Chapter 3: Madness

A/N Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! I know I took a long time coming out with this chapter. What happened was a rather effective case of writer's block. Today, I tried to write again, and I was about to give up when I saw your reviews, and this is what happened. : ).

So, I'd like to thank you all so very much again for reviewing. Even from the beginning, all of you who encouraged me to keep going. So yes… thanks to obsessedwithspike, kim (as always : ) ), Dieu Anonyme, DanielNieves, willow-wiccan, and Autumn Soleil for this chapter. : ) . I know that it might seem somewhat incoherent, but hopefully I'll be able to clear it up later. Until now, I hope you enjoy this chapter. (And the new one up on Adhara's Fate too!)

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Buffy wanted to reach out to him. Her fingers were already trembling so much she had to hide them in the folds of her sleeves. He looked like something unreal… a statue in dirty leather and tears. And yet, he was so alive that she could have been reborn in every anguish-filled second their eyes remained locked. She couldn't forget the irony… the dead man, who was more alive than anyone else she'd ever met.

It killed her now. It had always been killing her. She'd told him as much.

But she'd never known just how.

Not until this moment, at the very least. This moment, where all they were doing were being still, looking at each other. Two warriors who were always moving. Always fighting. Always feeling the blood run through them and around them, tasting the pure sparks of violence in the air.

They were still, and it seemed as if eternity wasn't enough to keep this moment going.

Spike broke it, naturally.

The snap of wood as Spike stood so abruptly and stumbled backwards over his bike to land on the ground again made her heart jump. Wood. Wood. In a flash, she was running towards him, barely registering the look of panic on his face.

"Don't!"

She paid him no heed until he scrambled back; "Slayer, no!"… scattering splinters from the branch he'd inadvertently broken when he'd fallen. She paused, just out of his reach as she stared at him with fear.

"W-what?"

Spike looked at his bleeding hands, punctured by the wood and slowly rose his gaze to meet hers.

He was torn.

Not that that wasn't normal for him. Bloody hell… she looked like an angel. Old lines of poetry came back to him, and he cringed.

Saviour, shine thy sword away,

Thou light doth blind my eyes,

Dost thou grant salvation, pray?

Or doth destruction in thee lie?

Closing his eyes and opening them again, he let out a hoarse, whistling breath. Somehow, in the darkness, he found a voice.

"Buffy, love…" he swallowed at the widening of her eyes. I have no right to call her that now… "Slayer," he forced out, choking on the words. "Slayer, I…"

He looked so… broken. Confused. His eyes darted around as if he were looking for an escape, and she felt her heart thump within her ribs. Reminding her of the blood flowing through her veins. She leaned towards him as if his words were a lifeline and he shied away like a rabbit.

It broke his concentration. and he couldn't help it. "Just... don't be here."

She stared at him disbelievingly, and he felt his unbeating heart sink. William the Bloody Awful Poet… still failing to find the right words a century later. "Don't… be… here?" she enunciated slowly, stepping towards him. "What the hell are you talking about Spike?"

He didn't realise the question was half-rhetorical. "Shouldn't be here, Slayer. Out of Sunnydale, out of your town. Chasin' after a dead thing."

The look that she levelled at him made him laugh again, and his hoarseness choked him.

"You mean after everything that's happened between us," she gestured wildly around, and he thought she was pointing to the vast expanse of highway between them. "After everything that's gone down, the only thing you can think of to say is 'just don't be here'?"

He blinked in surprise.

She pursued it ruthlessly. "You think that'll ever solve this? Me not being here? Or is that what you want in general… for me not to be here?" the shock in and of her voice startled him into moving.

"Slayer, I never said that."

"Then what did you say?" she demanded, crossing her arms. He wanted to grin and make a snarky comment… he wanted anything to happen, as long as it prolonged the moment of her standing there, strong again. Not like the last time. "What did you mean?"

He swallowed. "I don't know what I meant," he said, blandly.

She wanted to explode, but she couldn't. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't. She wondered if she could still move. She reached out a hand to try, but her fingers stayed locked in her arms like stone.

"Don't take me like that, Slayer," he warned, coldness seeping from his tone. "You don't always have to be blamin' me for everything that goes through that pretty little head of yours."

He stood a little straighter.

"I meant what I said," he continued. "You… shouldn't be here. So just don't. Go back. Or else we'll soddin' finish this."

"Finish?" she asked in disbelief. "You think this is about finishing?"

They paused for a moment, locked in each others' eyes, and then he was so scared by what he saw in hers that he reeled back. "Oh! I see, that's it," he dashed away the last remnants of salt from his eyes and smirked, feeling naked without his duster draping around him. "You're finally gonna do it, aren't you?"

Incomprehension fuelled her irritation. "Spike…"

He ignored her. Felt his persona coat him like leather. "How bloody ironic. Couldn't have done it with better timin', Slayer. I finally leave, like you've wanted be to for how bloody long… and now you decide to soddin' stake me. Or not soddin' stake me, because you can't seem to make up your mind!"

"Spike!" she snapped at him, and he stood down almost automatically at the sight of the green fire in her eyes. "Stop babbling and bloody listen to me!"

How could he refuse an offer like that?

She stepped in closer and he stepped away. "I didn't run all the way here to… stake you," she let the last words ease out as if she were in pain. Then her eyes grew murderous. "Moron."

He heard an echo of Dawn. Another girl hurt. Another life tainted.

"I… I came here because I…"

Something within Spike stilled his raging emotions. Perhaps it was her eyes, perhaps it was just her quiet declaration. Or perhaps he'd finally just cried himself out and could do nothing but be calm and recognise a side of Buffy she'd never shown him before. It surprised him, the amount of vulnerability in her eyes. Not when he'd told her every night he dreamed of saving her… not when she'd told him about Heaven, not at any time had she ever looked this…

"Because you what, Slayer?" he asked softly.

She brought her chin up and stared at him defiantly. "Because I want you to stay, you stupid vampire."

Spike's jaw dropped, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to start laughing or crying again. "You wh-what?"

She refrained, barely, from stamping her foot. "You heard me," she snapped, and then when he recoiled from her, she stepped closer again, and this time he did not move away. "I don't want you to go. Please, Spike, I…"

"He looked at her, guardedly. "I don't suppose I have a choice in all of this, Slayer?" he queried guardedly, peering at her with red-rimmed eyes.

"I need you," she finished. And then she glared at him. "And no, you don't have a choice!"

"That's my gi…"

He cut himself off abruptly and fell silent, and she winced for him. He wanted to misinterpret it, to start off anything that could end the unbearable tension between them, but he couldn't. Wouldn't. Whatever had happened had brought them to this path, and so he squared his shoulders and stared at her.

"What happened, Buffy?"

She laughed shortly. "Between you disappearing, Giles coming back and getting himself landed in hospital, Faith kicking me in the head and Willow heading off to destroy the world, not much."

He stared at her and she couldn't help but laugh more. "Bloody hell," he said unexpectedly. "That sounds like Sunnydale."

A crooked grin spread across her face. "And now Xander and Tara are the only people out there trying to stop her, and we don't even know why she's still alive… and I'm here with you."

His eyes narrowed. "Fill me in, Slayer. We can't leave things to the whelp."

She paused, as if she was considering his words. A beat. Then… "No."

"No?" he stared at her disbelievingly. "You're just going to let Red end the world now, are you?"

She shook her head. "I had a Slayer dream. Literally. She'll be alright. The world will be alright."

He cocked his head and looked at her, and she was swamped with memories. The way he always looked at her. She couldn't believe how easily he'd slipped, how easily they'd slipped from confronting each other to the apocalypse. It seemed like a safer topic, she realised with a shiver. She was more comfortable about the possible ending of the world than actually owning up to everything with Spike.

Sunnydale was such a screwed up place.

"So you're saying that the soddin' Powers that Meddle sent you a dream to say things were gonna be dandy? I thought you always said they were warnings."

"This one was," she didn't want to look at him now. The highway stretched before them, the wilderness around them and she wished that she could see which way the other road led. "They were just warning me about another apocalypse."

His shoulders tensed. "Pre-emptive," he said.

She was torn again, between shivering away from his soul-piercing stare and drawing closer because she wanted to see herself in his eyes, because she wanted to know what her soul looked like and it just might be him; this demon that could love and fight and kill all in one breath.

"About you," she suddenly blurted out. "They were warning me about you."

They were the wrong words, and she cursed herself for them even before his eyes turned to flint. "They were, were they?" he asked, softly.

She saw it the second that it happened. The change. He grew taller, fuller. His shoulders straightened and his face curled into an ugly sneer, even as he stalked forwards towards her. "So what? What'll I do, Slayer?" he ran a finger down her arm and she tensed. "Be the Big Bad again? Rain everything down in blood and destruction?" he curled his tongue between his teeth and she shivered as he leant down to breathe tantalisingly into her ear. "Or is it what I'll make you do?"

It was her turn. She stepped away from his hands, barely restraining herself from slapping him away… the anger in her eyes so intense she was almost blinded by it.

Until she saw his eyes. His eyes that matched that blue, blue sky she had seen.

Like rain.

His eyes were like rain. She stared transfixed as his sneer faltered, as his predator stance shifted, and with that single realisation the rage that had threatened to erupt with his words cooled to a simmer. "That's bullshit and you know it, Spike."

He growled, but she didn't hear hatred. "Are you so sure about that?"

Yes, yes I am. "They were warning me about…"

She paused. And thought. What had they been warning her specifically about? She bit her lip and almost drew blood, and her arms wrapped around herself as a cold wind assailed them. She had to stop him from doing whatever he'd planned to do. Yet judging by what Faith had been saying, it didn't look as if the act of stopping was supposed to have a dusty ending.

"Well, pet?"

She looked at him, sharp-eyed. "What were you going to do, Spike?"

He stiffened at her accusatory tone. "What do you mean what was I going to do?" he asked defensively.

She gestured at the motorbike. "Where were you going? They told me I had to stop you from what you were going to do, because if I didn't, then we'd have another apocalypse on our hands."

His jaw dropped, and she was suddenly struck by indecision. His face was a storm, lightning and thunder chasing their way across his pale marble features, but they weren't form anger, they were from confusion and… guilt?

He swallowed, bitterly. "I don't have to tell you what I was going to do, Slayer," he stepped away from her again, and she felt bereft.

"What, were you going to raze LA? Get your chip out? Massacre innocents?" her eyes blazed as a wave of possibilities overturned her head. "God, you were going to do that?"

He watched as, like always, the Slayer got a few too many steps ahead of herself.

"I can't believe you!" she flared. "I thought that you'd actually started to change… Faith even said I should trust you, should stop lying to myself about you, and off you go and want to start killing again?"

"Hey, wait…"

She continued, oblivious. "God, Spike… didn't you even think? Or did you plan to not care when I found everyone with their throats ripped out and flowers everywhere?"

His eyes were stony again. "Now listen here, Slayer…"

"And then I would have had to stake you!" she raged, not even registering his growing ire. "You evil…"

There was only so much a vampire could take in one night. Spike had soul-searched… or searched the grubby remains of what might have constituted as a soul, at any rate. He'd travelled, he chain-smoked, he'd just about gone off his bat. And so he snapped. "Listen, you self-righteous bint," he growled, seizing her arm. "Why do you always have to bloody see the worst in me?"

They don't see you. But I do. You walk in worlds, My William… my Shining Knight…

"Because there's nothing else to see," Buffy shouted, her voice cracking. "Because if that's not what you were going to do, then why are you hiding it from me?"

"I was going to get my soddin' soul!" he yelled.

It felt drawn out, like a prayer. Buffy froze, and he was like the sea. "I was going to get my soul," he repeated, feeling an incredible weariness drop over him. "I was going to get my bloody soul, because then you could love me."

She stayed still.

"Go on, then," he laughed, tears starting to prick at his eyes again. "Give me your speech. Tell me how you could never love a thing like me. Tell me how even a soul couldn't make me any better, couldn't even bring you to look at me…"

His lungs sucked in air as he suddenly turned to game-face and she stared at him wide-eyed.

"Tell me I'm beneath you," he hissed.

The night was full of pauses. Seconds ticked past as she felt them, like clock hands moving inside her skull. Finally, quietly… "No."

"What the fuck do you mean, 'no'?" he snarled, and she wondered for a second if he was going to hit her and break her nose. "You always do, that's what you do! It's what you always do, it's what you'll always do, it's what…"

"Spike."

His hysteria stopped for a second. "What?"

"Shut up."

Mustering all of her will-power, Buffy grabbed his head, and pulled him down to her until she felt his fangs touch her lips.

And then she kissed him and tasted blood.