Mother
Spike returns to Revello drive only when he's abso-fucking-lutely sure that no living thing is stirring. He is carrying the weight of his anger on a thin film of relief and quasi-gratitude and God help the person that crosses his path.
Thank you bloody Robin Wood for setting me bloody free.
The bitter words are bouncing around in his head, ricocheting off the shards of memories that now come freely as he makes his way silently through the house and down into the basement, grateful not to have encountered anyone inside. Glad, that he didn't have to speak to anyone, that he didn't have to see her.
In the quiet of the darkened basement, he sags lifelessly onto the cot, letting out an exaggerated breath, and swings his feet up to lie down, staring at the ceiling. He breathes in and out evenly, willing the anger to subside. It's giving him a headache, and he is already in a lot of pain.
Or maybe it's that he's fighting the inevitable, maybe that's what causing the pain behind his eyes. He closes them and lets it come.
Puzzle-piece-shaped memories now assemble in his mind completing pictures of people and times that he'd long forgotten.
He remembers with complete clarity the first time he'd seen Cecily. He'd thought her radiant, transcendent and so heavenly unattainable, which made her more attractive to him. He had felt so unworthy of her yet convinced that, through her, he could be the man he always wanted to be: accepted and loved. He attributed nearly every joy that could never attain to her, as if she alone held the power to grant true happiness to him.
He remembers approaching her with his card, asking if he could speak with her. It had all been so very proper and so very gentlemanly, but she stared at him as if he'd offered to pleasure her right in the front parlor. How dare he sully her with his very presence. And later…those words…words repeated to him even more recently by another.
You are beneath me.
Can I pick 'em or what?
Who are these women that they can so consume him? Well, to be honest with, William wasn't very much to consume. He was a wonderful son, but an incredibly poor excuse for a man. Yes he was a good man, whatever that was worth. It hadn't been worth much to Cecily.
Cecily: his porcelain goddess. His Venus. His muse. His…
He wonders if she ever really existed, or if it was simply his idea of the perfect woman projected onto the cruel, heartless bitch that was the real thing. All she truly ever expressed for him was disdain. All of the niceties he'd remembered of her had been in his imagination.
I was too...soft, too open...for her. She was hardened already and my optimism, my desire for love and joy and beauty only sickened her because she was already dead to it.
Again Spike recalls those words: You're beneath me. But someone else is speaking them now.
Buffy.
Cecily hated herself, her world and her circle of friends. She was miserable and so she'd made him miserable (and probably others as well.) Buffy clearly hated herself last year. She resented her circle of friends for bringing her back. She was miserable and she'd used him to feel…something…anything. And then what had she said?
I'm using you.
Well, at least she had the decency to admit it. Spike can't imagine any admission of guilt coming from Cecily's holy mouth.
Bint.
He doesn't like the idea of comparing Buffy to Cecily, but the resemblances are there. Two women, unwilling to love, one from incapacity, one from having endured so much that she felt dead inside.
...it's killing me.
Spike opens his eyes and stares at the pipes on the ceiling. They're new. Newer than the house. He remembers Buffy having to replace them. Remembers her annoyance at his suggestion to help. He remembers the glimmer of recognition, in her eyes, of the person inside him when he'd offered his assistance. The look she gave him before she quickly threw up the walls between them once more.
No, not like Cecily.
He remembers the first time he'd set eyes upon Drusilla. Such darkness he'd never seen before: a gothic beauty. She sang out to him with her knowing smile and captured him with her eyes. He was lost to her in an instant and any love he'd ever had for Cecily was quickly burned away by Drusilla's dark flame and the promise of an end to his suffering...his humiliation. The promise of being deflowered by the lust of the world was too enticing to turn away from. He invited her in willingly.
He remembers her...gift...and the first time that he'd opened his new, vampire eyes and looked into the night. Oh, how it glittered! It left him quivering in her arms, he was so overwhelmed. Every sense heightened, piqued, teased. He had been so blind to it all! But Dru gave him the world as it truly was meant to be seen.
His rapture had been shattered abruptly by Angelus, of course. And Spike recalls his first encounters with his grand-sire. How cold and cruel he was, yet how animated in his cruelty. He'd enjoyed torturing young William mentally, and later physically, reveling in the rape of his mind and his body: both acts equally bloody and merciless.
Angelus could jump head first into a lake of human suffering and backstroke to shore with an easy smile on his face. And William envied him.
William had given his unbeating heart to Drusilla and Angelus had sliced it up and served it right back to him piece by piece: blood dripping from his malicious grin. He has cursed William for being 'too human.' And William was ashamed.
Too human for Angelus and our lil' family, not enough of a man for anyone else.
Spike's eyes open to the ceiling. He slowly becomes aware of the pain of his bruises and lightly touches his face where Wood had been pummeling him. The wounds are healing already and the itchy skin around them is singing with pain.
He can still hear the strains of his mother's song in his ears and he allows himself to remember her now. How she loved him...really loved him, like none other since. The guilt at having loved her too much to let her go echoes in his chest, a dim memory. He had thought it such a gift, the immortality, but it had taken away the very thing he'd sought to preserve. Her.
He'd killed her. Twice. But she'd forgiven him. Had he forgiven himself? Clearly not.
He's punished himself by placing the women in his life above him, as he did her. He sees, now, how he's been searching for her in every woman he'd come to love. Searching for that complete and total acceptance of everything that he is and was. What he really needed to do was accept himself. To become his own man. To stop being love's bitch.
But it's easier said than done. Wood can attest to that, surely. It's probably been easier for him to turn all of his hurt into anger and seek vengeance on the one that had taken what had never really been his to begin with: his mother. Nikki the Slayer. Because, with the Slayer, it all comes down to the Mission. Everything and everyone else is secondary. Spike had realized this at the same moment the words left his mouth back at the workroom. Ah, the irony of it. He'd been taken there to die and he'd left feeling more alive than he had in decades.
He sits up and shrugs out of the duster. Pulling off his boots, he places them on the floor next to the cot. He removes a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his coat and lights one up, leaning his back against the cold concrete of the wall.
He closes his eyes and pushes the memories away for now. He is exhausted and he is...afraid. Of seeing her. Of knowing, definitively, her part in the plan.
His soul says: No, she didn't have anything to do with it. Look at the way she came to your aid. She cares for you. Things are different now.
His head says: You're a fool.
He senses her before he hears her. Hears her before he sees her. Smells her fear before she enters the room.
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Buffy knows he's home...well...back. She hesitates to go down there. There's no way of telling what he's thinking or feeling. Whether he blames her at all for what's transpired.
She thinks that if he'd wanted to see her, he would have come upstairs, but she knows he wouldn't have. And he was so quiet when he returned that she didn't hear him so much as feel him.
"What can I possibly say to him?" she asks aloud. Damnit, Giles. How dare he do this…decide for me.
Her eyes close tightly and her face becomes a mask of pain and resignation as the night's events flicker in her minds' eye.
Too far, Giles has gone too far. God! I don't have time for this petty shit. This, none of it, matters.
Her breathing is erratic and she makes a concerted effort to calm herself down. Wearing out her threadbare carpet by pacing back and forth isn't helping, so she sits on the bed, mindlessly tapping her foot.
I can't even trust him to be around us anymore. Who's to say he won't try it again or that he won't come up with some other 'solution' for my supposed shortcomings?
She jumps back up again and resumes pacing. Finally, she makes the decision to go downstairs, turns and opens the door quickly before her fear can hold her back.
Just...it was the look that he had on his face when she found him in front of Robin's. It made her the anxious. It's a look she hadn't seen for a long time and doesn't want to see it again, not directed at her.
He was angry, yes, but it was more. Much more. The air around him screamed danger. So is he dangerous now? Isn't that what she'd asked him to be?
Need to go to him.
That's all she can think as she tiptoes down the steps with deceptive speed and reaches for the basement door. She smells the cigarette smoke.
"Well, at least he isn't punching the walls," she attempts to assuage her fear. "And he's here...not...gone." The hair on her arms is standing upright as she opens the door. Her steps are hesitant and silent as she descends into the black.
She stops a moment at the bottom to give her senses time to adjust. The muted orange glow of his cigarette tells her where he is, but she could close her eyes and almost picture him sitting on the cot, propped up against the wall, hair mussed, shirt off maybe, his arm resting on the one bent knee as he slowly brings the cigarette to his lips.
"Something you need, pet?" His words cause her to jump a little, and she's glad there's no light there. There's a tightness in his voice which tells her that this will not be easy.
"I...just wanted-" she stammers.
"-to finish the job?" He says it, but there's no fire in his words. He knows, really, that she had nothing to do with the attempt on his unlife. He isn't even sure why he says it. He's angry still, yeah. Angry and disgusted. He could battle a warrior. He couldn't stand a coward.
Wood is a coward.
"No!" Her voice is a little too loud. She moves closer to him, able to make out his outline against the white wall, illuminated by the tiny bit of light coming from the high window. "No." She continues softly. "I wanted to make sure...that you...were...ok."
He peers at her through the darkness, the cigarette forgotten. Why am I doing this to her? I know she didn't-
"I didn't know, Spike" she says softly but firmly, moving towards him. When she reaches the cot, he moves his legs and she sits on the edge.
"I know, luv." He reassures her, relaxing a little if only to relax her. She sighs audibly. Spike takes one final drag on the cigarette and stubs it out in a makeshift ashtray at his side. "Let me guess," he says, exhaling with a grunt. "Principal knew that you were with Giles and he thought he'd take advantage o' the situation, right?" He reaches over and turns on a small lamp. When she doesn't answer he turns his head to study her face for the reason.
Buffy realizes that Spike doesn't know that Giles had anything to do with it. She doesn't know whether to tell him, but in her silence she has said it already.
"Ahhh. He...knew." His voice is low, too low, and his leans back against the wall. Her heart begins to race, and he hears it. Buffy expects him to explode, but instead he begins to laugh. It's breathy and mirthless.
"So..." he says thoughtfully, elongating the word. "The Watcher has more of the Ripper left in 'im than I gave 'im credit for, eh?" He laughs softly, shaking his head.
"He betrayed you, Spike, I don't think it's funny." She says, incensed.
"Oh no, pet," his words are deliberately slow as he looks at her. "He didn't betray me. There's no love between us." The light from the tiny lamp hits Spike just across his cheekbone. Buffy bristles at the calm menace in his gaze.
Buffy runs her hands through her hair and thinks on that. "You're right, it's me that he betrayed."
Spike tilts his head sideways, eyebrow crinkling in confusion. "How's that, luv?"
"How is that? He conspired to kill you, Spike. You." She points at him, waiting for his understanding to click in.
"Uh yeah, pet, I was there." He grunts and flicks an invisible piece of offending lint from the blanket with a little too much ardor.
She pulls her legs up onto the cot and sits facing him. "He lied to me. He took me to the cemetery and started spouting off about my duty and sacrifice." She gazes into the cinderblocks of the wall for a way to organize her thoughts. Spike softens as he watches her.
"He...he kept asking me about Dawn." She resumes, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. Spike's jaw clenches at the implication of those words. He studies her. "Asking me if I'd be willing to let her go to save the world. Said I need to be a 'general' and lead the troops.
"I didn't understand why we were going through that again, Spike, I mean...we'd had that conversation so many times. It didn't click, y'know?" She looks at him and he shakes his head slowly.
"I didn't understand why we were out there. And then a vamp rose and he told me to take my time killing it, all the time blabbing on and on about making difficult choices." She looks down at her fingers and pauses for so long that Spike isn't sure if she'll finish. "That's when it hit me."
She looks up at him. He stares into her and he can see it: rage. She is seething beneath the calm exterior and the fear that he'd felt when she'd entered the room was of him, that he'd think she was part of it.
"Buffy...don't be too hard on 'im." His words are plain but she waits a moment to see if anything follows. Something must be following such an idiotic statement as that.
"Excuse me?" She glares at him, her mouth held open in incredulity.
"He was trying to do the right thing. I 'aven't been the safest thing to 'ave around 'ere lately." He drops his eyes back to the blanket, picking at it.
"You-" she's searching for the words to tell him how wrong he is. She swallows hard and tries a different approach.
"Spike...you were in trouble. Real trouble. The First has had you by the balls since you got back into town. It was using you. It's been using all of us, but you most of all. That tells me something."
"What's that, luv?"
"That it's scared of you."
Spikes laughs out loud. "Oh c'mon, luv, don't oversimplify."
"I'm not!" she retorts. "Think about it." He regards her briefly and realizes she's serious. He nods for her to continue, mostly out of curiosity, but more out of longing. He loves talking with her when she reveals how her mind works. She never used to, not before...
"Why torture you? Why not just kill you, huh?" She waits.
He shrugs. "Stupidity? Boredom?"
She suppresses a smile. "No, Spike, it's because you are a threat. You have something it's afraid of. You said that it kept appearing to you as...as-"
"As you-" he finishes for her.
"So why would it do that?"
"It was the ultimate torture, pet." He catches her eyes and holds her there for a moment. "It knew that you were the only thing that mattered to me." Buffy fights to ignore the butterflies flapping in her stomach.
"It used my...image...my voice to try to break you mentally." He nods.
"And it used the Ubie to try and break you physically."
"Don' know about that." He looks down. "It only ever hurt me enough to make me weak...and then-"
"And then the real fun began." She whispers, shuddering. He briefly places his hand on her leg, his thumb idly caressing her skin through the cloth.
"Yeah." He removes his hand and decides to leave it at that. But she continues.
"What did it want from you?" Her voice has become soft again; it sends pleasurable chills down his spine.
Spike looked away from her for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "It wanted to me believe that you wouldn't come."
"That I would leave you there?" He nods. "What does that tell you?"
"That it wants me on its' side?"
"Maybe."
"Or that it wants us apart." He looks up at her again and their eyes meet in understanding.
"You're my strongest ally, Spike, my best warrior. You've become the one I trust the most." She pauses, looking directly into his eyes. He waits for her to continue, not wanting to interrupt this most-unexpected confession of need. "Giles almost destroyed us," she says softly. "All of us."
"Why do you place so much importance on me, pet?" His question is honest. She wants to be annoyed, but his expression is so sincere.
He doesn't understand. You're beneath me, Spike. I'll never be your girl.
"Spike, I didn't. The First did. And if Giles weren't so blinded by his Watcher's glasses, he would see that." He offers her a small smile. She merely looks back down. "I told him that he's taught me everything that he can. I don't need him anymore."
"Yes you do, luv." She glares up at him.
"For what? I can't even trust him." Spike takes her hand and squeezes it. She's so warm. It startles him every time, her heat.
"He loves you, Buffy. He knows what insurmountable odds you're up against-"
"We." She corrects him. "We're up against the crazy odds." He nods, acquiescing.
"Ok, we. We're up against something so powerful that we don' even know what it bleedin' is, Buff. Giles doesn't know what to do, so he does what he does best. He does what's sensible. He removes obvious dangers."
"So is Willow next?" Her expression doesn't change. He's a little thrown by how valid a point she has.
"I don' know what to say to that."
"There's nothing to say. We're all walking on the edge here, Spike. We're all battling our inner demons. It isn't for him to decide who is too dangerous. I'm the Slayer. That's my job. And I don't have time for personal vendettas and revenge." He really smiles at her this time and she is taken aback at his brightness and warmth.
He nearly lost his life tonight and here he is giving me advice on how to patch up things with his would-be killer.
"What?" she asks.
"You." He closes his mouth, but the smile remains. "You're bloody amazing. Jus' when I think-" He lets go of her hand and withdraws from her, suddenly uncomfortable.
"What…Spike?" She leans forward to touch his hand, understanding his hesitation as a learned behavior. "Tell me." He looks at her big green eyes and cannot help but take her face in his hand, cupping her cheek. Her skin is soft and so warm it seems to melt into his palm. Buffy feels the tingle from his touch travel through her body and down to her very center. She closes her eyes for a moment as her breath hitches.
"You're the Slayer." His vice is full of warmth and love. She gives him a 'duh' look and he laughs silently. "What I mean is...when I first met you, you were so uneasy in your role as the Slayer, even though you were the strongest I'd ever seen. And over the years, I've watched you grow into it and thought 'yeah, she's the Slayer now.' And then you'd grow a little more and I'd say 'no no no, now she's the Slayer.'"
She smiles again, instinctively leaning into his touch a little more. "And now?" Her heart is full of careful hope. She wants him to understand what she's feeling. She wants him to open up again.
His hand, however, drops from her face after a final caress and he studies her for a moment. "Now you're the Slayer. The Slayer of all slayers." She shrugs and looks away to cover the look of disappointment at the loss of contact.
"Maybe."
"No, no maybes. You're It. And you're going to save the world - again."
She turns her head back to him. "You have so much faith in me, Spike."
"And you have so little." They both laugh softly. "Now Giles-"
She groans, he tilts his head down to catch her eyes. "Giles loves you and he certainly doesn' want the world to end. 'e did what he thought was best for everyone concerned. Now, if you disagree-"
"If?" She looks back into the wall.
"If you disagree, you need to put 'im in his place, yeah? But," he turns her head back, by her chin, to look her in the eye. "Don't push him away, luv. You need him."
She contemplates this for a few moments and he takes his hand away again but not before slowly brushing his thumb across her lower lip. That simple movement sends ripples through her. Her eyes glaze over as they land on his mouth, the desire stirring deep inside. Spike is lost in her for a moment. His eyes are drinking her in. He inhales the intoxicating cocktail of her scent. His longing for her is almost too much for him to bear.
Drowning in you Summers. Drowning.
He catches himself and instantly stiffens all over, withdrawing from her again. She frowns a little, wondering the cause for such an adverse reaction. She noticed the look that he'd just given her. She recognized it: W a n t.
"Just talk to him...after you've calmed down." He finishes softly, recovering his composure. She looks into his eyes, which are now midnight blue yet still burn brightly in the dark room, and tries to remember her world before Spike came into it. It seems as if he's always been there.
"Ok," she says barely above a whisper. He smiles.
"It's late, luv." He rises from the cot and picks up his coat, folding it and putting it on a crate by the wall. "You should get some sleep." Buffy also rises and brushes her hands down her pants.
"You're sure you're ok?" She dreads going upstairs alone, but he's obviously come to some decision about 'them.' It isn't her right to press the issue. She just wishes…
"Ta, luv. Right as rain." He smiles warmly at her.
"What does that mean, anyway." She asks, playfully crossing her arms. He just smiles again and turns from her partially. "Alright…g'night." She reluctantly ascends the steps.
"'Night, luv." When he hears the basement door close behind her, Spike's shoulders sag. He gingerly removes his clothes. The bruises send lightening bolts of pain through his body and his abated anger returns, but he ignores it.
'No time for vendettas' is right. We've a war to win.
He climbs into bed, folding his hands behind his head. He reaches into his mind for the one perfect night he's had in his whole miserable existence. He doesn't have too far to travel. It is that night, not so long ago, when he and Buffy held each other in their arms, kissing, gazing into one another's souls.
It's only in these wee hours that he'll allow himself to indulge this way. Hell, he figure he's earned it after today. Usually he has to fantasize about Buffy's tenderness. Tonight he has a memory of it.
He closes his eyes and prays for sleep.
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Buffy climbs into bed and closes her eyes. She tries to remember that perfect night, such a short while ago...the way that Spike had held her. The way he'd looked at her as if he finally knew how she felt. She'd tried to tell him, finally.
And I failed miserably.
A tear slips out of the corner of her eye and she wipes it away. It's times like these when she misses Joyce the most. She wishes she could climb into bed with her and babble about life's little cruelties. Ask her for some of that motherly advice she so desperately needed. Wishes she were there to tell her it would all be okay, in the end.
No time for a pity party. We've got to save the world - again. And as long as we're still friends and he's at my side, we can do this. Together, all of us, we can do anything we put our minds to. That's what mom would say.
She exhales deeply and prays for sleep, but she knows it won't come.
"I wish you were here, mom."
"I am here, sweetheart." A voice says from the darkness.
TBC