All Characters except the ones you haven't heard of belong to Joss Whedon and Co. Not me. It's not like I'd want them, either. I mean, how would I feed them all?
~Star Mouse
@ @ @
Twelve cemetaries. All up for vampires. Spike living in one of them. Gee, which one should she patrol first?
She headed towards the one farthest from Spike's crypt. She'd work her way towards him. Save the best for last. And hope when she got there that he wouldn't look at her that way he'd been recently.
Pitying. While there were looks she hated worse, pity was pretty high up on her list of loathed emotions in other people.
Wow, she was in the mood to kill something.
And the hellmouth always obliges.
Three vampires leapt out of the shadows. Two crowded minutes passed. The dust settled. Buffy wiped her stake off on her pants. They were old pants. The dust and blood had made a paste. Good thing they were old pants. She walked on.
@ @ @
He could sense her. He had always been able to sense her. He'd thought it went along with being desperately in love with her. *Snort* Desperate was right.
He could still sense her. But recently it was just a predator/prey instinct. Depending on her mood, their respective roles could change. Who was currently hunter or hunted.
She was hunting now, but she smelled like a human, not a Slayer. She was prey. It was a dangerous mood she was in. Self-pity could get her killed, out like this. Spike watched her from the shadows as she dusted a pair of vamps. She started to walk on, but then stopped. And looked straight at him, though she couldn't see him.
"Spike?"
He sighed, and stepped out of the shadows.
"Slayer."
"Hi." She ran a hand through her hair. "Um. What- what are you doing here?" Her hope was almost palpable. He hated to crush it, but he could no more let it live than kill her.
"Watcher sent me."
She covered it well. Her face barely flickered with the wave of dissappointment she felt.
"Damn. I told him I didn't need help. You can go on back to your crypt. I don't need a baby~sitter."
He didn't love her, but he didn't want to see her dead. Again.
He walked forward. "No, he was right. You're in no condition to patrol."
"Gee, I wonder why," she muttered, looking at the ground.
And he broke. How many times had they been over this? Best end this one quickly. Volume seemed to help, to that end.
"Look, Slayer! I tol' you. I'm sorry, but it just won't work. I spent too bloody long being shot down by Buffy the Bitch." He turned around. God, she irritated him. How could he have spent so long just taking this bull?
"So this is, what, Payback?" He spun. There it was. That glint of a Slayer scorned.
"Nothing so vindictive," he sneered, as he was so good at doing, and started away, down the path between gravestones. It was her route, so she followed him.
"Then what is this? You don't just wake up one morning and stop loving someone!" She got a flash of dejavu. Junior year. Possessed by a ghost, acting out his final confrontation with his lover, played by Angelus. At the time, the situations had been oddly parallel. History repeating.
"No," drawled Spike, walking swiftly. "This is a brassed~off vampire gradually realizing that he has been in love with an utter bitch in hate with him. This is a vampire finally moving on with his unlife and not ready to scoot back a few miles to meet that bitch in the middle when she decides she' s ready to reciprocate."
He plunged on, relentlessly. "I loved you, you hated me. Do you think I enjoyed that? Sure, it was fine for you, made me easy to use. And you did. You treated me like dirt's trash. And I accepted it. I *did* enjoy it, you know it? Know why? Because I knew it was the best I could expect from you. You thought it was killing you? Ha! It was bloody destroying me. You're a fickle, vicious woman, yeah, I see that now. And it's gon' to stop."
@ @ @
Giles had, after several minutes of sympathy, managed to get the yellow demon to hand over a small book of prophesies by some mad priest or another, but before he'd had a chance to look at it, there'd been a bit of a midnight rush, and he'd been too busy serving odd and foul~smelling drinks to odd and foul~smelling customers to think much about it.
And then there had been a rather loud sound, and someone had slammed onto the bar in front of him. But they had come from above, not either side.
He had caught a flustered glimpse of red fabric, and then a piece of the wall had become a hole, accompanied by more noise and bright light.
Giles looked down at the unconcious young woman sprawled on the bar top.
"Good Lord!"
@ @ @
"Xander! Xander!"
There was a muffled reply from the bathroom. Anya grabbed up a stack of bridal magazines and clacked into the bathroom.
"Honey, do you like the--" She looked up. "Oh. Removing your facial hair? Good. You were getting kind of scratchy. But I'm tactful, so I didn't say anything."
Xander tapped his razer against the sink and carefully made another track in the foam on his chin.
"Thank you, Sweetie. I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'Congrats on the progress.' What were you saying?"
Anya held out two open magazines with post-it notes on the corners of the pages.
"These. They're the same price, same availability. I would like to know which you would prefer."
Xander looked down at the page. He blinked, and lowered his razor. "Is that a bridal magazine?"
"Uh huh. What do you think?"
"Anya, when we say bridal,' we mean with weddings. Not horses. You know that, right?"
"Yes. This is for the wedding. Our carraige is going to be pulled by two white horses I'm renting, and they need matching bridals. Do you like the white or the silver?"
"Woah. You lost me on 'wedding carraige.' You realize that we're operating on a low budget on this one. It's not like we have a lot of extra cash, Ahn."
"Yes, well it's your fault that we're even *having* a second wedding. The first one should have been plenty. I'm not going to make the best day of my life into a bargain buy because my groom was being stupid."
"Confused. I was confused. I apologized. We agreed not to talk about that. It didn't happen."
"Right. So there's no reason to scrimp on our first wedding. Now pick."
Xander looked down at the page, a whipped and broken man.
"Silver."
@ @ @
"It has stopped. It breaks my heart to think about how I treated you. It makes me cringe, okay? It makes me hate myself. Does that give you a happy?"
Spike groaned. Why was everything so black and white for her?
"No. I don't hate you, Slayer. I just don't love you anymore."
"Well, I love you!" Buffy was near tears. "I love you," she whispered again. They'd said all this before. She just had to hear it. Again and again. Hoping there was hope in it. Hoping some night he would say something different, when she told him she loved him.
Spike shook his head. When he spoke again it was softer, as if he'd used up his supply of anger for the moment. "If you'd said that, oh, three years ago, we would have been fine. Hell, if you'd said it one year ago I would've taken it. Things would'a been different. But you're too late. You're too damn indecisive, and you're too self~absorbed."
Ode to Joy pierced the night. Spike sighed and half~turned, so Buffy wouldn't see his pink phone. Still had an image, after all. "Hullo?"
He listened for a moment, and then glanced at Buffy.
"No, she's here. She's fine."
He paused again. He turned around completely. His eyes were narrowed in suspicion or confusion, one. Buffy tried to read his expression, but it was impossible.
"You say she what? Is that possible?" He snorted. "Wait, stupid question, forget I said it. Is she dangerous?" Another pause, and his eyebrows shot up. "I suppose that answers that, then. Right. We'll be right over. Unless you'd like us to finish the patrol... Alright then, we'll see you." He pressed the end button and slipped the phone back in the pocket of his duster, where it collided with the stakes also living there.
He set off towards the entrance to the cemetary, gesturing over his shoulder at Buffy. "C'mon. Bartender Frank has a problem."
Buffy jogged to catch up. "Who?"
"Watcher. There's some bird materialized in the middle of the bar, shot a hole through the wall, and passed out."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"But, a bird? What kind?"
Spike stopped short. "Wha-- oh. Right. Bloody Americans," he muttered. "Bird. Some chick. Dame. Broad. Woman. You know. Female of the species." He glanced back at her. "Whatever species that may be."
"So what's the problem?"
"The problem is at some point this explosive person's gonna wake up, and he'd like a bit of back up when it happens. Now come on."
Story still alive?
Let me know whether or not to kill it/ put it out of it's misery, whatever.
~Star Mouse