TITLE: "Normal again" (8/8?) part I
(Because of length, cut in five parts.)
AUTHOR: Richard Bachman
EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com
SITE: nope
FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this!
DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.
SUMMARY: based on the episode Normal Again. Instead of Buffy, Spike was poisoned by the demon and his consciousness was transported into an alternative reality where he found himself incarcerated in an asylum.
THANK YOU: For your patience. I love to write, but unfortunately, I also have to do other stuff for a living.
ACT 8: Hell wasn't such a bad place after all.
SCENE 1
I must have dozed off for a while, because the bedroom was dark when I opened my eyes again, and the murmurs coming from downstairs had quieted down. I blinked a couple of times, clearing the stickiness out of my eyes. I would have given them a good rubbing if it wasn't for the inconvenient set of chains holding my wrists. I bald my hands into fists and tugged on them. The chains rattled, but didn't give. Gathering more strength, I gave another tug, hard and violent enough to make bits of my skin that got caught between the links cut open. I ignored the pain. After all, I was used to hell of a lot worse, but the fact that I couldn't free myself out of my restrains worried me. If I wasn't trippin already, I would have sworn that they grew tighter every time I tried to break them. And then the notion slipped back into my mind.
Tara had done a spell on them. A binding spell. No wonder they could keep me down.
Whimpering in distress, I rocked back and forth, jerking on the steel restrains relentlessly, ignoring the pressure that built up around my wrists and ankles as I continued to trigger the spell. The bed shook and squeaked under my efforts. Panic was compelling me to do the lesser smart thing. The links started to cut into my flesh, and the pain increased till it was agonizing enough to bring tears into my eyes.
I heard footsteps. Someone came up the hallway and a small strip of light appeared underneath the door.
"Spike? Are you still awake?" A female voice asked. The door swung open and Tara stood in the doorway, her curved frame blocking the harsh light flooding in from down the corridor, but the remaining beams that came in still made me squint. She moved into the darkened bedroom and sought to switch on the lights, but I whimpered softly in protest, while I continued to rock the bed, making it sound as if a horny motel couple were making out in it. Tara gave me worried scowl, then closed the door and drew a chair to sit beside me.
"What's the matter? Are -Are you hurt?" She asked. I noticed that she wasn't quite at ease, sitting here in the dark with a madman re-acting a scene from "The Exorcist" in front of her eyes. Perhaps I should have let her switch on the lights, didn't want to give the easily frightened witch the wiggens. She was nice enough.
"Uhuh." I managed to say, and God help me, there was that scary little giggly thing again, ripping through my throat like an itchy mouse crawling its way out.
The witch gave me a long glance, it was an amusing mix of fear and pity and concern. Her lazy eyelids darted over to my hands, but her sight in the dark was of course very poor with her being human and all. She couldn't see that they were bleeding, and as she reached out and dabbed her slender fingers in sticky blood, she pulled back faster then when she would have when dealing with a snarling dog.
"S-Spike! Y-You a-are b-bleeding." She stuttered, a weakness she only showed when she was very upset and it wouldn't have normally bothered me at all, but at this particular moment, for some idiot reason, it sounded really funny and my soft giggling became a crazy and mean laughter, the kind you hear coming from bullies after they have beaten the crap out of you and have gotten away with your lunch money. I grinned a toothy smile at her, mocking cheer all plastered on my face, while I buckled my pelvis in a very obscene way. Tara looked at me with plain horror in her eyes.
Good work Will, scare the crap out of the cuddly lady warlock, why don't ye? Why don't you go outside and mug a couple of old grannies as well? Toss a baby-buggy on the road while you're on it.
"I-I am s-sorry." She whispered softly. "I s-should have checked the spell before I put it on you. H-here let me help." She reached out her hands and planted them on my wrists. I flinched away from her touch (Yep, that's the kind of bad-ass hardy vampire I was) but there wasn't much vacant space to move as the short chains won't allow me to. Tara closed her eyes and muttered something below her breath, her bosom rising and falling, straining the silk fabric of her emerald green dress. A pentacle dangling around her neck, a polished piece of alabaster crystal, framed in a pentagram made out of silver, suddenly lightened up and illuminated her face in a pale shade of blue. I whimpered, the daft coward that I was, as I felt the power that she had gathered with her spell flow out of her fingertips and damp palms, and into the steel restrains that had wrapped into my flesh like a python mangling its prey. The energy felt warm, clashing with the cold stinging sensation that had been there before the witch had offered me some relief from her magic. There was the sound of links moving over one another, and the agonizing pressure on my wrists declined, ebbing away till there was only a dull throbbing pain left. I swallowed and tried to move my hands and wriggle my fingers. They still worked, which was a relief because I had expected that they had gone black and stale by now. Tara walked over to the end of the bed and did the same to the chains that held my ankles. At the end of her private magic session, I felt a much happier patient.
"I broke the binding spells on the chains." She explained, her long, bailey coloured hair dangling in front of her shy eyes. "They won't hurt you anymore. Try to get some rest without slipping into unconsciousness."
All the crazy giddiness that had roamed inside of me like a jolly merry-go- round had gone away and was replaced by a feeling of utter misery and loneliness. I wished that she would stay and talk to me, so I won't feel so very lost. So I tried to form words with my mouth and tongue for a change rather then to continue my communication with her in one-syllable animal sounds.
"Don't go." I pleaded, my mouth dry and tasting vile, probably from that rancid stuff Red had tried to shove down my throat. "I don't want to be alone."
Tara had been standing up looking down at me, but as my words sank into her, she gave me a sweet reassuring smile and sat back into the chair next to the bed. "You're not alone, Spike. We're here for you. Willow is remaking the serum for the demon poison in your blood as we speak. You'll be all right."
"Not all right." I muttered, and awful feeling sunk into my stomach. "She doesn't know that this isn't real. I'm not supposed to be here."
Tara looked at me with concern and puzzlement written on her face. "Relax Spike. It's not how you think it is. Dawn told us about your um - experiences when you were away, and I know that they must seem very real to you, but they aren't. This -" She made a gesture with her hand. "Is real. And we are real."
"Yeah." I said, my throat constricting as I spoke. "Right. I'm a century old vampire with a government chip in my head, you're a young lesbian wicca, and Buffy is the Slayer of evil nasties. Sounds real realistic. More so even then me being a very severe mental head case drooling my life away in an institution while en-passant spinning you whole lot up out of my badly wired neurons."
"I know it sounds strange." Tara tried. "I wouldn't have believed it myself if I wasn't who I was. But I'm very certain about who I am, Spike. I am a witch. A real one with real powers. And -And I've seen things together with you guys, faced up to monsters and have been through enough to belief in myself. I know you can do that too."
Something sharp and icy stabbed me there in my dead heart. "I don't know who I am any more." I whispered hoarsely. "You don't know how it was, luv. I've been there, back in the real world for three longs months. I was in a place where the people continuously told me that I was sick and that I was delusional, but that they would be there to help me to recover. I didn't like to be locked up like a bloody animal in a fancy white cage, the hell I did. But, God, I was almost normal there! I had a name and I still had family. I was cared for. And- and even though I was wasting away behind the padded walls, I knew it would get better. I knew that there was a chance that I would eventually get out. I had hope that one day, the docs would let me go home and I would walk out of there with the sun on my face." I paused and swallowed, gazing at the witch with hazy eyes. "But here, I don't have such a chance. I don't have any hope. If I stay here, I will be stuck in the darkness forever. Alone."
I looked away from her with once again the sting of tears behind my eyes. A gentle, warm hand wrapped around my own, and gave me a comforting squeeze.
"You're not alone, Spike. You're one of the Scoobies. A friend. After all that we have been through together, we won't let you down."
"A friend?" I asked, fluttering my eyes in disbelief. "Is that what I am to you Scoobs? Funny thing." I snorted. "I thought you all hated my guts. Evil wicked thing without a soul aren't even considered a person in Buffy's or Harris' point of view."
"Oh, no! We don't hate you." She clarified rather hastily. "And-And Buffy certainly doesn't hate you. Xander might sometimes be upset about some weird stuff you say or do, but generally, we do consider you one of us now."
"Speaking of whom, where is she?"
Tara furrowed her brows a little, and said. "You mean Buffy? Um- she is still downstairs with Dawn. And she was helping Willow out to get some more serum out of the demon. She's really trying to help you -"
"Why didn't she come up to see me?"
Tara averted her eyes and even in the dark I could see the colour on her cheeks change. The shy wicca was never much of a liar. "She-She didn't want to -um leave the demon -um unguarded?"
Even in my distress, I managed to get a bit annoyed with her. "Seriously luv, if you're trying to make up an excuse, try not to raise your voice at the end of the sentence, it kinda gives away that you're lying."
"Spike, I didn't want to lie to you. But with Buffy, things are complicated."
"Now that's not much of an newsflash here."
"She didn't want to see you." She puffed out the words in one long sigh, and flinched her gaze away from my eyes so she won't be able to see my heart breaking into pieces. Clever girl.
"Have - have I done something to upset her?" I managed to ask rather moronically naive. My voice trembled while inwardly, I tried to pick up to shards and glue it back together into something that came close to the original to at least provide me with some courage. "Was it Dawn? I-I didn't mean to hurt her. I really didn't."
"Oh no! It isn't that. It's - She doesn't want anybody to know about you and her."
My heart was struck by a soddin earthquake and all the pieces fell apart again even before the glue had time to settle. She didn't want her friends to know about us. That's why she kept herself away from me. She was afraid that I would spill the beans to the Scoobs once I set my crazy eyes on her. My love for her flooding over my lunatic tongue before she could do anything to stop me from jabbering it out to her friends. She didn't want them to be disgusted with her. Perhaps, they won't even be able to forgive her, after all, sleeping with an evil soulless thing had to be one of the most horrific crimes a Do-Goodie Goodie Slayer could indulge into, even when it happened to be that the wicked nasty had real feelings for her and tried to do good.
I eyed at Tara, a tinge of anger rising up from the vastness of misery that threatened to sink my mind. "You already know about us. She told you, didn't she? That's why you're the only one checking out on me, while the others have to stay downstairs."
The witch nodded uncomfortably, a pang of guilt warping her face.
"Oh that's rich!" I blurted out in a loud voice, startling the wicca like a frail deer. "That's just rich! So now what? Did she ask you to perform another spell on me? One to get my tongue stuck to my nose so I won't be able to talk while I'm hallucinating? Why doesn't she just show up herself with a large frying pan and whack me on the head with it? A bit of kiddie comical relief on my behalf wouldn't even break me into a sweat, considering all the crap I've been through the last couple of months."
"Don't be so angry at her. She does care about you. I mean, she went to see me and asked if I could summon the gaskoelkastmaniaks -"
"It's glarghk guhl kashma'nik" I corrected. Bloody hell, even the witches were this badly educated. How were they supposed to fight these things if they didn't even get the pronunciation of their names right? "And you actually got it summoned?" I added sarcastically. "Hell, that's like calling out for your cat unfortunately named SteelRod and not getting a heavy biker bloke with a beard and a "I love mother" tattoo to knock at the door. Seriously, you're lucky, luv. You could have summoned any other, much nastier creature from the Never Never."
"I read its name right out of the books." Tara defended herself. "I know I'm bad with names. I didn't want to make any horrible mistakes. The kind that gets people killed."
We talked somewhat longer, with the wicca trying to persuade me that Buffy wasn't heartless and had done everything to get me fixed up after the demon poisoning. Everything, except for coming to see me and looking me straight into the eyes that was. It made me feel bitter, and it made me realize that she never would accept me for what I was. I was a vampire here, and she was the slayer. It was a relationship doomed to fail miserably, at least if I could dare to call whatever thing we had a real bond, rather then a series of mindless and lustful shagging appointments. They could had made a bloody sitcom out of the concept and I would have watched and laughed about it if it wasn't for the fact that it bloody well was happening to me.
After a long and exhausting talk, Tara left to check on Red again, helping her to stir the cauldron so to speak. She told me for the last time not to worry and not to hold a grudge against the Slayer for not turning up at my sickbed, which I snorted away with some colourful commentary. Joking my way around it as I was used to do. But inside, I felt like hell.
Tara did manage though to put my mind back on the straight path, no more pathetic lunatic acts for William here, although there was still enough distress lingering at the back of my mind to swallow me whole. When the wicca opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, a sickening smell, a stench that you would get when something crawled inside the oven and died there, rose up from the kitchen downstairs and turned my stomach. The second serving of crazy juice, I presumed, was on the menu.
I was left alone in the dark after Tara was gone. Alone with my train of thoughts that had much difficulty to stay rational. I can't let them do this. I can't stay here. I argued, although the bed felt really soft and comfortably warm, and the darkness was kind of comforting too, shielding me from everything that could do me any harm. What difference does it make, the less hardy part of me quarrelled, if you're strapped down to a bed here, in this soddin William-verse where you're so-called "friends" treat you like a loon, or that you're tied down in a bed in the loony-bin?
Either way, you're not really going anywhere anytime soon.
I closed my eyes for a sec, feeling another giggle rising up, but this time, it wasn't madness that drove me to it, rather the realization of the total absurdity of it all. Although the thought of giving up was very tempting, there was a part of me, the sane William part of me I supposed, that didn't quite want to agree with the lazy-me.
I couldn't stay here. There was a difference between this and the other world, which had nothing to do with how much pain or bliss either one of them had to offer. There was something far more important that tipped the scale. A little thing called reality.
I had lost five years of my life already. Five years spent in a world that wasn't real, building up relationships that weren't there, hating people in conflicts that were all just made up. Killing, fighting, scheming. Laughing, loving and crying about nothing, emotions spun out of thin air. Caring about a girl who wasn't who I thought she was, letting her hurt and torment me, while in the reality I had left behind, she had been there all the time, waiting for me to return out of La La land.
I was sick and tired of wasting my life away. I wanted to live again. Really live. I wanted to feel the sun beating down on my face till my nose started to peel, and I wanted to see her smile at me. That enchanting toothy smile that told me that she was glad to see me instead of being repulsed. Back in reality, Dr Buffy Summers was waiting for this poor lost patient, and I was willing to fight my way out of this to get back to her.
The chains rattled as I pulled on them, twisting the links while I was testing for weaknesses. With a hardy tug, the restrains around my left wrist snapped, followed briefly by the ones wrapped around my right wrist. The shackles dropped on the carpet with a heavy clunk, and I checked the damage I had done to myself in my less lucid state; there were pretty imprints in my skin and the parts that had been just underneath the steel links were red and raw, with a couple of scratched drawing a bit of blood, but the wounds were already starting to close.
I guessed that there were also upsides in being a vampire.
The shackles around my ankles were even easier to break, since I had much more strength in my legs then in my arms. Getting up proved to be a bigger challenge. One step out of the bed and everything in the soddin room started to sway. I grabbed a bedpost and tried to steady myself before I tripped and caused enough racket to get the Scoobs scuttling up the stairs to check things out. My legs felt as if they were made out of rubber, and although I didn't though it was possible for a vampire to run a fever, I felt flushed.
It must be the poison, I reasoned for as far my swirling brains allowed me to. It's triggering some kind of immune reaction in my body. Must be wickedy strong to even be able to get a dead one like mine up and running this determinedly.
Or, a small voice in the back of my head explained, this could be a crystal clear clue given to you from who ever is up there and running this puppet show that you're really trippin on your own sick brain juices here. Seriously, a dead person suffering from flu, could it even be more ridiculous?
I shook my head feverishly (punning unintended here) to get rid of all the inner voices driving me crackers, and headed for the vanity in the corner of the room (This was Joyce's bedroom, I recalled. I saw pictures of little Buffy with happy mom and happy dad smiling in the camera.) and snatched my trench coat off the surface, dragging a variety of tiny knickknacks down with it as though I had tried to perform a very clumsy magic trick.
Thank God for sound isolating carpets.
I stooped down to pick them up, containers with day - night and afternoon crèmes, a handful of lipsticks in rainbow colours and a couple of mouldy combs. I didn't want to leave Joyce's bedroom in a bloody mess. Buffy would be upset. But the minute my head bobbed down, a massive headache, solid and hard as a brick wall, hit me and my temples started pounding in a nauseating rhythm. I took a deep unnecessary breath and flung my head over my shoulders.
This was going to be hard.
I cleaned up as much as I could without having to steam clean the carpet from my stomach juices. There was a bottle of blood red nail polish that had lost most of it contents on the wax-polished tabletop, but I had it tidied up with a Kleenex tissue and a bit of spit (Don't look so disgusted, you know I have done worse). It left a bit of a pink haze there, but I figured you wouldn't see it that much against the dark oak. Hell, even I had trouble finding the stain, let alone Buffy with her humanly impaired googly eyes. I was sure she wouldn't notice a thing.
Still, I shoved her mom's photo over the spot, just in case the sun tend to highlight the furniture in an odd angle, you never know.
I headed for the window, opened it and climbed out of the room and onto the roof. I knew a tree just outside of Buffy's room that was tall enough for me to reach from up here. I also happened to know that it was just sturdy enough to support my skinny vampire ass. Not that I'm some sort of pathological stalker of course. Hell no. Just happened to be very familiar with the Summers family resident. Besides, Angel was worse.
I came by Buffy's bedroom-window as I scuttled over the roof, and noticed that the curtains were drawn and a light was burning inside. Stooping over and crawling on my hands and knees, I managed to pass her window unnoticed without plummeting off the roof and breaking my neck. I reached out and grabbed an old branch, twisted and ravaged by too frequent use. I wrapped my hands around it, pushed myself off using the drainpipe and flung my legs over to the base of the thick branch, swinging them over it. I had almost managed to get myself into a comfy sitting position when I heard voices coming from the Slayer's bedroom.
"It isn't fair!" A door slammed shut and I didn't even have to hear more to know that it was Dawn. "Why can't I go to mom's room to see him? You know he didn't mean to hurt me. Otherwise the chip would have gone off."
"Dawn! Spike can be dangerous right now. I don't care how much you think of him as a cuddly demon-friend, but he is and stays a vampire! You heard Willow. We don't know what that poison is doing with his mind. What if he snaps and the chip cannot stop him any longer? Do I have to offer my little sister to him to see if he recognizes you and starts sobbing for forgiveness? It doesn't work that way with demons."
I closed my eyes and breathed out an annoyed sigh as I overheard her lecturing on Little Bit. Great, cruel words coming from the mouth of the Bitchy Slayer, another world of hurt had just opened up to me.
"How can you say such things about Spike? He saved you from that kuleriak demon! If it wasn't for him, it would have been you lying there!"
"It's glarghk guhl kashma'nik Bit." I whispered below my breath, agitated. Bloody hell. Could at least one of them get it right for a change?
"I didn't ask him to get in the way." Buffy said, rather coldheartedly. "I could have killed that thing and strolled back home before midnight. But oh no, the big Bad had to show up and play the chivalry knight again. Demons of the world beware, it's Spike in a trench coat. It would have been cool if it wasn't for the fact that he was so incredibly clumsy in saving the lady in distress and ended up needing to be saved himself."
Ough, that was really below the belt. Although I knew she sometimes didn't much appreciate my help, I had thought that at least most of the times I had done some good for her. But now, she was saying that I was more of a burden to her then anything else! I clenched my hands around the tree trunk, splitting bark as I drove my fingers into it. My ears picked up a grinding noise and I realized that it was me, grating my teeth.
"I can't believe that you're saying this." Dawn uttered, her voice shaky. "That is just mean. You wouldn't react like this if it was Willow or Xander who got hurt. Or me."
"That's because Spike is a demon." She said, as if that notion alone could explain everything. "Believe me Dawn, he can take care of himself. He has a whole century of practice to pass the test. As soon as we give him the antidote, he will be better in no time. Meanwhile, don't get near him!"
I had heard enough. Crazy hallucinated crush on an imaginary girl or not, her words still made me angry. And it bloody hurt. I tightened my jaw, and started climbing down the soddin tree, making as little fuss as possible, not to draw attention from the Scoobs inside. I jumped down the last few feet and landed with my boots on the lawn, swaying a little on my feet as the headache rewarded my efforts with a pang of nausea.
Buffy's bedroom faced the back garden, once a luscious place of greenery with all sorts of fancy flowers and scrubs, now a severely overgrown wilderness with grass that reached up to knees and an a collection of exotic looking weed flourishing in the patches where once the rosebushes had grown. Buffy wasn't much of a gardener, and ever since Joyce died, no- one had the time nor the patience to keep it from turning into a rainforest. I wouldn't be surprised to trip over a Bengal tiger in here. The lawn was sure thick enough to hide one.
I gazed back into the house. There was a porch made out of white woodwork that led into the kitchen, since the entire ground floor of Buffy's house was raised a few feet above the ground. The large, murky windows (They really needed a good cleaning. Buffy was sloppy again.) provided a view inside, and I saw both witches standing in front of the kitchen counter; Tara looking into a spell book and muttering something inaudible while Red was crushing a bunch of unidentifiable objects in a bowl using a stone pestle. Somewhere at the back, a pot was boiling over with some black bubbly stuff, probably the antidote in making. It hissed clouds of steam once it dripped on the hot cooker.
I turned my back on all that, and waded down the lawn. Tall grass brushed my legs and dew collected on my boots as I fled out of the garden, determined to leave the Scoobs and the Slayer for what they were and find my way out of this soddin hallucination.
TBC
AUTHOR: Richard Bachman
EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com
SITE: nope
FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this!
DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.
SUMMARY: based on the episode Normal Again. Instead of Buffy, Spike was poisoned by the demon and his consciousness was transported into an alternative reality where he found himself incarcerated in an asylum.
THANK YOU: For your patience. I love to write, but unfortunately, I also have to do other stuff for a living.
ACT 8: Hell wasn't such a bad place after all.
SCENE 1
I must have dozed off for a while, because the bedroom was dark when I opened my eyes again, and the murmurs coming from downstairs had quieted down. I blinked a couple of times, clearing the stickiness out of my eyes. I would have given them a good rubbing if it wasn't for the inconvenient set of chains holding my wrists. I bald my hands into fists and tugged on them. The chains rattled, but didn't give. Gathering more strength, I gave another tug, hard and violent enough to make bits of my skin that got caught between the links cut open. I ignored the pain. After all, I was used to hell of a lot worse, but the fact that I couldn't free myself out of my restrains worried me. If I wasn't trippin already, I would have sworn that they grew tighter every time I tried to break them. And then the notion slipped back into my mind.
Tara had done a spell on them. A binding spell. No wonder they could keep me down.
Whimpering in distress, I rocked back and forth, jerking on the steel restrains relentlessly, ignoring the pressure that built up around my wrists and ankles as I continued to trigger the spell. The bed shook and squeaked under my efforts. Panic was compelling me to do the lesser smart thing. The links started to cut into my flesh, and the pain increased till it was agonizing enough to bring tears into my eyes.
I heard footsteps. Someone came up the hallway and a small strip of light appeared underneath the door.
"Spike? Are you still awake?" A female voice asked. The door swung open and Tara stood in the doorway, her curved frame blocking the harsh light flooding in from down the corridor, but the remaining beams that came in still made me squint. She moved into the darkened bedroom and sought to switch on the lights, but I whimpered softly in protest, while I continued to rock the bed, making it sound as if a horny motel couple were making out in it. Tara gave me worried scowl, then closed the door and drew a chair to sit beside me.
"What's the matter? Are -Are you hurt?" She asked. I noticed that she wasn't quite at ease, sitting here in the dark with a madman re-acting a scene from "The Exorcist" in front of her eyes. Perhaps I should have let her switch on the lights, didn't want to give the easily frightened witch the wiggens. She was nice enough.
"Uhuh." I managed to say, and God help me, there was that scary little giggly thing again, ripping through my throat like an itchy mouse crawling its way out.
The witch gave me a long glance, it was an amusing mix of fear and pity and concern. Her lazy eyelids darted over to my hands, but her sight in the dark was of course very poor with her being human and all. She couldn't see that they were bleeding, and as she reached out and dabbed her slender fingers in sticky blood, she pulled back faster then when she would have when dealing with a snarling dog.
"S-Spike! Y-You a-are b-bleeding." She stuttered, a weakness she only showed when she was very upset and it wouldn't have normally bothered me at all, but at this particular moment, for some idiot reason, it sounded really funny and my soft giggling became a crazy and mean laughter, the kind you hear coming from bullies after they have beaten the crap out of you and have gotten away with your lunch money. I grinned a toothy smile at her, mocking cheer all plastered on my face, while I buckled my pelvis in a very obscene way. Tara looked at me with plain horror in her eyes.
Good work Will, scare the crap out of the cuddly lady warlock, why don't ye? Why don't you go outside and mug a couple of old grannies as well? Toss a baby-buggy on the road while you're on it.
"I-I am s-sorry." She whispered softly. "I s-should have checked the spell before I put it on you. H-here let me help." She reached out her hands and planted them on my wrists. I flinched away from her touch (Yep, that's the kind of bad-ass hardy vampire I was) but there wasn't much vacant space to move as the short chains won't allow me to. Tara closed her eyes and muttered something below her breath, her bosom rising and falling, straining the silk fabric of her emerald green dress. A pentacle dangling around her neck, a polished piece of alabaster crystal, framed in a pentagram made out of silver, suddenly lightened up and illuminated her face in a pale shade of blue. I whimpered, the daft coward that I was, as I felt the power that she had gathered with her spell flow out of her fingertips and damp palms, and into the steel restrains that had wrapped into my flesh like a python mangling its prey. The energy felt warm, clashing with the cold stinging sensation that had been there before the witch had offered me some relief from her magic. There was the sound of links moving over one another, and the agonizing pressure on my wrists declined, ebbing away till there was only a dull throbbing pain left. I swallowed and tried to move my hands and wriggle my fingers. They still worked, which was a relief because I had expected that they had gone black and stale by now. Tara walked over to the end of the bed and did the same to the chains that held my ankles. At the end of her private magic session, I felt a much happier patient.
"I broke the binding spells on the chains." She explained, her long, bailey coloured hair dangling in front of her shy eyes. "They won't hurt you anymore. Try to get some rest without slipping into unconsciousness."
All the crazy giddiness that had roamed inside of me like a jolly merry-go- round had gone away and was replaced by a feeling of utter misery and loneliness. I wished that she would stay and talk to me, so I won't feel so very lost. So I tried to form words with my mouth and tongue for a change rather then to continue my communication with her in one-syllable animal sounds.
"Don't go." I pleaded, my mouth dry and tasting vile, probably from that rancid stuff Red had tried to shove down my throat. "I don't want to be alone."
Tara had been standing up looking down at me, but as my words sank into her, she gave me a sweet reassuring smile and sat back into the chair next to the bed. "You're not alone, Spike. We're here for you. Willow is remaking the serum for the demon poison in your blood as we speak. You'll be all right."
"Not all right." I muttered, and awful feeling sunk into my stomach. "She doesn't know that this isn't real. I'm not supposed to be here."
Tara looked at me with concern and puzzlement written on her face. "Relax Spike. It's not how you think it is. Dawn told us about your um - experiences when you were away, and I know that they must seem very real to you, but they aren't. This -" She made a gesture with her hand. "Is real. And we are real."
"Yeah." I said, my throat constricting as I spoke. "Right. I'm a century old vampire with a government chip in my head, you're a young lesbian wicca, and Buffy is the Slayer of evil nasties. Sounds real realistic. More so even then me being a very severe mental head case drooling my life away in an institution while en-passant spinning you whole lot up out of my badly wired neurons."
"I know it sounds strange." Tara tried. "I wouldn't have believed it myself if I wasn't who I was. But I'm very certain about who I am, Spike. I am a witch. A real one with real powers. And -And I've seen things together with you guys, faced up to monsters and have been through enough to belief in myself. I know you can do that too."
Something sharp and icy stabbed me there in my dead heart. "I don't know who I am any more." I whispered hoarsely. "You don't know how it was, luv. I've been there, back in the real world for three longs months. I was in a place where the people continuously told me that I was sick and that I was delusional, but that they would be there to help me to recover. I didn't like to be locked up like a bloody animal in a fancy white cage, the hell I did. But, God, I was almost normal there! I had a name and I still had family. I was cared for. And- and even though I was wasting away behind the padded walls, I knew it would get better. I knew that there was a chance that I would eventually get out. I had hope that one day, the docs would let me go home and I would walk out of there with the sun on my face." I paused and swallowed, gazing at the witch with hazy eyes. "But here, I don't have such a chance. I don't have any hope. If I stay here, I will be stuck in the darkness forever. Alone."
I looked away from her with once again the sting of tears behind my eyes. A gentle, warm hand wrapped around my own, and gave me a comforting squeeze.
"You're not alone, Spike. You're one of the Scoobies. A friend. After all that we have been through together, we won't let you down."
"A friend?" I asked, fluttering my eyes in disbelief. "Is that what I am to you Scoobs? Funny thing." I snorted. "I thought you all hated my guts. Evil wicked thing without a soul aren't even considered a person in Buffy's or Harris' point of view."
"Oh, no! We don't hate you." She clarified rather hastily. "And-And Buffy certainly doesn't hate you. Xander might sometimes be upset about some weird stuff you say or do, but generally, we do consider you one of us now."
"Speaking of whom, where is she?"
Tara furrowed her brows a little, and said. "You mean Buffy? Um- she is still downstairs with Dawn. And she was helping Willow out to get some more serum out of the demon. She's really trying to help you -"
"Why didn't she come up to see me?"
Tara averted her eyes and even in the dark I could see the colour on her cheeks change. The shy wicca was never much of a liar. "She-She didn't want to -um leave the demon -um unguarded?"
Even in my distress, I managed to get a bit annoyed with her. "Seriously luv, if you're trying to make up an excuse, try not to raise your voice at the end of the sentence, it kinda gives away that you're lying."
"Spike, I didn't want to lie to you. But with Buffy, things are complicated."
"Now that's not much of an newsflash here."
"She didn't want to see you." She puffed out the words in one long sigh, and flinched her gaze away from my eyes so she won't be able to see my heart breaking into pieces. Clever girl.
"Have - have I done something to upset her?" I managed to ask rather moronically naive. My voice trembled while inwardly, I tried to pick up to shards and glue it back together into something that came close to the original to at least provide me with some courage. "Was it Dawn? I-I didn't mean to hurt her. I really didn't."
"Oh no! It isn't that. It's - She doesn't want anybody to know about you and her."
My heart was struck by a soddin earthquake and all the pieces fell apart again even before the glue had time to settle. She didn't want her friends to know about us. That's why she kept herself away from me. She was afraid that I would spill the beans to the Scoobs once I set my crazy eyes on her. My love for her flooding over my lunatic tongue before she could do anything to stop me from jabbering it out to her friends. She didn't want them to be disgusted with her. Perhaps, they won't even be able to forgive her, after all, sleeping with an evil soulless thing had to be one of the most horrific crimes a Do-Goodie Goodie Slayer could indulge into, even when it happened to be that the wicked nasty had real feelings for her and tried to do good.
I eyed at Tara, a tinge of anger rising up from the vastness of misery that threatened to sink my mind. "You already know about us. She told you, didn't she? That's why you're the only one checking out on me, while the others have to stay downstairs."
The witch nodded uncomfortably, a pang of guilt warping her face.
"Oh that's rich!" I blurted out in a loud voice, startling the wicca like a frail deer. "That's just rich! So now what? Did she ask you to perform another spell on me? One to get my tongue stuck to my nose so I won't be able to talk while I'm hallucinating? Why doesn't she just show up herself with a large frying pan and whack me on the head with it? A bit of kiddie comical relief on my behalf wouldn't even break me into a sweat, considering all the crap I've been through the last couple of months."
"Don't be so angry at her. She does care about you. I mean, she went to see me and asked if I could summon the gaskoelkastmaniaks -"
"It's glarghk guhl kashma'nik" I corrected. Bloody hell, even the witches were this badly educated. How were they supposed to fight these things if they didn't even get the pronunciation of their names right? "And you actually got it summoned?" I added sarcastically. "Hell, that's like calling out for your cat unfortunately named SteelRod and not getting a heavy biker bloke with a beard and a "I love mother" tattoo to knock at the door. Seriously, you're lucky, luv. You could have summoned any other, much nastier creature from the Never Never."
"I read its name right out of the books." Tara defended herself. "I know I'm bad with names. I didn't want to make any horrible mistakes. The kind that gets people killed."
We talked somewhat longer, with the wicca trying to persuade me that Buffy wasn't heartless and had done everything to get me fixed up after the demon poisoning. Everything, except for coming to see me and looking me straight into the eyes that was. It made me feel bitter, and it made me realize that she never would accept me for what I was. I was a vampire here, and she was the slayer. It was a relationship doomed to fail miserably, at least if I could dare to call whatever thing we had a real bond, rather then a series of mindless and lustful shagging appointments. They could had made a bloody sitcom out of the concept and I would have watched and laughed about it if it wasn't for the fact that it bloody well was happening to me.
After a long and exhausting talk, Tara left to check on Red again, helping her to stir the cauldron so to speak. She told me for the last time not to worry and not to hold a grudge against the Slayer for not turning up at my sickbed, which I snorted away with some colourful commentary. Joking my way around it as I was used to do. But inside, I felt like hell.
Tara did manage though to put my mind back on the straight path, no more pathetic lunatic acts for William here, although there was still enough distress lingering at the back of my mind to swallow me whole. When the wicca opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, a sickening smell, a stench that you would get when something crawled inside the oven and died there, rose up from the kitchen downstairs and turned my stomach. The second serving of crazy juice, I presumed, was on the menu.
I was left alone in the dark after Tara was gone. Alone with my train of thoughts that had much difficulty to stay rational. I can't let them do this. I can't stay here. I argued, although the bed felt really soft and comfortably warm, and the darkness was kind of comforting too, shielding me from everything that could do me any harm. What difference does it make, the less hardy part of me quarrelled, if you're strapped down to a bed here, in this soddin William-verse where you're so-called "friends" treat you like a loon, or that you're tied down in a bed in the loony-bin?
Either way, you're not really going anywhere anytime soon.
I closed my eyes for a sec, feeling another giggle rising up, but this time, it wasn't madness that drove me to it, rather the realization of the total absurdity of it all. Although the thought of giving up was very tempting, there was a part of me, the sane William part of me I supposed, that didn't quite want to agree with the lazy-me.
I couldn't stay here. There was a difference between this and the other world, which had nothing to do with how much pain or bliss either one of them had to offer. There was something far more important that tipped the scale. A little thing called reality.
I had lost five years of my life already. Five years spent in a world that wasn't real, building up relationships that weren't there, hating people in conflicts that were all just made up. Killing, fighting, scheming. Laughing, loving and crying about nothing, emotions spun out of thin air. Caring about a girl who wasn't who I thought she was, letting her hurt and torment me, while in the reality I had left behind, she had been there all the time, waiting for me to return out of La La land.
I was sick and tired of wasting my life away. I wanted to live again. Really live. I wanted to feel the sun beating down on my face till my nose started to peel, and I wanted to see her smile at me. That enchanting toothy smile that told me that she was glad to see me instead of being repulsed. Back in reality, Dr Buffy Summers was waiting for this poor lost patient, and I was willing to fight my way out of this to get back to her.
The chains rattled as I pulled on them, twisting the links while I was testing for weaknesses. With a hardy tug, the restrains around my left wrist snapped, followed briefly by the ones wrapped around my right wrist. The shackles dropped on the carpet with a heavy clunk, and I checked the damage I had done to myself in my less lucid state; there were pretty imprints in my skin and the parts that had been just underneath the steel links were red and raw, with a couple of scratched drawing a bit of blood, but the wounds were already starting to close.
I guessed that there were also upsides in being a vampire.
The shackles around my ankles were even easier to break, since I had much more strength in my legs then in my arms. Getting up proved to be a bigger challenge. One step out of the bed and everything in the soddin room started to sway. I grabbed a bedpost and tried to steady myself before I tripped and caused enough racket to get the Scoobs scuttling up the stairs to check things out. My legs felt as if they were made out of rubber, and although I didn't though it was possible for a vampire to run a fever, I felt flushed.
It must be the poison, I reasoned for as far my swirling brains allowed me to. It's triggering some kind of immune reaction in my body. Must be wickedy strong to even be able to get a dead one like mine up and running this determinedly.
Or, a small voice in the back of my head explained, this could be a crystal clear clue given to you from who ever is up there and running this puppet show that you're really trippin on your own sick brain juices here. Seriously, a dead person suffering from flu, could it even be more ridiculous?
I shook my head feverishly (punning unintended here) to get rid of all the inner voices driving me crackers, and headed for the vanity in the corner of the room (This was Joyce's bedroom, I recalled. I saw pictures of little Buffy with happy mom and happy dad smiling in the camera.) and snatched my trench coat off the surface, dragging a variety of tiny knickknacks down with it as though I had tried to perform a very clumsy magic trick.
Thank God for sound isolating carpets.
I stooped down to pick them up, containers with day - night and afternoon crèmes, a handful of lipsticks in rainbow colours and a couple of mouldy combs. I didn't want to leave Joyce's bedroom in a bloody mess. Buffy would be upset. But the minute my head bobbed down, a massive headache, solid and hard as a brick wall, hit me and my temples started pounding in a nauseating rhythm. I took a deep unnecessary breath and flung my head over my shoulders.
This was going to be hard.
I cleaned up as much as I could without having to steam clean the carpet from my stomach juices. There was a bottle of blood red nail polish that had lost most of it contents on the wax-polished tabletop, but I had it tidied up with a Kleenex tissue and a bit of spit (Don't look so disgusted, you know I have done worse). It left a bit of a pink haze there, but I figured you wouldn't see it that much against the dark oak. Hell, even I had trouble finding the stain, let alone Buffy with her humanly impaired googly eyes. I was sure she wouldn't notice a thing.
Still, I shoved her mom's photo over the spot, just in case the sun tend to highlight the furniture in an odd angle, you never know.
I headed for the window, opened it and climbed out of the room and onto the roof. I knew a tree just outside of Buffy's room that was tall enough for me to reach from up here. I also happened to know that it was just sturdy enough to support my skinny vampire ass. Not that I'm some sort of pathological stalker of course. Hell no. Just happened to be very familiar with the Summers family resident. Besides, Angel was worse.
I came by Buffy's bedroom-window as I scuttled over the roof, and noticed that the curtains were drawn and a light was burning inside. Stooping over and crawling on my hands and knees, I managed to pass her window unnoticed without plummeting off the roof and breaking my neck. I reached out and grabbed an old branch, twisted and ravaged by too frequent use. I wrapped my hands around it, pushed myself off using the drainpipe and flung my legs over to the base of the thick branch, swinging them over it. I had almost managed to get myself into a comfy sitting position when I heard voices coming from the Slayer's bedroom.
"It isn't fair!" A door slammed shut and I didn't even have to hear more to know that it was Dawn. "Why can't I go to mom's room to see him? You know he didn't mean to hurt me. Otherwise the chip would have gone off."
"Dawn! Spike can be dangerous right now. I don't care how much you think of him as a cuddly demon-friend, but he is and stays a vampire! You heard Willow. We don't know what that poison is doing with his mind. What if he snaps and the chip cannot stop him any longer? Do I have to offer my little sister to him to see if he recognizes you and starts sobbing for forgiveness? It doesn't work that way with demons."
I closed my eyes and breathed out an annoyed sigh as I overheard her lecturing on Little Bit. Great, cruel words coming from the mouth of the Bitchy Slayer, another world of hurt had just opened up to me.
"How can you say such things about Spike? He saved you from that kuleriak demon! If it wasn't for him, it would have been you lying there!"
"It's glarghk guhl kashma'nik Bit." I whispered below my breath, agitated. Bloody hell. Could at least one of them get it right for a change?
"I didn't ask him to get in the way." Buffy said, rather coldheartedly. "I could have killed that thing and strolled back home before midnight. But oh no, the big Bad had to show up and play the chivalry knight again. Demons of the world beware, it's Spike in a trench coat. It would have been cool if it wasn't for the fact that he was so incredibly clumsy in saving the lady in distress and ended up needing to be saved himself."
Ough, that was really below the belt. Although I knew she sometimes didn't much appreciate my help, I had thought that at least most of the times I had done some good for her. But now, she was saying that I was more of a burden to her then anything else! I clenched my hands around the tree trunk, splitting bark as I drove my fingers into it. My ears picked up a grinding noise and I realized that it was me, grating my teeth.
"I can't believe that you're saying this." Dawn uttered, her voice shaky. "That is just mean. You wouldn't react like this if it was Willow or Xander who got hurt. Or me."
"That's because Spike is a demon." She said, as if that notion alone could explain everything. "Believe me Dawn, he can take care of himself. He has a whole century of practice to pass the test. As soon as we give him the antidote, he will be better in no time. Meanwhile, don't get near him!"
I had heard enough. Crazy hallucinated crush on an imaginary girl or not, her words still made me angry. And it bloody hurt. I tightened my jaw, and started climbing down the soddin tree, making as little fuss as possible, not to draw attention from the Scoobs inside. I jumped down the last few feet and landed with my boots on the lawn, swaying a little on my feet as the headache rewarded my efforts with a pang of nausea.
Buffy's bedroom faced the back garden, once a luscious place of greenery with all sorts of fancy flowers and scrubs, now a severely overgrown wilderness with grass that reached up to knees and an a collection of exotic looking weed flourishing in the patches where once the rosebushes had grown. Buffy wasn't much of a gardener, and ever since Joyce died, no- one had the time nor the patience to keep it from turning into a rainforest. I wouldn't be surprised to trip over a Bengal tiger in here. The lawn was sure thick enough to hide one.
I gazed back into the house. There was a porch made out of white woodwork that led into the kitchen, since the entire ground floor of Buffy's house was raised a few feet above the ground. The large, murky windows (They really needed a good cleaning. Buffy was sloppy again.) provided a view inside, and I saw both witches standing in front of the kitchen counter; Tara looking into a spell book and muttering something inaudible while Red was crushing a bunch of unidentifiable objects in a bowl using a stone pestle. Somewhere at the back, a pot was boiling over with some black bubbly stuff, probably the antidote in making. It hissed clouds of steam once it dripped on the hot cooker.
I turned my back on all that, and waded down the lawn. Tall grass brushed my legs and dew collected on my boots as I fled out of the garden, determined to leave the Scoobs and the Slayer for what they were and find my way out of this soddin hallucination.
TBC
