Harnessing Sunlight
Part Nine, Fighting Back Darkness
"I can't."
"Can't or won't, Spike?" Buffy's scared and doesn't know how to fix the mess they're in. There are too many obstacles in the path, and Spike is adding to them.
He doesn't respond, and the pattering of the rain fills the gaping quiet.
If he answers her, he won't be able to stop. The whole truth will come out, and then, he won't be able to contain the feelings he's successfully walled off for so long.
Still, he knows that he has to tell her the truth. He has no choice now.
Her hand finds his in the darkness, fingers parting his. Her skin is icy. . . as cold as he is. He blames himself and wishes he could warm her the way she does him most of the time.
"I'm here," she says softly, trying to catch his eye. "Just tell me the easy parts first."
He opens his mouth but finds that he can't speak. Clearing his throat, he discovers a beginning, "You want to know what happened in L.A., pet?"
"In the last battle. . . the one with all the demons that the Senior Partners sent after you guys for killing the Circle of the Black Thorn. How did you survive when Ang. . . no one else did?" she encourages, faltering on Angel's name.
"For someone who doesn't pay attention to the names of things. . ."
She squeezes his hand and moves closer to him, drawing her knees up so that their hands rest against her belly. "When it comes to the people I care about, I pay attention." Spike starts to cut her short, but she keeps going, "When it comes to you, I pay attention." She reads the surprise on his face even in the low light. "Thought you were gone back in Sunnydale. . . thought I lost you." Her eyes blur with unshed tears. Great. Just what they need. More water.
He carries her past the emotion, "I survived the fight for two reasons."
She sniffs, swiping her free hand across her eyes.
Spike continues, his voice low, "It was Angel really. He's the reason I survived. He knew dealing the Senior Partners such a blow would anger them. . . he knew it was a suicide mission, but that didn't mean he didn't try to come up with an escape plan."
Buffy is genuinely taken aback. "Wow. A lot changed between you and Angel in the time you spent in L.A. Last I knew, you two were acting like jealous little school boys."
"I was not!" Spike objects.
"Um, what do you call that picture of Angel you taped on the punching bag?"
"That wasn't Angel. . . that was Beavis. . ." Spike cocks his head to one side, "or was it Butthead that had dark hair?"
"Neither of them had fangs. The picture you drew had fangs."
"Oh, right."
"Back on topic, mister. Angel obviously came up with an escape plan?"
"Angel didn't exactly come up with it himself. Ex-Watcher boy and Illyria came up with it."
"Wesley?"
"Right. The two of them used the notes I wrote on Illyria's abilities." He glances at Buffy to explain," Illyria was the god king that took over Fred's body."
"I know." Buffy knows all these people by name and excruciating details of their physical appearance. Andrew and the remaining Slayers from L.A. told her stories.
"And I was put in charge of sorta testing her limits."
"Sort of testing her limits?"
"She was pretty powerful. . . like Glory. . . only Illyria could alter the flow of time with a wave of her leather-covered hand. Could walk through the walls between dimensions without a second thought. Threw us for a loop several times. Wes came up with a way of stemming her powers when she almost imploded though."
"What does this have to do with escaping?" Buffy urges, feeling guilty for even asking. She wants to let Spike talk. . . to hear his entire story after such a long silence, but she also needs to understand how his story applies to the danger they're in now.
He nods to let her know that he appreciates the urgency of their situation. "Charlie fell first. He was wounded before we even started the fight in the alley. Took a demon or two with him. It was raining. . . kinda like this." Spike inclines his head toward the heavens. "Sometime later. . . I don't know how long. Difficult to say in the middle of a fight of that scale. Illyria was taken. Should have seen her, pet. A god trapped in the willowy body of this beautiful woman. . . streaked in blazing blue and a fighting force to be reckoned with."
Buffy experiences a twinge of jealousy but realizes it's unreasonable. She chooses to focus on the emotion in Spike's voice. He has so much pride in and caring for these people she's never met, and she finds that she's glad for him. . . proud of him for continuing to do what's right even in the face of imminent doom.
Spike bows his head. "Then, she was taken. . . life snuffed out as if. . ." He pauses. "And then, Angel."
"Angel," Buffy breathes. She's known nothing of Angel's death. . . never had the courage to ask, and even his name still affects her after all this time. It's almost as if hearing about his death makes it permanent.
Spike runs his thumb over her knuckle in understanding. "Angel called out to me in the midst of the fight. Barely heard him over the rain and fighting. He'd fallen back behind me, so I made my way back to him. Had to go through several demons to find him. Pulled a hairy wanker off of him before I could see him. Pet, are you sure you want me to. . .?"
She can't form words over the lump in her throat. Spike isn't describing the heat and energy of the battle, but in her mind, she can imagine what he went through. . . what Angel endured. She nods for him to continue.
"His face was burned from that dragon he insisted on taking on himself. Wouldn't let me even get in so much as a punch or two. And he was bleeding from more wounds than I could possibly count. Suppose I was, too. After that, we fought back to back. . . against a hopeless never-ending sea of evil. Angel's arm was taken. . . bit off by. . ."
Spike senses Buffy folding in on herself with hunched shoulders, so he softens his tone, "I'll leave out some things, right, love?" When she reassures him by moving her fingers, he keeps going but sticks to the facts, "After that, I felt his hand in the small of my back, and he made me take something from him. A talisman. Told me to get out. Told me to find you. . . protect you. I tried to argue with him. . . that I'd signed up for this fight all the way to the end, but he insisted, and he activated the device with the push of a button and a short string of syllables I don't even recall. . . couldn't much hear. And then, I was gone. The battle was gone; the demons were gone; Angel was gone."
Buffy sniffs, trying to clear up her tears. "Where did you go?"
"I don't know. Some other dimension that Illyria knew about? There wasn't much to it 'sides a cliff, never-ending night, and a door. 'Cept didn't really run across the door for several days. . . or at least it seemed like days. My sense of time was thrown off by the battle and then by the unchanging world I was thrust into. Didn't know if I was really in hell or not. . . if I'd actually died before the talisman took effect or if it had worked. Just knew I had to keep going to get find a way back to y. . ." Spike can't tell her that she was the one who had kept him alive. . . kept him moving through the bleak, hollow world between worlds.
"A door just showed up?" Buffy asks, avoiding what she's just heard. She doesn't have time to process it; she just has time to summon the energy to survive.
"Yep. Out of nowhere. I opened it and found myself underground, months had passed, and above ground was lost to the Senior Partners and the demons. Still not sure exactly how the whole sodding thing worked out the way it did. Left it to Rupert to figure out."
As he expected she would, Buffy draws back a little, and her departure leaves him cold.
"How come you didn't try to find me?" She doesn't mention Angel's directive.
And he doesn't mention that he couldn't face her. . . could hardly live with himself for what he failed to do. "You know how it was at first, pet. Things were too chaotic. I just tried to help the people around me."
"And then, you didn't tell me the truth when I found you!" Buffy rises a bit unsteadily with her hand sliding on the slick stone, her volume increasing with her height. She doesn't quite know what she's doing, why she's yelling, or what will come out of her mouth next. She just knows that she's been holding her emotions in check too long, and now they're spewing out like she's Old Faithful. "How do you think I felt when the world went to hell? So many people died, including too many people I cared about. . . I just wanted to find everyone I knew and loved. . . to see if they were safe. . . alive, whole! I didn't isolate myself and spend time helping others around me! Well, I did help, but that's not my point!"
She stomps her uninjured foot for emphasis, trying to find the words for what she's trying to convey. "The point is: I searched for the people I cared about. That was utmost on my mind, and I don't care if it was selfish o-or. . ."
Tears are streaming down her face now, and Spike pulls himself upright to stand before her. . . so close but so far away.
She tries to turn off the evidence of her feelings, but her body refuses to comply which only makes her more angry. . . at herself. . . at their situation. . . that it took a failing mission to force them to tell each other the truth. And still. . .
"Why didn't you try to find me after you came back the first time? You were alive. . . all those months in L.A., and you never once tried to come to me?" She shakes her head, and water flies around her. "No, no. Don't answer that. I don't want to know. Why didn't you look for me after Angel explicitly told you to? Answer that one!"
His automatic response is sarcasm. "You know me, love. I don't exactly follow orders."
"That is a non-answer!" Buffy spins on her heel then, heading into the darkness enshrouding the Charles Bridge. . . into the rain, heedless of what lay out before her. Lord help any demon that should come across her path.
Anger flares through Spike, and with anger comes the truth, raw and undeviating, "You want to know why I didn't look for you?" Buffy stops at the honesty in his tone, but she doesn't turn around. "Buffy, I failed you. . . in more ways than one. How could I possibly go from saving the world. . . being one of the team that. . . that made the world a better place in your eyes to being one of the team that brought the world to its knees? By taking that talisman from Angel, I succumbed. I faced down evil, and I broke. I didn't die. . . I didn't sacrifice everything to save the world. I ran away from it." He breaks off then, realizing that he's crying, too. "I took the sun from you."
Her fingers fumble for the pouch at her waist. The object is still there, unbroken. Heart pounding in her chest, she turns to him. Now she knows why he's been agreeing to go on all the recent missions with her. Though she's trembling inside, her words are steady, "All these things you're saying to me. I believe that you believe them to be the truth. I do. But I wonder. . . I wonder where the Spike I knew went. And I wonder when he turned into Angel."
Lightning darts over Buffy's head, punctuating her last sentence and illuminating the world behind her.
As the accompanying thunder crackles and rolls, Spike shouts, "Buffy! Come here!"
"What?" As lightning flashes again, Buffy follows Spike's line of vision to the arching doorway to the bridge tower. Ropes hang down from the archway with severed human heads, swaying in the wind from the storm, their eyes bulging from their sockets as if someone had squeezed on their necks.
Buffy scuttles to Spike's side. "What the hell?"
"Presents from the shifter, no doubt. Didn't notice the smell what with all the demon gore covering us."
A network of electricity fills the sky, and the essence of cinnamon sizzles in the air surrounding the wounded pair. The now whole shifter lands lightly on the cobblestones and looms in the entrance to the bridge, wings bouncing and folding in on themselves and clawed fingers pressing into stone. Bits of rock tumble to the ground like displaced orphans.
"Now you know," Spike says, his tone flat. "Let us pass or at least let her go."
The shifter cackles and backs onto the bridge, snapping off a handful of human heads to take with it. "Now why ssshould I allow that, vampire?"
"What's it talking about?" Buffy asks, looking from the shifter to Spike and back again.
The shifter continues to move backward, effectively drawing Buffy and Spike into the drizzling rain. "The Sssenior Partnersss would be mossst pleasssed that I learned the truth of why you sssurvived the final battle and alssso brought them a trophy. . . the Ssslayer and a vampire with a soul."
At Spike's side, Buffy asks him, "You knew it was listening?"
"Wasn't sure, but I thought it might be why it let us get this far. . . why we had time to rest." He glances at the small silhouette beside him. "It's not why I told you the truth, pet."
Buffy affords him a fleeting look, not sure how she feels.
"Sssilence!" the shifter booms. "I will have you both. . . but firssst, I want to play." Gathering the amputated heads into one fist, it begins to trace foreign symbols in the air with hooked fingers, traces of light streaking behind each movement. It speaks the words of another language, voice scraping, hissing and clicking over unrecognizable syllables. With each completed portion of the spell, one of the heads explodes sending brains and chunks flesh falling over the bridge.
As the enchantment is cast, the wind strengthens, causing Buffy to stumble into Spike yet again. Neither of them makes a sound despite the jarring of their injuries, and Spike's hand steadies Buffy, guiding her to his other side to help shield her from the driving air currents. The water in the river is animated by the gale, and within seconds, the water is churning and lapping over the sides of the bridge to splash about their feet.
Lightning provides light for their surroundings, and Buffy squints past the rain, river water, and wind to see the dark shadows of demons and vampires pouring like liquid over the opposite end of the bridge, swelling around the body of the shifter and flowing toward her and Spike.
"Bloody déjà vu," she hears Spike shout above the din of nature and the grunts of the coming army.
"Got my back?" she yells in return.
"Always, pet. Lost too many people. Not losing you, too," he calls back as the attackers swarm around them like insects.
And they fight.
Minutes pass, and the minutes grow into hours.
Somehow their broken bodies find the adrenaline and power to keep going.
They shoot and slice, kick and punch, duck and dance, each covering each other's weak spots until they are panting and gasping, blood flowing and limbs hanging limp. Dust flies, and bodies pile up. Despite the inevitable, neither of them falters.
A set of talons slices into Buffy's shoulder from behind as she fends a trio of vampires off Spike who is attempting to remove his knife from a dying demon's solid belly.
She cries out in pain, and with a roar, Spike unsheathes his knife from the corpse and decapitates the demon that sunk his claws into Buffy.
In that moment, several brilliant streams of light cut through the darkness like the soft headlights from a car. Every creature pauses to discover the source of the light as the shifter roars in dismay.
Buffy gasps when she recognizes the white streak of an airplane powered by rockets weaving its way toward the bridge. She hears the voice coming from Spike's ear communicator despite the crackling interference from the shifter's lightning bolts.
"It's Andrew!" she says, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.
"Yeah, and Shifty isn't too happy about that." Spike taps his ear. "Wasn't sure the transmitter was working!"
Buffy can't comprehend Andrew's response, so she watches the events unfold.
Lightning arcs over the throngs of demons and vamps as the shifter attempts to take down the plane. The attackers fall behind the shifter, dispersing faster than a crowd parting after gunfire.
The plane twists its rockets to land like a helicopter in gush of wind and water. Buffy and Spike slosh back toward the bridge tower, carefully evading bodies and gore. The door to the small plane opens in a hiss of vacuum seal and a set of stairs lowers to the unstable ground. Without the moving target, the shifter sends the lightning bolts directly at the plane. The electricity sputters ineffectively against the force field over the jet. The shifter howls in annoyance.
"That means," Buffy murmurs to herself.
A familiar redhead bounds forth from the entrance. "Buffy! Spike!"
"Willow!" Buffy hobbles as quickly as she can toward her friend as lightning bolts crash around them.
"Are you guys okay?" Willow asks, giving them a once over. "Well, you're alive at least."
"Nice to see you, too, Red," Spike says with a grin. "And you brought Wolf Boy, I see."
Buffy spies a fully wolfed-out Oz emerging from the plane followed by a handful of other hairy werewolves.
Willow shrugs. "Needed some wolf-y backup. And Andrew's flying the plane." A lightning bolt strikes close to her right elbow. "And that's just getting to be annoying!" She grits her teeth and pivots toward the shifter. "What's his deal?"
"Weather control," Buffy offers.
"We'll see who controls the weather," Willow grumbles. She touches her ear. "Andrew. Lower the field."
Then, Willow raises her hand toward the sky. Something akin to distant thunder rumbles. A streak of white shoots through her hair, and Latin escapes her lips. Buffy's skin tingles as her friend crackles with energy that she's drawing from the storm. Snarling, growling, and biting, the werewolves rush to meet the re-advancing demons.
"What are you?" roars the shifter.
"Your worst nightmare," Willow says, her disembodied voice echoing all around them. With a flick of her wrist, the power she's pulled forth from the storm spirals forth in a shaft of red and gold energy and swallows up the shifter.
A wave of dizziness suddenly engulfs Buffy, and strong arms catch before she can fall. "You'll be okay, love. Just lost a bit of blood from that wound in your back," the soft voice whispers in her ear.
"You're hurt, too," she manages, the world going black around her.
"Don't worry bout that. It's almost all over with. We're going home."
Buffy hears his words, but she doesn't know if her heart believes him.
TBC. . . One more part! Thank you so much for the thoughtful reviews so far. . . hopefully the remaining questions will be answered in the tenth and final part. . . :o)