Cold Comfort

Set after 'Entropy' (Buffy Season 6)

Chapter Five

'Anya?' he says. 'Come with me.'

She looks up at him. 'When?' she says.

'Soon's you like. Now.'

If he were more sure of her response he'd kiss her now, to persuade her. But he doesn't know if she'd smack him in the head, kick the cat and run; or slip her arms round his neck, pull him close, melt like butter.

Then, he likes that in a girl.

'Come on,' his voice is low, his eyes are glowing.

There's a tense beat, like they're both watching the same tightrope-walker; and then she turns her head away, dropping his gaze. The tightrope-walker starts, sways, and plummets.

'What about the shop?' she says.

There's no change in her tone, but she's slumped a little. Come down to earth. He looks at her for a few more seconds.

'Right then,' he says.

She stands up, looks around, as if for clothes she hasn't shed, and moves towards the door. Her hand on the handle, she turns.

'Not coming back, ever?' she says.

He takes a step towards her, and then another, and then he's leaning over her, looking into her eyes. Not touching her by so much as a hair.

'You could make a sign for the door,' he suggests in a low voice.

'Gone to catch the post: back in five years.'

'Someone could fill in. Who's been helping you?'

'Halfrek.'

'Give her a rise. Say you'll bring her back some candy and a still-beating heart.'

She drops her eyes. 'I thought you weren't coming back.'

'I haven't made up my mind yet.' He hopes this sounds suggestive.

She wavers, then smiles luminously. 'I'll go find Hallie,' she says.

He opens the door a crack, and peers out.

'Nearly dusk. I'll go pick up a car. The car, my car. No stealing-'

She doesn't question it.

'You can pick me up in front of the shop. Give me an hour.' Now it's decided, she sounds business-like, and he nods. Before she leaves, she turns again.

'Spike.'

He pauses in the act of lighting up.

'On our trip. There's not going to be any - sexual intercourse.'

He raises his eyebrows.

'Right. Have to think of something else to do while we wait for the lights to change, then,' he says, and immediately wishes he hadn't.

She gives him a taut smile.

'Well. Just wanted to get that straight.'

Gotta like the bollocks on her though, he thinks as the door closes behind her. How many girls, you ask them to leave town with you, first thing they say is 'when?'

He sighs as he starts gathering his things together. He's not sure what he's doing. This journey had been his lone, desperate flight, his brave attempt to get out of Buffy's patch, out of her hair, out of her reach. Why's he turning it into Bonnie and Clyde?

Did Lady Macbeth stipulate 'no sexual intercourse'? Had Judith hung a sign in the shop before she decapitated Holofernes? Anya may be a knock-out and a tough cookie, but he's not sure she's going to fit in with his view of things.

Still - the sheer stupidity of the plan is exhilarating. He carts a giant roll of Bacofoil out of a sarcophagus and starts hacking it into the shape of a windscreen.

'I think it's worse than that,' says Tara, bending over the results of her spell. 'I think they're robots.'

Willow peers down where Tara's finger's pointing.

'Where?' she says. 'Are you sure? I thought those were trees.'

'No, look, here. This criss-cross pattern? It repeats itself, a whole lot of times.'

Buffy doesn't say anything. She'd like to. She'd like to dazzle the others with something fierily creative, and at the same time impressively well-researched. But after staring at the marks on Tara's parchment for nearly an hour, all they look like to her is the prints of a heavy-drinking gerbil trying to teach his three-legged girlfriend the rumba. She decides to keep that one under her hat.

'Could Warren do that, Buffy?' Tara asks, looking up at her. 'Build a whole big bunch of robots in such a short time?'

Buffy starts. 'I guess so. He seemed to be churning them out pretty fast last year.'

'But why would he want to?' says Willow. 'I mean, he had big plans - why would he want to go back to the sex-bot sweat-shop? That was hard to say.'

Tara frowns. 'That bot you fought last year, Buffy - she was pretty strong, wasn't she?'

'Darn right!' says Willow, before Buffy can answer. 'Don't you remember at that party, when she threw Sp - s-stuff around?' Stick my big fat foot in it, she thinks. No-one's mentioned Spike or Anya to Buffy since that night - just assumed the sound of their names would flick on the raw.

Tara gives Willow a rueful half-smile. Half for effort thinks Willow, because Buffy's suddenly lost to them, staring at the table, her eyes swimming. Her face looks like it's about to crack; it's horribly out of shape - not in a he-took-my-tru-u-uck sort of way: in a grown- up, distraught, having a bad nervous breakdown sort of way.

She has no idea why she's losing control this badly. She's always so good at blanketing over bad thoughts; it's a slayer function, she relies on it. Only now there aren't any thoughts at all - just a sick, hot feeling that sweeps her if someone says Spike, making everything ripple, like heat-shimmer.

Tara pretends nothing's wrong. It's a skill she didn't have before she came to Sunnydale.

'Well,' she says, 'I don't know what Warren's plan is, but I'm guessing an army of super-strong mechanical love-bunnies isn't going to make it any easier to deal with.' She takes a deep breath. 'We need someone to go find out what he's up to -'

Buffy's face clears a little. 'You guys stay here,' she says. 'I ...uh... I have ways of making nerds talk.'

'Buffy - are you sure that's such a good idea?' asks Tara.

Buffy leaves a pause. Banging the crap out of people is a reflex to her, not an idea.

Tara starts to stammer. She knows what she wants to say. 'I m-mean, Warren- knows you're not- not exactly a fan. And those robots - they're pretty strong.' She doesn't say, you'd be instant mash. 'I - I think we need someone who can go undercover, someone Warren won't s-suspect.'

She falters. She can feel Willow trying to read her mind - in the figurative sense, she hopes. She didn't like letting her watch the spell, can't help the shivers she gets when she thinks how readily, how gladly she once let Willow walk around inside her thoughts, speak silently, straight into her brain.

She tries again, and her voice comes out clear.

'I think we need Spike,' she says.

There's silence. Tara begins to sweat.

'I know it's not ideal,' she says, 'I mean, I know no-one feels like seeing him right now. But he doesn't have any good-guy reputation weighing him down, and we know he can handle himself. Plus, he's-' she swallows, 'he's done... business with Warren before. We just - we need-'

Buffy stands up suddenly. 'I'll go ask him,' she says. 'Get it over with.'

Willow looks alarmed. 'Are you sure you wouldn't like someone else to go?' She looks at Tara nervously.

Tara stands and puts a hand on Buffy's arm. 'I know he hurt you, a lot -' she begins.

The door clicks open softly. It's Dawn.

'Who hurt who?' she says, looking from Tara to Buffy. And then, 'Oh.'

Buffy picks up her coat. 'I better go,' she says.

'Where're you going?' asks Dawn, but the door's slipping shut already.

Tara looks flustered. 'Uh - we think Warren's cooking up some trouble,' she says. 'Buffy just went to see if she could find out some more about it.'

'Right,' says Dawn. 'And where do babies come from?' It doesn't come out defiant, but withered and plaintive. Tara looks concerned.

'Dawn, are you sick? You look kind of peaky. Are you sleeping ok? Maybe you should get an early night.'

'I'm sleeping fine,' says Dawn fractiously. She's been having nightmares, mainly about monks, but she doesn't want to think about that. Willow jumps up,

'I'll fix you some hot chocolate, Dawnie,' she suggests. 'Maybe a boost of calorific goodness is what you need.'

'That's a great idea,' Tara start gathering up her jars of herbs and ointments. 'I'll just move this stuff out the way, and then you can come sit down, ok?'

There's no answer, and both girls turn in time to see Dawn close her eyes and buckle against the wall; but not in time to catch her as she slides gracelessly to the floor.

Buffy takes the walk to Spike's in tearing strides, keeping pace with the beating in her head. She hardly knows what she's doing. She's out of control, her mind, her depth.

As she gets nearer her blood cools. Her feet too; she slows down.

What's he going to think of her, turning up like this, after everything?

What must the others have thought? That she'd jumped at the chance to chase him up, snapped at the excuse like a lizard at a bluebottle. She had.

She knew it would hurt, breaking it off, this thing, this freak-show- knew it would leave a wound. But she'd thought it would be just one more, the kind you clap a band-aid on, the kind that heals quickly, leaving a discreet scar. (She knows what his scar feels like under her lips. She begins to hurry again). A flesh wound, she'd thought. Not the kind you haemorrhage from.

Now she knows, she needs him - doesn't care if he's good for you or bad for you, muesli or morphine. Just knows she has to get back to him now, or things will be bad.

When she turns the corner to his crypt, there's an unfamiliar car standing there, wreathed in foil.

The door opens and Spike comes out, a cigarette glinting in his mouth, his blanket rolled up under one arm.

He stares at Buffy.

Her eyes are glazed and red-rimmed, and they glitter in the dusk. She's not standing straight; that Slayer elastic is vanished from her gait. She looks unbeautiful, she looks corroded, she looks collapsed.

This is it, this is why he can't leave Sunnydale. She'll die if he does.

He doesn't trust her to keep trying without him. He forgets he was leaving so she could have her Sweet Valley life back, forgets that another girl's agreed to elope with him, good as. Forgets their last encounter was ugly. The blaze of her presence, dimmed as it is, dazzles his mind as always.

'Why are you moving on, Spike' she asks coldly, saying his name as if it's 'Toe-rag'. 'Slept with everyone in Sunnydale already?'

He doesn't hear any betrayal, any shock, any loss, in her voice. Only sees that she still comes to kick him around, even if now she doesn't go to the trouble of moving a muscle to do it.

He closes the door behind him, pushes past her to the car, rotten with grief.

'Yeah,' he says, revving up. 'Whole football team.' He looks at her. 'I'm a slut.' Then he's gone, crashing off through the graveyard. She's left standing there, trying to scrape together some anger, numb.