly darkening streets as rain began to spittle down on her. There would be a storm and for once she was grateful for the dramatic irony. A weight of dread pitted into her solar plexus as she neared Revello Drive, her fingers beginning to pain against the object in her hand.
Asleep. Again. Dead to the world. Dead to her? (I lied.) Lying prostrate on the sofa in a pose that made known his undead status. His face burrowed in cushions, his body preternaturally lax in a position that would have suffocated anyone who needed to breathe. One arm sprawled over his head and reaching out to a beam of fading light. Fingers twitching in parody of a cardinal rhythm. She hated him at that moment and concentrated the feeling in a bitter swell that she used to fuel her assault. "Get up!" The kick to the sofa had no effect and her hands fisted in frustration, one set of fingers white-knuckling around the black object. She tried again. "Get. Up!" He jolted with a muffled yelp, shook by the reverberating force and hollow echoes of her kick. His head and then body twisted and one blue eye frowned at her. "What is it?" A surge of white-blue rage bubbled up and emerged from her throat in a bitter laugh. "Everything." He knew. Knew something what was wrong. She could sense the instincts kicking in with swooping scopes of his mind. Did he leave his blood out to congeal? Had he forgotten to take his boots off? His inverted gaze fell to his bare feet and settled there. "You know." She didn't have anything in her. No words, no energy to transmute into sound, nothing. She nodded and so did he. "I... It was only a few. Only a bit." She backed away from him as he stood. Afraid of what he might do, afraid of what she might do, afraid of him and herself. Conflicting impulses swarmed, moulded and melted inside of her, fading away to nothing. No action other than her continued backing-away from him. He met her step for step, not closing but preserving the distance. There was something in his stance she didn't recognise, his shoulders tense and his body thrumming with... something. "I know I said I wouldn't, but -" "You just couldn't help yourself." She finished for him, her eyes narrowing against the sickeningly sudden understanding. "I didn't want to help myself." He met her eyes but there was no defiance there, his gaze wavered slightly as if unsure of his focus and she recognised it finally. Fear. "But I didn't-It was only a bit from each. I didn't kill anyone -" "Yes! You did." The surge of air rushing out of her stressed each word with desperation for him to understand as she did. Her heartbeat quickened with panic as she searched his eyes for a futile attempt to find some kind of comprehension. She tried again, weaker this time. "Yes... you did." Her shoulders rolled forward in defeat and she fell back against the wall. "I'm sorry, Buffy." It was all it took: three words and she straightened back up and back into herself, staring at him in incredulous anger and hatred and - "Who are you sorry for, Spike?" The steadiness of her voice surprised her and she realised she was borrowing something from the Buffy of years ago, from the Buffy she feared dead. "Me? Yourself? 'Cos you sure as hell aren't sorry for that person you killed. For their families." He flinched and her eyes seized upon it, a perk of hope rising to the forefront and keening on his every move. A hand came up to run through his hair and any minute trace of discord was wiped out with the neutralising of his features. Nothing. (This is what he is. Cold. Remorseless. A killer.) She shivered in the confines of a momentary hesitation of silence. "I don't... I can't..." "You can't imagine how they feel." It was a statement, but her ears heard the plea in her own words, knew that she hadn't achieved shutdown just yet. She hated herself. Hated that she didn't hate him. Silence engorged with the swell of her heartbeat and magnified the distance between them. He was lost to her now... surely? But then he spoke. "They'd feel... like you and me." She choked on a dry sob of what? Relief? Derision? He eyes flitted to the sofa he had helped purge of negative associations. "Then why?" He shrugged. He really didn't know. All in the moment he looked so lost and out of place and she found herself wanting to shout to him, remind him that this was his place, his home. "Do you want me to go?" (Oh God.) She blinked against her liquid vision and shook her head vehemently. "No, no, never. Don't ever ask me that again." "I don't know if I can -" "Couldn't you at least try?" She asked against the resistance of her tight chest. "Why?" "Because it'd make this easier." She heard something drop with a hollow din and in flashback pictured her weakening fingers losing grasp of the black object. She followed, slumping to the floor and belatedly becoming aware of the deflation and ebbing away of any resolve. Wide eyes fell to stare at the abstraction of carpet. Only aware of shapes and colours she saw something familiar come to her in a flash of pale skin, a triangle of black and a piercing dot of blue she used as her fixed point as she began to retrace the map of herself. "It's never easy, Buffy." Her gaze lifted to his as he sank down in front of her and reached out to skin that craved his touch. She exhaled with a heavy sigh as he made contact leaning in to him and covering the distance and letting his body absorb the tremors of her own. His hands were in her hair, brushing it back and his lips on her face, kissing her softly, fiercely. Gentle soothing caresses alternating to desperate pressures against her flesh as if he couldn't decide which way forward. She saw it then, in his eyes. She felt it: his desperation. He was so desperate for her to forgive him. Didn't he know that if she hadn't already, he'd be dead? "I just know." He stilled, his head pulling to look at her. "What?" She shook her head and made it known in other ways. In the way her lips touched his, in the way her fingers splayed against his cheek, in the way she rocked her hips against the hardening in his groin.
"I..." He trailed off with a gasp, the echoes of his every sound surrounding and trickling through her. She trembled, her insides shivering against the confines of her body as if struggling to externalise, to pull her inside out. Grasping at his shoulders she felt his release with the uncoiling of tension in the muscles under her kneading fingers. Her forehead dipped to rest against his as they recovered and she allowed her ragged breath to even out into the cadence being set by the rhythm of the letters he was painting with his fingertips on her back. She sighed. Quelling against him, her fingers began to trace something intrinsic on his scalp.
"What's this?" He asked, an amusing glimmer of boy-like curiosity gleaming in his eyes as he picked up the fallen shape. He examined it, turning it over and around and observing how the curve of its hollow captured and reflected the light. "It's for you." She admitted almost shyly, her eyes dropping to take in their entangled limbs and back up to his smiling eyes. "It's an ashtray." He chuckled, his chest and shoulders shaking with it and she felt herself smile until his face furrowed and became pensive. "You don't like it?" He shook his head, a quirk of a smile twitching at his lips. "I love it. But if it's a present - you have to give it to me." Rolling her eyes, she took it from his proffering hands. Only there was something in the way he held it out to her, almost challenging her to admit that it was more than just an ashtray. She cleared her throat and wriggled into a straight-backed pose, her eyes squinting at the ceiling for inspiration before meeting his. "I saw this today and it reminded me of you. I would like you to have it." He smiled as he leaned in for it, drawing his fingers over hers as he accepted the gift. "Thank you. I'll get you something." She lifted an eyebrow and he shrugged. His eyes dipping in the way hers had and drawing him into himself. "I am sorry." "I know." She whispered and pulled him back against her. Gasping at the sensation of his mouth on her neck, she moved with him as he shuffled on top of her and when she opened her eyes the world stopped. (No!) He tensed with her, his head lifting to frown at her. "What?" She made no move and he followed her panicked gaze over to the mantle piece. Over to the glowing, swarming, warning spheres. "She's coming." TBC (One or two chapters left - depending on length)