Broken Origin II - Chapter Nine
"Oh , my god! Spike?!"
Gentle hands were on him, slowly lifting him. Spike's skin stung with bloody friction burns on his hands and face, and he hissed as his raw cheek brushed against Buffy's shirt – strike that, his bleedin' shirt. The hole in his chest had stopped hurting quite as badly, but the truly disturbing thing was that he could feel blood slowly oozing from the wound.
"Spike? Are you okay?" she was whispering urgently, holding his weight up, trying to look into his face.
"What the hell is she doing?" one of the hunter's asked out loud. They clearly thought she was crazy.
"He killed your family, Buffy!" her watcher shouted across the alley in exasperation. "He's a vampire! You can't trust him – one day he'll get tired of playing house and turn on you!"
Spike leaned against a wall, not knowing where he found the strength to keep upright, other than knowing he'd rather be staked again than let anyone know just how well they'd succeeded in working him over. He couldn't quite keep his chin up, though – kept dropping just like a bloody great stone to his chest as he fought to stay conscious.
The slayer surprised him by stepping up to him and touching a careful fingertip to the deep grazes along his sharp cheekbone and chin.
He looked at her warily from beneath his lashes as she lifted his chin. Her green eyes were sharp as they drifted over his face, settling briefly on the raw, bloody scrapes from he'd landed on the alley pavement on his face and ended skidding on it for a good thirty feet.
"Buffy," he tried to talk to her, but his mind was going all sluggish, and his demon had sprung up during all the action, and had yet to leave him though he tried to will it away. It was just as well, it reckoned. It'd be too hard right now to talk around his fangs without sounding like a second-year with a bad lisp, anyway.
"What did they do to you?" Her hand had found the blood staining the front of his shirt, and the ragged hole left by the watcher's council hunter regulation stake – the one that had barely missed his heart.
Stunned by the amount of choked concern in her lowered voice, he quickly searched out her eyes, and suddenly wanted to kill the council hunters all over again just for putting that pained look on her pale, thin face.
"Miss Summers, did you hear him? He killed your family!" an unknown voice called out.
Buffy's eyes were glittering with angry, unshed tears as she looked down at the sticky red blood staining her fingers. She looked ready to do murder.
Spike gave her a minute shake of his head. He knew what she was thinking. Hell, he was thinking along the same lines, but in this instance, any kind of revenge was a dish best served cold. He swallowed, and forced out one quiet word.
"Don't."
Buffy's hand was shaking as she stared at it, but her voice was hard and steady on as she spun around in the headlights and addressed the hunters beyond them.
"Two vampires in L.A. killed my family – and they're dust. Spike is my family, now. If I ever catch any of you trying to stake him again…" she shook her head, her voice trembling with her fury. "Believe me when I say I'll make you hurt in places you never even knew you had."
Shocked silence reigned in the pre-dawn air as the Slayer turned back to the vampire, and carefully moved under his arm.
Spike allowed himself to be supported for a moment before he abruptly shrugged her off.
The watcher called out a protest when he realized they were leaving, and Spike raised his hand and flipped the man off without breaking stride or looking back.
"He's right, you know," Spike made a point of telling her back at the crypt.
Frowning in the middle of her bandaging, the Slayer squinted at the ugly gouges on his face in the light of the lone candelabra and gave him a swift glance before unrolling another length of gauze from the large first aid kit on her lap.
"We really gotta' get more light in here," she said offhandedly. "Who's right?"
"The watcher." Spike drew in a sharp breath and held it, gritting his teeth as she casually stuck a finger in the hole in his t-shirt and used it to rip down his front.
"Sorry," she said apologetically as she yanked the sides apart, and jerked them down his arms. "What about Giles?"
"I will turn on you someday," he told her seriously, looking at her carefully through his lashes as she held up a small bottle of peroxide. "Hell, I have turned on you. I am evil; it's inevitable. An' if I don't, I guarantee you I'll leave."
She paused, but then went on, looking unconcerned as she twisted the bottle's cap off. "I'm not worried about it," she bluffed.
Spike's eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. "Oh, you aren't are you? Well, y'bloody well should be! Don't think I would?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Duh. Of course I do. You forget, I've experienced you at your worst. Despite what you might think of me, I don't think of you as some puppy I brought home and house trained." She actually smiled at him then, her eyes twinkling in the candlelight. "I know you still bite. I've got the bruises to prove it."
"You don't know my worst," he shot back darkly, but she only shook her head.
"Let me worry about it, okay?"
Spike made a face at her puppy comparison then, but decided to let the subject go as she tilted the bottle towards his chest. He arched backwards against the cold crypt wall, his abs trembling. "Forget the disinfectant and just throw a couple of plasters over it, will you? I'm dead already, y'know – s'not like I have to worry about fevers n' infections."
The slayer sat up straight, blowing strands of hair out of her eyes as she scowled at him. "A couple of band-aids aren't going to do anything for you either, Spike. There's a hole the size of my fist, here, and it's still kind of – yuck – bleeding. Or oozing…I dunno. Do vampires bleed? Is it a lack of blood pressure thing?"
"I've had worse , Slayer. Stop mothering me and go down and see if you can dig out another shirt for me." He made a movement as if to get up, but she planted a warm hand on the space between his neck and shoulder and pushed him back down.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to strip me of all modesty," Spike complained. "Will'ya quit fussin'? M'fine."
"You always say that. And you don't have any modesty, Spike." She bent towards his chest again and sighed. "There are like, wood splinters in here, anyway. That can't be comfortable. The peroxide will help wash them out…I think. Stop being such a baby, Big Bad, and suck it up."
"I'll suck somethin' in a minute, alright," he growled, looking pointedly at her throat. Rolling his eyes, he gave another impatient growl disguised as a sigh and dropped his head back on the chair, staring resolutely at the ceiling.
Wincing, she turned the bottle over…
Rupert Giles approached the crypt where the vampire and the slayer had entered several minutes before, and was peering at the door in the darkness when a loud roar shook the night.
"Arrrgh! Sonofabitch, Slayer! Fuck!"
Jumping away from the steel door in surprise, he looked the stone façade over, wondering what in the world could possibly –
"Sweet sodding Christ! Ought to kill you with your own bloody stake right now, d'you know that?!"
Alarmed, Giles had his hand on the entrance when, unbelievably, he heard a loud feminine giggle.
"All done, and you were so brave, Spikey. Too bad I'm all out of lollipops."
"Rrrrr. Think it's funny, now, do you? M'serious as a heart-attack, love. I could jab the business end of that splinter of yours right through your sternum, and pluck that bratty lil' heart of yours off the point just like a crushed, overripe plum. Lay you back over my arm an' suck it out through your bleedin' neck – "
The giggle turned into all-out cackling, hysterical laughter.
"God, I can't believe how much of a cold, cruel-hearted bitch you are," came the first voice again on a ragged sigh, sounding just plain wretched this time. "Don't know why I suffer you bein' around me. Damn that stings."
"Aw, poor Spikey had a boo-boo – want me to blow on it?"
"Oh, I'll give you something to blow on, you bloody sadist – "
Giles's eyebrows shot up, and he wasted no time in knocking soundly on the heavy steel door, and wrenching it open. He dashed inside only to find himself facing another door, and he yanked that open as well. The scene that met him inside didn't match the one he'd been picturing outside.
"Giles!" Buffy blurted, red staining her cheeks as she launched herself up from the floor.
"Oh, bloody hell," the vampire was grumbling from his seat on a stone tomb. "Just what I needed."
"What are you doing here?" Buffy asked angrily. "Did you follow us?!"
"He-he was going to attack you!" Giles said breathlessly.
She looked surprised. "Who? Spike? Nah, he's just like a stray dog – I fed him once – well, unwillingly – and now I just can't seem to get rid of him," she joked.
"Watch it, Slayer," the vampire warned from his perch, his now-blue eyes slitted. "Won't be down for long."
Buffy shrugged, but left off teasing him, Giles noted. She seemed wary of him…and probably rightfully so.
Giles took a deep breath, and walked right up to the vampire. "I'm Buffy's watcher, Rupert Giles."
Spike disdained the other man's reluctantly proffered hand. "Yeah, haven't we met, mate? Don't I remember you tryin' to kill me about thirty minutes ago?" He made a show of reaching beside him, and lighting a cigarette, and lifted a brow at Buffy over 'Tweedy's' shoulder. Her prompting frown made him roll his eyes. He looked at the watched through hooded eyes, and pursed his lips as he – barely – inclined his head. "Right. Meeting you has sent me into grand spasms of pleasure, m'sure," he muttered with a liberal dose of bitter sarcasm.
To his satisfaction, the other man immediately drew back. He looked at the slayer as if to say, "This is what you were defending so fiercely back there?"
"Buffy, I don't know what he wants from you, but you can't trust him. He is a vampire. You are the Slayer, therefore – "
"Oh, I know this one! 'Slaying entails certain sacrifices, blah, blah, bliddy blah, I'm so stuffy, give me a scone.'" She shook her head. "Forget it, Giles. I'm not giving Spike up."
"Well, may I ask why the bloody hell not?"
"I told you already. We…understand each other. We're…friends?"
Spike coughed loudly into his hand and the slayer glared at him over her shoulder. The cough miraculously disappeared.
"Friendship," the watcher spat. "Vampires are not interested in friendship, Buffy. Why don't you ask him what he's really after?"
She sighed angrily. "He's not 'after' anything – are you, Spike?" She turned and looked up at him expectantly.
Spike's face was totally without expression. "'Course not, love," he purred as he slipped his hand down one denim-clad thigh and then hooked his thumb in the waist of his jeans, letting his long fingers sprawl suggestively over his fly.
He watched intently as the slayer turned hot pink and she quickly turned back to the watcher. "See?" she choked out.
"He's after getting in your trousers, is what he's after!" The watcher blurted out unexpectedly, and his cheeks suddenly matched the slayer's, who gaped at him. Spike mocked him while she wasn't looking. He smiled lopsidedly, wiggling his brows, and ran the tip of his tongue indecently over the sharp points of his incisors as he dropped his eyes meaningfully to the slayer's neck. He made a slight snapping motion with his jaws, and let his eyes flicker to gold for just a moment before the slayer turned back to him, and he made his expression go flat again.
The wanker sputtered, but Buffy wasn't as taken in by him as Spike may have assumed. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, and smacked him in the stomach with the back of her hand. "Knock it off, Spike."
Spike only gave a low, evil chuckle and lifted a hand to rub his much-abused abdomen.
The watcher, meanwhile, motioned violently at the slayer. "May I speak to you in private?"
"Well, well, well…someone in this room certainly thinks the sun shines out of their bum, don't they?"
Buffy growled under her breath.
Spike grinned.
"Hang on, Giles," she said, and headed for the open trap in the floor. She climbed down, and when she returned a few tense minutes later, she was carrying an old, cracked mug that Spike recognized as being one of two she'd brought with her from the watcher's apartment, along with all the other junk in her knapsack. The mug carried the scent of blood, and he knew she'd emptied a bag of the small emergency stash he'd stolen nights ago from the hospital and left to keep cool in the icy cold run of water in a small crevice in the rocky ground below. The blood was chilly, and stale, but it smelled of heaven to him right now.
The slayer carried the mug over to him, ignoring the shocked look she was receiving from her watcher – that was when he realized she actually meant to feed him. The homey-ness of the situation nearly made him squirm with discomfort. She started to tip the cup to his lips, but he caught her wrist and cleared his throat. "Slayer…I'd rather drink it by my own hand."
She looked slighted for a moment, and then she surrendered the cup.
"Oh. Right. Sorry."
Spike gave her a slight smirk, and then took a gulp of the cool, slightly slimy liquid. The texture didn't matter just then, though…
"What is that you're drinking? Blood?" the watcher asked, trying to sound casual.
Spike rolled his eyes and finished the mug off in one huge gulp, savoring the coppery tang coating his tongue.
"No, it's cream tea – what d'you think? 'Course s'blood you ninny."
The watcher's cool blue eyes brightened in sudden interest. "Really? You can survive off cold blood? Interesting…can you exist solely on, say, pig's blood?"
Spike tilted his head at him. "You can ask some other vampire – if you can find one that won't eat you first and ask questions later."
The watcher's interest in him abruptly cooled.
Satisfied by his reaction, Spike set the cup down on the stone slab and pushed himself off, ignoring the stab of pain that went through his shoulder and chest at the movement. "Well, m'headin' down to grab a nap – gotta' rest so I can hunt some more tasty townie's tonight, eh? Thanks for the snack, Slayer." Spike ignored the look of dismay from the slayer and smirked at her watcher instead as he moved towards the trap door.
"Oh, and by the way – tell your boys to fall back, get out of town. If I see 'em 'round here again, I'll bite their bloody faces off."
Buffy stared after Spike when he closed the trap door, her face set in lines of dismay.
"You-you allow him to feed off other humans? You can't be the slayer, you-you're an abomination!"
Buffy glanced at him tiredly before retrieving the mug and fetching a large bottle of water from the pack to rinse it out.
"He's a vampire, Giles, and he drinks blood. Besides, he doesn't kill anymore…" I hope, anyway…
"How do you know? Are you with him every moment of every night? Why, he could be killing innocent people!"
"Spike and I have an understanding, now. He doesn't kill, and I don't stake him. Most people don't even remember what happens after, he said."
"How can you trust this creature?"
"Listen, Spike has saved my life more times than I can count since my parents died. He may have done it for his own selfish reasons, but still… He trained me, taught me to look out for myself, which is more than I can say for this 'council' of yours. You couldn't even find me after I was kidnapped."
Giles blanched at that. "It was a most unfortunate…well, circumstances…I understand that Mr. Merrick did not – "
"Whatever. Point is? Spike's with me. Right now, he is fighting with me, instead of against me. He cares about what happens to me…well, sometimes, anyway…well, maybe never, but, end of story. Can I go to sleep, now?"
Giles swiped a shaky hand across his brow. "Would you happen to have any of that tea that I sent with you left over?"
It was dawn, now, and Buffy's eyelids were growing heavy as she sat with her equally tired watcher over two steaming mug's of Earl Grey – thanks to the canned heat and tiny battered kettle she'd retrieved from the pack.
"You…you killed a Guaroknarl?" Giles suddenly interrupted her droning narrative of what had happened to her since she'd left L.A., his voice faint.
"Oh. Well, yeah…two, actually."
Giles upset his tea. "T-two?!" he burbled, swiping at his undone tie and now-wrinkled shirtfront with his kerchief.
"What?" Buffy frowned at him. "It's not like they're hard to kill…I mean, once you get past the horns and tail, it's really just a matter of kicking it's ass – literally."
"That's very, er…nice. It's just that…well, I've been given to understand that Guaroknarl's are very rarely seen above ground." Giles cracked a hesitant, sheepish smile. "I rather think I'd have liked to have seen one."
"Count yourself lucky you didn't have to smell like one," Buffy told him, making a face. Suddenly she was starving, and the plain tea was doing nothing for it. She uncrossed her legs where she sat on top of a plaid wool throw Giles had went out and brought in for her from his car – he'd been appalled at her living conditions – and crossed over to the 'miracle-pack' again, this time pulling out a small cup of instant ramen noodles.
Giles, who looked a little absurd sitting on a throw on the floor of the crypt in his rumpled three-piece suit, with his legs crossed, and his back against the wall, gave her a stern glance as she approached with her treasure.
"Buffy, I do hope that you'll recall I gave you that supply as a temporary fix. I fully expect you to come to dinner every evening, at the very least, before our training and your patrolling. One cannot exist on all that starch and sodium alone."
Buffy tore the top off the paper cup, poured boiling water in from the kettle, and sniffed appreciatively. "It's heaven," she told him on a blissful sigh.
"Hot food…mmm, I can't wait." She managed a few minutes, and then took a careful sip, almost burning her tongue in her eagerness.
"So…I bet you're gonna' insist I stop training with Spike, now, too?" she finally asked Giles carefully.
"No bit of learning is ever wasted." Giles looked grudging even as he said this. "And I must admit, Spike's past…experiences may prove helpful to you in coming battles."
"Will you get in trouble with the council?" Buffy asked, watching him closely. Giles acted a little snobbish, but she was starting to like him a little – even though he'd nearly skewered Spike.
"Undoubtedly," Giles sighed, and his eyes twinkled a little as he smiled at her.
His face went very serious, though, a second later, as if some awful thought had occurred to him.
"Giles? What is it?"
"Buffy…there are some things about Spike that you should be made aware of. Things…he's done in the past."
"I don't think I wanna' hear this," she said, setting down her soup.
"Nonetheless, you shall," Giles said firmly. "You must know what he is capable of." He took off his glasses and looked at the floor before continuing.
"First of all, his name – William the Bloody. He first earned this name towards the end of the nineteenth century…"
Buffy felt real tears in her eyes as Giles finally finished his lecture.
"He…really did all those things? He killed all those potentials back in World War II? They were just…children. And the Slayers. He's…God, he's a monster, more than I even knew…" Buffy got up and paced a slow circle around the crypt on rubbery legs.
"Buffy I didn't tell you this to turn you against him," Giles told her, wincing slightly as he, too, rose, his joints protesting the damp cold.
Buffy looked at him doubtfully.
"Well, all right, I did, but perhaps I shouldn't have told you in this manner, at least."
"He deserves to be staked," she whispered, ducking her head. "God, why am I crying? I didn't even cry when I killed my Mom," she sniffed with a slight laugh.
"You're disappointed in him," Giles said, his chest aching at her sadness.
Buffy swiped her sleeve across her eyes and caught sight of Spike's blood staining the front of the shirt. She stared at it before she sighed shakily and looked at Giles.
Her resolute silence said more than she ever could have explained to him, in words.
To be continued in Chapter Ten…
Disclaimer: I own NOTHING!
A/N: Thanks for reading…!
