Chapter 18

Buffy couldn't help herself. She mentally and physically took a step back, trying to fathom what demon Spike had just revealed. In the end, she. . . or rather the other Buffy had chosen Spike's life over her own. Instead of Spike dying for the world, the alter-Buffy had died for Spike.

Her heart beating in her throat, she met vampire Spike's clear blue eyes as if seeing him for the first time. "Why?"

Demon Spike shrugged. "She. . ."

Jenn spoke for him, filling in the blanks, "She believed in him. . . believed that he would stay behind and fight for Angel. . . fight to help him rally back from the evil that was starting the consume him through Wolfram and Hart."

Buffy exchanged a look with her Spike, and for some reason, she longed to reach out and touch him. . . just to reassure herself that they were in a different place than the Spike who remained a vampire. Without a word spoken between them, he read her thoughts, and he moved closer to her so that she felt his body hovering near her back.

"I still don't see what this has to do with anything," Jon snarled with more volume than his other interruptions.

"He's starting to sound like a broken record, but he's right," Harmony said, fluffing her hair and staring off into space as if bored by the entire conversation.

Vampire Spike ignored his ex, "Only, I failed to bring him round. He sank further and further into the clutches of the senior partners, and there was nothing I could do but watch. And I only stayed around to watch because of. . ."

"Celeste," Buffy supplied, memory forever imprinted with the image of the little blond-headed girl who had called her "Mommy."

Demon Spike nodded. "Right. Had to make sure she was safe from the evil. And because Angel slipped further, that must mean that the tension across dimension lines was lessened."

"I don't understand how this tension could be affected so much by one being," Jenn offered. "You think there'd be enough Slayers to keep the tension going."

Roxy explained, "Not all the Slayers are major players in the battle between good and evil. . . no matter what we or they might like to think."

"It comes down to down to you three for some reason," vampire Spike suggested, nodding at Buffy and Spike in turn. "You and you and your Angel."

"Again, I ask how this relates to my people," Jon interjected. He was starting to sound like a broken record. . . a deadly broken record that hissed and packed quite a wallop in his attack.

"It relates because you want to stop Stephanie, too," Roxy replied. "The senior partners want to temporarily stop Stephanie so the power differential can continue to build.

"We want to kill Stephanie," Jon corrected. "Doesn't matter how many of us die in the process. We want her dead for what she has done to us. . . making us slaves to the magic through the chips in our head."

"Never said the senior partners didn't want her dead," Roxy added quietly. "Know I do."

Harmony nodded. "Michael and I want her dead for what she did to Stephan. She ruined everything for us; we were set in the city." She sniffed delicately. "She burned down my shop!"

"Wait a minute. There're chips in brains involved?" demon Spike scoffed. "Well that just makes everything all grand."

Everyone stared at him. Apparently, he was over his tears of a moment ago. Buffy surveyed him and decided that wasn't accurate. He was just putting up his bravado again.

"What? Just glad they're not in my noggin."

"But it's okay for them to be in ours?" Jon leered at the vampire, but the kranook leader seemed more placated now that the subject was on something he cared about.

"Actually, it may be the key to everything," Roxy said. "Spike, Buffy, and Angel have a prophecy to fulfill."

"That's gonna be real easy." Buffy made a face. "Or did you forget that you took Angel's soul from him?"

"To save his life!"

"Well, now he's batting for the other team." Buffy's eyes rounded, and someone snickered. She thought it was demon Spike. "That came out so wrong."

Roxy winked at her. Buffy wasn't sure if she wanted to strangle the witch or give her a hug after the experiences they'd shared together.

"And now, we can use that to our advantage," the witch assured them.

"How?" Spike asked. "He's kind of. . . well, evil now."

Roxy nodded. "Which is why we give him his soul back from afar."

"Hey! You said you couldn't do a gypsy curse," Buffy reminded her.

"I can't. But Willow can." Buffy opened her mouth again, but Roxy spoke before she could utter a sound, "And I have a way that you can contact her. Meanwhile, the rest of us will give Stephanie and her vamps the fight of her life."

"And after Angel gets his soul back?" Buffy asked.

Roxy sighed. "I'm afraid that I don't know what will happen then."

xxxxx

Buffy had chosen him twice.

In the semi-dark depths of the underground, Spike inhaled the stale scent of unused air and clutched a torch in one hand, lighting their path. He was having a hard time fathoming the truth. Even though it was plain as day in his mind, his emotions weren't quite up to speed. Hell, had his emotions been steady for the last three years without her? He thought they had been. . . when she wasn't in the picture.

Now in the quiet space. . . in the calm before the storm, Spike found himself wondering what would have happened if he had ignored her attempt to run away from him and gone after her instead. Would they be in this awkward space of touching and not touching. . . drawing close and pulling back?

Shifting the pack on his shoulder, he glanced at the Slayer. . . his Slayer out of the corner of his eye. Buffy walked along beside him as she had always done, blond hair trussed up in a bouncy ponytail that swung with an innocence that he knew she no longer possessed. She seemed oblivious to him. . . focused on their mission to get to the highest possible spot within the kranook caverns. . . closest to the mystical energy source humming through Stephanie's headquarters.

Spike clenched his jaw.

Roxy better not have been lying about where they needed to go, or he'd personally tear every limb from her body even if he had to get re-vamped to do it.

"So how're we gonna call Willow again?" Buffy asked him out of the blue, a spark of green glinting in her eye as she peered up at him.

"We're going to try to harness the energy the witch told us about, using this baby." Spike tilted his head toward the bag on his back. The magic amplifying device Roxy had given them felt heavy against his spine.

"And we got the spell. Say the right words, do a little dance, and viola, Willow contact?" Spike could picture her frowning as she went over the plan in her mind. "I wonder how we'll we know it's working?"

Spike chuckled. "I suppose when Red starts talking in our heads, pet."

"Inter-dimensionally? You have no idea, do you?" she asked, and Spike could see her incredulous expression in the dim lighting.

Levity between them sure was better than the alternative awkwardness that could have easily slid into place after their last one-on-one encounter. Spike wasn't sure how many more of those he could take on the current mission. . . or any other mission for that matter. What would happen after they accomplished their task of dashing Stephanie's dreams?

"Actually, no. Somehow we're supposed to help Angel retrieve his soul, so we can fulfill our end of the prophecy."

She laughed then. "This is crazy, isn't it?"

"What is?" Spike agreed, but he wanted to hear her view of the craziness.

"All these different agendas, different dimensions, different decisions, Roxy's plan, the vagueness of the stupid prophecy. God, who would have known that one little decision on my part would be so important? Makes me wonder what would happen if I. . ."

She stumbled over something in the dark, but Spike caught her by the elbow, holding onto her so she wouldn't fall.

"You all right, love?"

"Like this, for example," she continued, clapping her hands together to knock off excess dirt from the cavern wall that she'd touched in an effort to balance herself.

"What?"

"You know. If I walk the wrong way or fall over, is it going to cause some catastrophic event in the near or distant future?"

"I think that you're giving yourself far too much credit," he said in a lower voice. He bit the inside of his cheek in annoyance at himself for breaking the amicable flow of their conversation.

She shook her head. "You're right. You're right. I suppose all the power I wielded in terms of huge alterations in the timeline was just around that last apocalypse at the Sunnydale hellmouth."

"I suppose." Spike wasn't going to fill in the blanks for her.

So, she kept going on her own, "Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I would've stayed with you?"

Spike wasn't expecting that question to come flying out of her mouth. Then again, he knew better than to try and predict anything she did or said.

His initial reaction was to say something sarcastic, put her in her place, and stalk off the opposite direction, ignoring that he had just had the same thought not a few minutes before.

But his rational mind knew better. . . knew that he really had nowhere to go in this hell. Space between dimensions his ass. . . this was hell. Annoyingly, the emotional part of him didn't want to hurt her despite what she had done in the past. And he was annoyed with himself because he knew what that meant about his own feelings.

Instead, he chose to be logical in answer to her question, "I think we'd have mucked it up royally." He paused, but she had no response, so he took her silence as agreement and admitted, "You weren't ready, but neither was I. I was a vampire for over one hundred years; think I adjusted to the whole human thing right off the bat? No puns intended."

The light on Buffy's face hinted at a corner of her mouth going in the upward direction.

"Have we had this discussion before?" he asked aburptly, staying with her mood.

She sounded more amused, "Hmmm. I think so. Only last time, there was considerably more yelling and emotion on both our parts. And then, there was the whole Jonathan thing."

"Don't bring him back up," Spike mock-growled.

"Well, you brought him up last."

"I know." Spike grimaced.

"What were you saying?"

"That we'd have mucked the whole thing up?"

"Yeah, that. You're probably right. We weren't ready." She halted dead in her tracks and placed a small hand against his forearm.

He watched her with a quizzical expression on his face. "What? Did you hear something?"

"And now? We're different now." She slid her hand along his arm and pressed her palm against his.

Scar molded against scar.

Spike blinked. Was she daft? Had she forgotten the recent events in his bunk at the kranooks' lair? What they'd said to one another. . . or rather what he'd said to her?

"I know what you're thinking. I don't have to decide now. I have to make up my mind about whether or not I trust myself enough to trust you." She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. "That sounded a lot less confusing in my head."

"Where are you going with this, pet? We have a mission here." He removed his hand from hers and hooked his thumb under the strap of the backpack, pulling it away from his shoulder.

She stared at him as he tried to push past her.

This time, she grabbed his arm. "No. I'm not finished."

"Well, I am."

"No, you're not. . . not until I say you are," she insisted, finding an untapped source of energy and dancing around until she was in front of him, blocking his way.

"Since when should I listen to you?" Spike was irritated now, and he just wanted to stop what was happening before he didn't have any control over his feelings.

"Stop it. You're just circling back around to the same argument that we had since we started this mission, and that. . . that prevents us from communicating."

"Don't see that you're the expert at communication."

"No. No, I'm not. But I'm trying here. I'm trying, Spike."

"Why bother?" He sighed as he gave into the emotion that was making his heart pound in a way that it hadn't in a long time. "It's not like we can take this conversation anywhere right now. We have a mission."

"Screw the mission!" Buffy shouted, throwing both arms in the air. "All you talk about is 'the mission!'" She studied the ground for a second with a little frown on her face. "God, no wonder everyone got sick of me before," she said almost to herself. Her gaze slammed into his again. "It's all about the 'bloody' mission! Even when I was off figuring myself out. . . it was about finding and helping all the Slayers in the world. . . teaching them lessons and showing them the ropes. . . teaching them the mission! Screw it!"

Of all the things she could have said. . . "What did you say, pet?"

Her eyes were ablaze even in the diffuse light. "I'm sick to death of 'the mission' ruling my life. I'm a person here w-with thoughts and f-feelings and rights and needs. Damn it! I have needs. And I deserve to take every rare chance that's offered me to try and meet those needs!"

Spike stared at her.

"Even if my everyday decisions don't carry that much weight in the mystical battle between good and evil, they carry a lot of weight to me, and hell, they can make a big difference in my life! And so, I'm making a choice! Right here. Right now. This moment." She paused half a second to breathe, and she began pacing back and forth under Spike's nose. He couldn't help but be amused by the motion of her ponytail punctuating her statements. "So I'm insecure; so I'm not perfect. Everyone is, and I never will be! So I've had a few bad experiences, so I need a little reassurance every now and then when someone from my past tries to hurt me. That does not mean that I'm not ready to make a decision! That does not mean I'm an emotional cripple! And that does not mean I don't know what I want!"

Spike wasn't sure what exactly she was hinting at. "Buffy. . ."

"What?" She looked up at him with wide green eyes and half-parted lips, all innocence as if she'd completely lost track of what she was saying with his utterance of her name.

"Bottom line, pet."

"Oh."

The scar above Spike's eye jumped half an inch.

She searched what she could see of his face. . . his eyes. . . . Then, she mumbled something so softly that he almost couldn't make it out. After all, he didn't have vampire hearing anymore.

"What?" he asked, uncertain whether he believed what she'd just admitted.

Something akin to hurt flashed over her features, and she spun on her heel and dismissed him with a flick of her hand. "But if you can't handle it."

And she was off up the next incline and closer to the heart of Stephanie's headquarters.

He took three large strides after her and spun her around with his free hand. The pack slid from his shoulder to the ground.

"Hope you didn't break it," she whispered, not sure what she meant.

His fingers dug into her upper arm, but not enough to hurt her. He couldn't really hurt her anyway. . . not really. "Don't say those kinds of things unless you mean them."

She glared at him, extricated her arm and stepped back. "You didn't even hear me."

"Say it louder then," he said, his voice indignant despite his attempt to sound neutral. "Say it like you mean it. You can't, can you?"

Tears glazed her corneas, sheathing green in crystalline liquid. She focused on his chest, pointing an index finger toward his sternum. "Don't. . . don't you. . .you even start with that crap again. Don't you build another wall when I'm trying to tear this one down."

Spike's own vision blurred before he was cognizant of the pain of the memories racing through his mind.

Buffy noticed and calmed by his display of emotion, she rested an open palm on his chest. . . over his heart. "You're trembling, and your heart is going so fast," she marveled, not for the first time, at his state of living.

"God, Buffy."

Deliberately moving her hand from his chest to his hand that was wrapped around the torch, she covered his fist, splaying fingers over knuckles. In gentle motion, she pulled the blaze down so that the fire echoed against the depths of her eyes. . . so he couldn't deny the genuineness of her words. . . .

"I love you, Spike."

TBC. . .