Crossing into unchipped country (11/?) by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: Around AtS 5.09 or 5.10
Author's note: Thanks to my wonderful betas!
Author's website:
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
Buffy is just about to hurl herself back through the factory entrance when a small form in game face bursts out of the door. It halts and swivels its head toward Buffy like a snake, as if there is no human spine in there at all. The face melts with a crunching sound and a grunt from the vamp. Buffy looks in vampire Faith's haunted dark eyes and she's paralyzed. This Faith must have been killed pretty soon after arriving in Sunnydale, hadn't even had time to choose the Mayor and turn evil. She was more innocent than the living Faith she knows. She was a victim. How can she kill her?
Faith shifts back and forth from game face another time and says with a big grin full of fangs, "Howya doing, B.? Any last words?"
Buffy opens her mouth to answer, although she has no clue what she's gonna say. Before anything can come out Faith turns gray and disintegrates before her eyes.
Spike looks at her levelly, stake still held at the height of Faith's heart. "Thought I'd spare you the decision, love."
What should she say? Thanks? He's the one she blames for selling Faith to Kakistos and at the same time she knows she's being unfair. Faith never stood a chance against Kakistos without her, Spike or no Spike. Still, her grief feels muted. Things that happen here don't really matter because this is not home. This was not the real Faith.
Spike gently takes her hand and tugs her towards where the truck was parked. He is not Spike. She shakes her head to get rid of the fuzziness and looks back to where Faith's dust speckles the concrete.
"Bugger! It's gone!" Spike says. She bumps into him because he's stopped. "We'll take a limo then. Always fancied me a ride in a hearse, got cheated of that when I died."
"Spike. Help me burn down this building. We can't afford to leave Kakistos alive."
Spike hesitates only a second. He nods at her and streaks off in a burst of vampire speed. It seems in direct opposition to his assent until Buffy sees him return with a kicking and struggling Ethan, carried by the scruff of his neck.
"Calm down, mate. You can't afford to let Kakistos on your tail either. Do a fire spell or something," Spike says.
Ethan straightens himself and brushes down his black star-spangled coat. "I told you, the building is impenetrable to magic. Cabling, remember? Magnetic fields?"
Spike paces up and down. "Think of something else. Collapse it? Trap them inside until the sun comes up?"
Ethan shakes his head. "Won't kill them. Tunnels."
Spike glances at the cars. "There's gas in the tanks. Let's get that out and douse the building."
Ethan gets a crafty look on his face. "I've got it. The building is protected against magic and people entering, but not against inanimate objects. We'll put the cars on fire, drive them to the gate and jump out. They'll explode Inside, in a purely mundane way. We've got a dozen limos here, ought to do the trick."
"Brilliant. Save two for our own getaway, though. Alright, go make the other two ready. Slayer and me'll drive them up and jump out, won't harm us."
Ethan's very quick and efficient when his safety is at stake. In no time the first two cars are ready for takeoff. Buffy drives the first one up to the gate at a modest thirty miles per hour, and jumps out at the last minute. She's calculated it a little too narrowly and almost crashes into the wall. Spike falls on top of her and takes the time for a quick grope before he rolls off and hastens to the next car. Buffy's determined not to be out-speeded by him and races after. The first explosion rolls out of the gate, closely followed by the second. A few vamps try to storm out but Buffy gets the first one and sees Spike hurry after the other two.
Another two explosions, and two more. It gets to be routine, drive up, jump out, roll, stand up, hop into the next one. When Buffy's heard explosion nine she gets up to find only one limousine left. The other one is already accelerating in the direction of the gate. Ethan's understandably hasty to leave here and they should be too, now they can think about getting away.
She's just in time to see Spike rip out the door of the last car. She hurries to the other side and opens the passenger door. The dashboard covers are ripped open and Spike's fiddling with a piece of wire. Hotwiring, Buffy knows this from TV.
When they've plowed through the goons and the gate and are safely on the road again, Buffy puts her hand briefly on Spike's arm.
"Thanks," She says. For Faith, she means. It's important to say it to him, because she so often hasn't said it to the other Spike.
"I know," he nods but keeps his eyes on the road.
"We could use the portal opener right now," Buffy says. "Why wait?"
"Don't like to do it from a moving vehicle, Slayer. Also, we can't be sure if the Amazing Rayne didn't try and double cross us. Don't trust too much on other people's skills. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. We best be gone. Might even think of stocking up on flammable goods in case we meet a Gatekeeper in the portal and it's as cranky as the one we saw in Iowa."
"Okay. Let's drive to my house? Or where it is in my dimension? If we cross near there we'd be safe after the transition. And I don't think the vampires are gonna be organized enough to follow us there."
"Yeah, vampires are the least of our concerns now, I reckon."
Buffy can't keep herself from checking the rearview mirror many times, though. She sees that Spike can't either. No driverless vehicles show up behind them and after ten minutes or so she relaxes in her seat and breathes out deeply. The moment she does the next hurdle pops up in her brain, grinning like a tumble doll on crack. Spike intends to cross with her into her home dimension for reasons he's kept secret so far. How do you solve a problem like Spike? The answer according to Giles would be devastatingly simple, but as she pleaded about Faith a few minutes ago, once you know a person the rules change.
It's like one of those decision trees. Staking: when impossible, go to box X: prevent him from entering your dimension. When impossible, go to box Y; please contact one of our employees at the following number. Only there is no one to call, the buck always stops with her. A leaden feeling descends. She remembers it well; she's been wearing it with varying degrees of confidence for years. Now that it's back she can be grateful for the days of reprieve, having a lighthearted adventure with a trusty companion.
She tries to sigh the heaviness away. She needs more data.
"You sound a little blue, pet. What are you thinking of? Feeling sad because this is nearly goodbye?"
Admitting that would be crossing a line she doesn't want to cross.
"I'll miss you, Slayer. Never thought I'd say that. Started feeling different about you."
Okay, so two minutes ago she thought this would be exactly what she wanted to hear, but now that he's almost saying it, she dances away from the feeling like a skittish horse. Not another vampire lover. Not the unsouled version.
"Spike, you're a great warrior and the perfect partner on an adventure like this, but I don't...I mean…"
The amused glint in his eyes makes her stop. "I'm not the guy you love? I got that, pet. You're not the woman I love either. There's the possibility - if we continued to work together - feelings might develop. But we won't. No hard feelings?"
"No, no, God, no. I'm glad we agree on this. I was afraid…" Buffy hesitates.
"You thought, me being Spike and all, I'd fall for you head over heals like my departed look-alike? Yeah, well, let's face it, I'm the real thing. Not a muzzled caged sad sort of vampire but the real Big Bad. I eat your kind, and I'm not planning on changing that. Wouldn't go down too well with you, I wager."
"You wouldn't, like, go to Africa to get a soul?"
"Emphatically, no."
Spike emphasizes his words with one of his sweeping gestures, making the limo swerve a bit. Limo swerves go on longer than ordinary car swerves, Buffy can feel it in her belly.
"Okay. I'm glad that's settled, then." Buffy says.
"Yeah, me too."
"Yeah."
The silence returns. Spike drives on. He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it one-handedly. Buffy wishes that the limo had a radio or CD-player but there's a gaping hole where radios normally are. Maybe Kakistos couldn't get his head around radios either. She doesn't want to look at Spike again, but she doesn't want to close her eyes and fall asleep either. She's done enough sleeping the past few days, and the adventure part is almost ending. Her neighborhood is approaching, and with the device in their possession, it won't be too hard to get back to her own dimension or universe.
She sees his right hand lying motionless on his jeaned leg. She's never looked really closely at Spike's hands before, and they are pretty big for a man as modestly sized as he is. Are his feet big too? There was only one thing she'd cared to measure in the old days, but it's embarrassing that she doesn't know this already. She stretches her neck to get a look at his feet. They seem enormous, but that could be due to his battered thick soled combat boots.
She returns her gaze to his hands. The black polish has nearly worn off. She opens her mouth to sat something about it but shuts it abruptly. All this getting friendly with him will lead nowhere. She could pretend she was making up for lost time, but the hard truth is, it's too late. Her eyes fill up and she looks away into the dark hole on her right. Stupid tears. Too late.
Spike puts his hand over hers. Never heavy, his hands or limbs. He only weighs on her conscience, never making her feel physically trapped and pinned like a bigger guy would.
"What do you want in my dimension, Spike?" she asks as the limo turns onto her street.
Spike cruises along slowly, both hands lax on the wheel now . He looks at her, his face tilted slightly down at her, eyes thoughtfully slitted.
"Something that's missing in mine. You think if you know, it'll help you decide whether to stake me or not?"
He grins at her confusion. Still reading her like a book, just like the other one. She used to hate him for that, but now she welcomes it. She smiles back, she can't help it.
"Here is the house."
It looks the same as hers. She and her friends haven't started personalizing it in the three wintry months they've lived there.
Spike stops and kills the engine. "This is it, eh? Moment of decision. What'll it be, Slayer?"
Buffy swallows. "What can you give me to make it easier? What promise?" Her voice sounds hoarse, no doubt telegraphing her feelings to Spike, who probably already knows about them from dozens of other signals.
Spike looks back steadily and takes her hand again. As the coolness of his palm enfolds her much smaller hand a sob sticks in her throat. She brutally forces it down and nearly chokes from it.
"One: I won't stay there forever. Once I find and take what I want, I'll return home. Two: You have the portal device at your end, so I'll need your help to return. Big incentive for good behavior."
He's still not saying what he's gonna do in her world, which she takes to mean that she won't like it.
"What does good behavior mean?"
She wants to bare her neck and say, here, take it all, but knows it for folly. Spike doesn't make a bid but balances his fingers together, stretches his arms and pops his knuckles loudly.
She considers briefly and tells him the bottom line. "Don't kill anyone."
Spike leans forward and puts his hand on her thigh. "Slayer," he says, "that's unreasonable. You can't ask me to live like that!"
Buffy just raises her brows and withdraws her hand. He exerts the subtlest of pressures on her thigh.
Buffy stares straight ahead. She's afraid that if she looks into his eyes she'll waver. "My world, my rules."
"Slayer…"
She crosses her arms securely.
Spike sighs and his voice is very close to her ear now. "Pig's blood it is."
She turns into the voice, her arms fall loose from their tight folding and she finds her lips and inch from his. His face is so close to hers that she can't focus on his eyes, a blue and white blur swimming in front of her. His arms have snaked around her back.
"One for the road, Slayer?"
The kiss is honey and smoke, his nose resting against her cheek, his fingers threaded in the hair at her neck. His lips are softer than sugar and more sweet. Buffy flows like molasses against his skin and wishes she need never solidify. Spike pulls away first and after a breathless second or two she opens her eyes to find him far enough away from her to get a really good look at him. The bright sodium lights of the street lamps make his skin milky white, his hair silver and his eyes darker than the night. The silence between them is prolonged and solemn. She looks back without saying anything.
Spike blinks and the connection is severed. They turn away from each other as if on cue. Spike reaches for the plastic bag with the magic device. He holds up the portal opener with Ethan's swan quill.
Buffy nods and they reach out to grab the blue ring of fire simultaneously.
Blink.
Buffy is stretched like spaghetti and strung around the universe's fork. Black strings creep in of their own accord next to her pale limp strands, crowding her out, smelling of squid, no, oil. She struggles against the sticky black tentacles, it's her fork, her sauce. The vortex spits her out. Metal clangs and she finds herself in her own Cleveland basement. She's chained to the wall and handcuffed in a very uncomfortable position. Handcuffs? Those are new. The cuffs are a little too high. The other Buffy must have been wearing really high heels.
She's galvanized into action when the realization hits. The other Buffy! She's home! The basement is silent but is a silence that rings with the absence of a great noise the moment before. Where is Spike? She needs to see him, remind him of his promise. She needs to see him once more.
"Xander!" she bellows, straining against the cuffs. "It's me, I'm home! Get me out of here!"
But those can't be Xander's footsteps she hears tip-tapping lightly and rapidly down the stairs. Dawn!
"Dawnie!"
"Buffy!" Dawn hurls herself around Buffy's neck and doesn't let go for a long time. "I was so scared, Buffy…"
Buffy's nose is squashed against Dawn's breastbone. She can't have grown this much in three days, can she?
Dawn looks her over with a smile. "You look as if you've been without a comb or moisturizer for days."
"Hey!"
Remarks like these will go stale very quickly, but it's good to be under a sister's scrutiny again.
"I'll tell you about it later. Unlock me, I need to go find Spike."
Dawn guffaws. "Spike who's in the insanely big hearse? He's wrapped around our front porch right now, not going anywhere soon. How did you find him?
"Dawnie, stop yammering and get me loose. It's not the Spike you know, it's one from another universe and he's unchipped, unsouled and dangerous."
Dawn jitters up and down from nervousness, unable to decide what to do first. "I have to go warn Xander."
"Dawn. First, cut me loose. Then go warn the others."
Dawn unlocks the cuffs with shaking fingers and Buffy sprints up the stairs, Dawn on her heels.
Buffy finds less mayhem and slaughter than she expected. Xander is standing on the porch, staring at the limo. Spike is still sitting in it, looking a bit dazed. Its crumpled nose is pressed up against the side of the house as if it was trying to get in, barring Spike from exiting through his missing door.
"Spike! You alright?"
"Bit shaken. I seem to remember the car wasn't moving?"
So does Buffy. "Maybe," she says slowly, circling the car, "you were aimed for the basement like me, where the other Buffy was. But you don't have an invitation so you bounced off the magic barrier, car and all. For which I'm kind of grateful, because it would have been hard to get the car out of the basement."
Spike grunts and feels his head. "Not exactly grateful here. On the upside, at least I have wheels."
He crawls out of his seat and manages to kick open the passenger door with Buffy's help. She grabs his arm to steady him when he almost falls out. The pointed silence behind her reminds her that they're not alone.
"Slayer, help me get this car down to Mother Earth."
Spike completely ignores Xander and Dawn, and Buffy realizes she can't do the same.
"Hey Xander."
Xander walks up to her but doesn't hug her like she expects. "You look...different. No time to shower I guess?"
"What's with you guys? Here I am, back from a harrowing adventure through different dimensions, driving halfway across America, and all you can do is comment on my personal hygiene?" Buffy says automatically, but her eyes have already swiveled back to Spike.
The front end of the limo lands on her front yard with a thud.
"Let me give you a hand, Spike," she says.
"Ta, pet."
The back of the car follows the front. Spike starts to move to the drivers' side but Buffy halts him with her hand. The black leather feels stiff and cold.
Spike picks off her hand gently but firmly. "I'll be back, Slayer. Dunno when."
She watches him clamber in the driver's seat and start the car. With a lot of wheel-churning and cursing Spike gets it positioned pointing to the street. "I'll be off, then. Cheers!"
And he's gone. Buffy stands and watches the car drive off in the direction they came from. Just before the turn the taillights wink on. Responsible driver, Spike. The sound of the receding engine goes on for a long time in the quiet suburb.
She turns to the house with a sigh and meets the avid stares of Xander and Dawn. Xander makes the universal gesture for 'well?'
Explanations seem unavoidable. "So, how much do you guys know already? You met vampy me, I guess?"
Xander's hand goes to a bandage on his neck she hadn't noticed yet. "We did, Buff, right when she landed on your chair with a big bang. The unrestrained type, you as a vampire. Not like I remember from when our nightmares became true."
"I'm sorta glad I didn't meet her. It must be so weird seeing yourself as a vampire."
Xander nods. "Willow has been giving many and detailed accounts of her personal experiences with this phenomenon. So, we didn't stake the Buffy vampire right away like Kennedy wanted, and researched first. Will realized we needed her if we wanted you back, like when Spike got the demon when you went to the Slayer dimension? Right now, Will and Ken are off buying spell supplies. And doing a movie. We would have tried a spell first thing tomorrow, Buff."
"Hey, that's cool. I can take care of myself, remember? I hooked up with the Spike from that world-"
"The same one who vamped you there?" Dawn says.
"Um, yeah. Well, he had a car. We figured the device came from Cleveland, and we had to get there to find one."
"We?"
"Yeah. We made a deal. I wanted to get home, he wanted his Buffy back," Buffy says defensively.
Why does she always have to defend her choices? Can't her friends trust her after all this time?
"It was an emergency. I allied with who was at hand," she says, going for stern and lectury. "No time for the fine points of morality."
Xander looks up at nowhere, in that remembering look he has, which comes out disconcertingly lopsided because his new eye doesn't quite track that far. "Wasn't it you who said, 'you can't beat evil by doing evil'?"
"I didn't do evil. I temporarily decided not to take immediate action on evil. That's not the same."'
"I thought there were vibes, Buffy. You two were vibey. And there were beseeching looks and hands on sleeves. I may be one-eyed but I'm not blind."
Buffy looks to Dawn for support, but her sister crosses her arms and nods. "There was vibeyness."
Great. She's back, in every sense of the word.
"But Buffy, I don't see why he's here, in our dimension. Unchipped and unsouled, I guess? How's that work with your so-called deal?"
If you put it like that it does sound wrong. The suspicion what she ought to have done nibbles uncomfortably at her peace of mind. Knowing what's right and being able to do it aren't the same thing at all, though. Blue eyes, knowing exactly what to do to her next, long strong fingers plying her body, they cloud the issue where they shouldn't.
"He gave his word he wouldn't kill anyone. He needs something in this world."
"But you don't know what? And you accepted a vampire's word? Playing a risky game, Buff. How will you feel when he breaks it?" Xander says, and she hates him for asking the question. He's never exactly been Spike's advocate, or Angel's, even when they were souled, so this comes as no surprise, but usually she finds it easier to dismiss his opinions.
"Well, I'm off to take a shower since my smell and appearance are so offensive. I'll wait until the others ar home to tell the gripping tale of my adventures. "
She has one foot in the door when a car turns onto their street. Her heart does a little double take but stands down again quickly. The engine sounds different. Never mind, shower and moisturize first. She has missed her personal care products and she's so gonna burn these clothes.
TBC