Chapter II: All that's Shattered
A/N(Apologies for taking so long with this next chapter, I wanted to see if people wanted me to continue and whether I wanted to continue myself. : ). Since I've decided that I'd like to keep this one going, I finally managed to write the next chapter amidst the hectic-ness that is my life. . I hope you all enjoy, and thank you especially to obsessedwithspike, Kim, Dieu Anonyme, DanielNieves, willow-wiccan, and AutumnSoleil for letting me know that you wanted this to keep going. I wouldn't have decided to continue without you. :). Also, thank you for just giving me reviews. . It's what we writers live off. This… this chapter is for you guys. I hope everyone enjoys this and that it was worth it of me to keep going. : )
So enjoy… and please review! Any constructive criticism or even comments on what you liked or what you didn't like are welcome. : ) )
The growing panic was starting to choke her. Buffy ran, her long, dark blue cloak flapping behind her like a broken set of wings. Oh god, have to… get there…
The crypt had been empty. Feeling oddly dead inside, she'd stepped through the broken glass and the smell of alcohol that wafted through the place. She swallowed. That hadn't ever been the norm for Spike. Sure, she'd smelt the alcohol before, but it wasn't like him to leave the glass there like that.
She closed her eyes again. Who was she to say these days what he was like?
She bit the inside of her cheek at that thought and squared her shoulders as she looked around. The upstairs was normal… at least as normal as it could be with the shattered glass scattered across the floor. There were specks of blood dotted around the concrete, dried and crusted as if someone had stepped on the glass and hadn't even bothered to stop the bleeding.
She bit the inside of her cheek again, but didn't start to worry until she climbed down the ladder to the lower level.
As soon as she'd safely descended, her heart began to beat wildly in her chest. Oh god… Oh god no…
Drawers had been hastily slammed shut with one lone, forlorn article of clothing gaping out of the gaps. The bed was unkempt, but looked as if no-one had slept in it for days. The candles that had always lit his crypt were scattered and unlit… it was only by the torchlight that she could see the strewn mayhem. Even the carpets that he'd seemed to lovingly rearrange every time she came were scattered.
She hadn't known what to expect.
But whatever she'd expected, it certainly wasn't this. She'd thought he'd at least be here. Maybe completely drunk, or icy cold, or unrepentant, or guilty or… or any thousands of emotions that she knew the vampire was capable of expressing.
She would have accepted those without a second thought. Perhaps yesterday she would have baulked and denied again that any trace of emotion lived in the vampire. The dead. But Faith had done her job.
Done her job… and Buffy had done the rest of it. The blonde Slayer closed her eyes briefly as she remembered the singing demon and the raw fire that had coursed through Spike's song. She remembered the fighting and the sex and the snarking and the laughs… and she was not surprised at the worry and fear that had begun to seep into her heart as she climbed the stairs in leaps.
He's gone.
It hit her as she leaned against the sarcophagus where they'd fu… had sex. Spike was gone. Gone! Spike… with his eternal smirk and peroxided hair. He, the one who'd always hung around the Magic Box, always been at home joking with Dawn, always been there on patrol even when she'd yelled at him to stop following her. He, who she'd always pushed away, and screeched at him to leave at the top of her lungs. He, the one who was supposed to always stay, even when she made his unlife and unliving hell. He…
He was gone.
It shocked her… the fact that she felt as strong a compulsion to suddenly burst into tears as she wanted to rage at him. Stupid vampire! He was supposed to stay! After all of this… after everything… how could he have left?
Her conscience kicked up images at her, and the growing anger immediately dissolved into tears. He'd had plenty of reasons to leave. And they all led back to…
Her.
She slid down the granite stone and cried her heart out. Buffy, always the strong one, always the one of action and determination. Buffy, the hero… could do nothing but sit and cry. She felt angry, helpless, guilty… the feelings all spilled over, one after the other, again and again. She cried because of Giles, she cried because of Xander and Anya, she cried for Dawn. She cried for Joyce, she cried for Willow and Tara… but most of all, she cried for Spike and herself. Big, fat tears that stained clothes and choked her throat dry. Tears that couldn't even begin to dull the guilt. It made her want to laugh, and then cry some more at the realisation that even when he wasn't there, Spike could make her feel. This was all because of him. All his fault. In a good way.
And that made her cry even harder at the way she'd repaid him.
Buffy didn't know how long she sat there, hiccoughing and sobbing wretchedly, wishing for a tissue all the while. Or maybe a box of tissues. Tissues were definitely of the good when one had a blocked nose of denial. She was so wrapped up in her world that her Slayer senses didn't go off until Clem was right in front of her.
"S-Slayer?" the pink, fleshy demon gulped. "Oh… Oh dear. Oh no…"
Her head snapped up at that, and he flinched, backing away protectively. "Uh, Slayer… it wasn't my fault."
"W… what do you mean?"
Clem swallowed as he took in her tears, and he felt his heart soften a little. Spike must have been wrong when Clem had listened to his drunken rants so many days ago… she obviously did care. Care enough, at least, to have cried so much. There would be a pillar of salt left in the morning, he was sure.
"I… ah, Slayer… he told me not to tell you…"
Fumbling for words was never a good idea. When they slipped out, Clem winced. Now Spike would kill him.
"What?" she demanded, suddenly standing bolt upright and looking at him with a mixture of ferocity and pleading. It scared him, the intensity that was shining in his eyes. He gulped again and prayed that Spike would at least kill him quickly.
"He… he actually only left about half an hour ago. He told me to take care of the place… but he didn't tell me where he was going."
"How?" she demanded. "How did he go? What direction?"
Clem trembled a little. Um… he went North. With a motorcycle."
Buffy leapt forwards and gave the startled demon a quick hug, before barely touching the ground as she ran so fast she seemed to blur.
Clem had stared after her. "I almost wish that she'll catch him," the demon said softly, before he trod inside and shut the stone door behind him.
So now she was running. Running harder than she'd ever run in her life. The ground flew underneath her, each step a companion to the beat of her heart and the painful rush of air in her lungs. Buffy was a Slayer… she was by no stretch of imagination in bad shape, and she had Slayer speed to boot. But Spike had a half an hour lead on her… and he was on a motorbike. She really had no hope, she knew that. She should have gone somewhere… grabbed a car… which would have probably led to an untimely demise of either herself or someone else. But she didn't have time for 'should haves'. She could only run and pray and hope that he hadn't gone straight out, that he'd waited or stayed for a while. So that she could catch him…
Who was she kidding?
As the motor thrummed beneath him, Spike felt sick. This wasn't a change… after all, he'd been feeling sick ever since it happened. Then again, now that he thought about it, the feeling had always been there, seeping its way in his undead gut for so long that it felt like eternity.
It all led back to Sunnydale. Angelus. Dru. And the Slayer…
But he didn't want to go there.
Snarling suddenly, he jammed down hard on the brakes, almost flipping the motorcycle over as it screeched to a halt on the side of the road. Cursing, he kicked himself off and landed solidly on his feet, his hands reaching to his duster automatically…
And finding it wasn't there. Again.
Growling, he clawed at his jeans, finding the squashed packages of cigarettes he'd somehow managed to jam in there the last few days when he'd ventured out of his crypt. He'd made Clem nervous; he'd never chain smoked that much in his life. Not even after he first realised that he was in lo…
Spike threw the unlit cigarette down and stamped on it. "Fuck!" he screamed into the air. "Why the hell does everything have to lead back to her?"
The vampire was nearing the end of his wits. Kicking the motorbike off the road, he shifted into game face to see where he was, trying to steady himself. He was only just out of Sunnydale, he knew. The grass and stunted trees stretched ahead of him to where he was going, but he found that looking down that way made his eyes ache. When he stared at his hands for a long while, finding nowhere else to fix his gaze on, he found that they were shaking.
"Bloody hell, mate," he said to himself softly. "'m not gonna kill myself in a soddin' road accident."
An old, weary smirk traced itself over the pale planes of his face. "It just wouldn't ring right… William the Bloody finally gettin' his fangs in the dust because of a car crash."
He dragged the motorbike closer into the grass, and sat against the still warm metal. There was still hours to go before dawn, so he didn't have to worry about that yet. Grimacing, he retrieved the dirty cigarette from the ground and lit it, trying not to care about the earthy taste mixed in with the smoke. Not that he was really concentrating fully on it anyway.
It was hard to, with all of the anger and guilt that he felt roiling inside him.
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and watched the smoke drift. "I don't have a soddin' conscience," he announced aloud to the sky, as if the stars could agree with him. "I'm a vampire. I live and bleed and kill. That's what I am, innit?"
He stared, intense sapphire eyes scanning the Heavens. "I mean, come on! I'm a demon here! I'm not supposed to care about anythin' that doesn't involve a good kill or good sex. What the soddin' hell is this?"
Why the hell do I feel her beneath me, why can I taste her skin and touch her hair and smell the fear?
"I like it when they're afraid!" he shouted out. His voice echoed in the emptiness, but he didn't pay attention to the sight he must have been; only clad in his jeans and black t-shirt, leaning against a motorcycle and screaming at the sky. "I bloody well love it! Chase them and wait until their very blood is scented with it!"
The Slayer, afraid! The Slayer, who fights all the beasties on her lonesome in the graveyards night after night… afraid of me. When I'd sworn to protect her and love her and…
"Oh hell."
Spike started laughing. They were hoarse, rasping laughs that made him sound like a dead man. He laughed until his bones were shaking and the bike behind him moved, and then he started crying because that was why he was laughing in the first place.
"Oh…" his fingers scrabbled in the dirt to find some sort of purchase. Spike felt like a part of him was levitating. The hysteria rolled over him in waves until he couldn't hold it in anymore. "Dru!" he shouted at the sky again, laughter mixed with tears bubbling out of his throat again. "Oh, my ripe wicked plum… my dark goddess… I know just how you feel now. All alone and talking to the bleedin' sky! Look! The stars are dancin' and…"
At this point, Spike broke down completely.
Afraid of me. I wanted her, wanted her, wanted her. I needed her, needed her, needed her. I loved her, loved her, loved her. And all I can think now is of the look in her eyes… the look that told me I was nothing but a monster…
When I thought, for a while, I could be a man.
"Oh… oh hell…"
Spike had never cried much before. He hadn't needed to. All of the tears of William had been cried out of him after three years at the tender mercies of Darla, Angelus, and Dru. But after he'd fallen in love with the Slayer, he found there were still tears inside of him. A reservoir of silent anguish that caked his undead heart. Now, it all came leaking out again just like it had on the day she'd died… and on the night she'd come back.
Without preamble, he suddenly found himself babbling through his tears. The blades of grass that stretched out before him seemed to sway like a confessional as he rocked and moaned and mumbled, blurting out everything in a tsunami of grief and hysteria.
"Oh man, I've really done it this time. Gone and… screwed it all up like I always have. I only wanted… only wanted to make her feel it, I swear. That's all… I never meant to… hurt the girl. Never meant to… hurt the girl. Never wanted her to… look at me like that… like I was a monster…"
He hiccuped even though he didn't need to oxygen. "Like I was… worse than a monster. Hell, she looked at me… and I could have… been worse than the devil himself and all his bleedin'… coterie too. I could have been…"
His eyes rolled back and he kept crying.
"Could have been a soddin' soulless… evil… dead thing…"
Spike never knew what made him look up. The smell of grass was sharp in his nose, and so was the smell of his own tears and anger and guilt. All of his senses were running amok. His hearing seemed to magnify his sobs a million times, so that the whole world seemed to echo with the sound of his tears. He tasted the salt on his tongue and wept even harder.
But somehow, something made him look up, and when he saw her about twenty meters from him, standing like a statue, he froze.
He rubbed his eyes. She was still there, and there was such an infinite look of pain on her face that he shook his head and pushed back the tears into his throat.
"I'm insane, aren't I?" he asked her, choking slightly. "I've finally cracked it. The Hellmouth an' everythin' soddin' on it has driven me mad. Why else would you be here?"
She was silent, unmoving. To Spike, that seemed to prove his point. With some of his old swagger, he looked at her straight in the eye.
"Still, you're right pretty for a figment of my bloody imagination," he had to wipe away the last wave of tears to stop her from blurring, feeling more build up even as he did so. "But I don't suppose you could bugger off an' make me stop feelin' even more guilty?"
She moved then. Moved towards him like a fallen angel as he watched in awe, red splotches still under her eyes and a haunted look in her eyes that he knew somehow matched his own.
"Hello, Spike."