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Awakening
Chapter Ten
Spike and Buffy were reclined in the back seat of the SUV, her back to his chest, her hips between his legs, his arms wrapped protectively around her waist, and they were both sound asleep.
Giles watched a moment before turning back to the dark, twisting road before them. Beside him, Angel throbbed rage – living and breathing – in the tight confines of the SUV, as he drove with controlled precision only a vampire could manage.
Aside from a brief spat when Spike refused to relinquish his claim on Buffy as he carefully pulled her into the back seat with him, none of the men had spoken for hours. Drained, Buffy had slept through the ATV ride and the transfer to the SUV. Giles had no idea how Spike managed to drive the ATV with Buffy unconscious in his lap, but he had done so with skill, leaving Angel and Giles to share the second four-wheeler.
Now, they were on their way over the mountain to Sunnydale. Giles worried about Buffy's wounds, but Spike reassured him she was healing and only needed rest. Spike's unconscious state in a vehicle with a Slayer, her watcher, and the vampire's angry sire was proof positive that he needed rest as well.
"Perhaps you should explain the Oath of Vassalage to me. And please keep in mind, Angelus, I will be vigorous in my fact-checking once we return." Giles' tone was barely a murmur, but there was no mistaking the undertone of steel lacing through his request.
Angel growled low in his throat, the leather of the steering wheel creaking under his tightening grip. "It's a fairy tale."
"So you've said, but I'd like to hear the tale, if you please."
"It's just…" Angel rubbed his creased brow, narrowed eyes never leaving the road. "Certain rites and rituals that are passed from sires to childer in keeping with vampiric tradition."
"What sort of rites?" Giles canted toward Angel. He wished he had a recorder or at the very least a pad and pencil.
"Rites humans aren't privy to," Angel spat.
Giles' blue eyes turned to gunmetal gray as he glared at the other man. "I suggest you make me privy to this one."
Angel sighed, wiping his broad hand down his face. "It's not so much a rite as...You know, a vampire can't…" Angel wavered, looking for the word. "Initiate it. It has to be…the Slayer makes the choice. She chooses. Only she knows the words and they are fleeting. Once said they're forgotten by all those who witness it."
Giles realized with a start that the memory was already fading. He knew what he'd seen, what he'd been privy to, but the words Spike spoke had already vanished.
Angel collected himself in the driver seat, dark, clawing caricatures of pine trees whisking by the windows, slivers of deep woods illuminated by the flashing headlights with each twisting turn of the road.
"It's more of a myth…or better yet, a cautionary tale. If you're a bad vampire, if you don't follow your nature – your true demon nature – if you aren't ruthless enough or bloodthirsty enough, that the Slayer will come. Not to dust you, but to claim you as hers. As her minion. Her slave."
"Her champion?"
The muscle in Angel's jaw flexed.
"She forces the oath onto unsuspecting vampires. Weak vampires. Those who are too lazy to hunt or too soft to kill."
"That doesn't seem the case here," Giles prodded, wanting the truth. "Spike's a ruthless hunter. A merciless killer."
In a burst of energy, Angelus slammed his fist repeatedly into the steering wheel, his larger frame swelling dangerously in the small space. The car swerved, veering into the other lane before correcting.
Pressed against the door, body angled towards his enemy, Giles watched as the vampire blew great billowing breaths through his nose in an effort to calm himself. Giles had never seen the vampire breathe before, and it tickled something in the back of his mind.
He glanced into the back seat, where both Buffy and Spike had slept through the commotion. Restless, Buffy had turned until she lay chest to chest with the vampire, her face pressed into his throat. Spike's hands had crept away from Buffy's waist until one wrapped around her hip, the other cupping the back of her head, holding her to him. Narrowing his eyes to focus in the dark, Giles watched Buffy's body lift as Spike took a breath.
Chest tight, he turned back to the road, keeping the dark outline of Angel's profile in his peripheral.
"The truth if you please," he demanded.
"That's the truth." Angel paused. "One of them. As with all fairy tales there's different versions."
"And the other version?"
Angel vibrated with barely contained fury, and Giles feared another outburst. With a deep breath the vampire calmed, his chin angling down even as he watched the road.
"That the Slayer is seeking a vampire worthy of her."
Giles digested this bit of information. The thought that a vampire, any vampire, souled or unsouled, had the potential to be worthy of a slayer was…unsettling.
"How can that be?"
"Again, it's all a vampire fairy tale. A….creation myth," Angel muttered.
"What do you mean?" Giles looked at him sharply.
"To understand what the Slayer is seeking, you have to understand what she is. What vampires are."
"What they are?" Giles thought he knew the answer to this, thought he'd known since he was in short pants, but the solemnity of Angel's tone sobered him. It reminded him that hubris was the height of folly, and that only a foolish man believed he knew all there was to know.
Angel took a deep breath. "In the beginning there was only darkness. Chaos. Demons dwelled within it. But…." For the first time since the conversation, Angel looked at Giles. "Then God said let there be light, and there was light."
Giles waited for him to continue, but there was only silence and the darkness that surrounded them.
"Then what?" he prodded.
"Well, it wasn't like turning on a light switch, was it? It was war. The darkness against the light. A war for supremacy and in between were the humans.
"Demon is a human concept." Angel continued. "You read it in the ancient texts. In epic tales that talk about the beginning times of old kings, demons are just blanket concepts for supernatural creatures. All supernatural creatures."
The tightness in Giles' chest expanded, pressing with agonizing pressure against his ribs. As an expert in history he knew this. He knew that demon was a concept ancient peoples used long before it became synonymous with evil. Even now, he and the Scoobies tagged the title demon to every other sentient creature they came across, regardless of how those creatures named themselves. It was the untranslatable word that stood in for the "other". The unidentified race that existed before humans. The unexplainable. The different.
And different came in many, many forms.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that's what makes a slayer. The first men called to a demon to fight demons. One in direct opposition to what they needed to fight. One that wasn't for the darkness, but against it. Once you understand that, then you understand what she's seeking."
"Which is?"
"The omega to her alpha. The darkness to her light. The demonic to her…"
"Angelic…" Giles breathed.
The gravity of the revelation hit Giles like a blow to the chest. The source, the power inside Buffy, inside all slayers, was angelic in nature.
"Do you really believe that's what she is? An angel?"
"Who knows!" Angel flung up a hand. "Like I said, it's all speculation. Rumors and fairy tales."
Giles nodded, grim. What were the concepts of demon and angel really? Were they beings fueled by holy and unholy essences or just creatures like any other? Supernatural, yes, but were they really divine?
"Then what?" Giles asked.
Angel shook his head. In disbelief? In denial? Giles wasn't sure. "Once the angel finds her demon, then together they balance each other until they ascend."
"Ascend? Off this plane?" Giles' wide hand massaged his chest, trying and failing to rub away the growing pit in his heart.
"No. Nothing like that. At least I don't think so. They just….become."
"Become what?" The ache didn't lessen.
"Whole, I guess. I don't know."
"Angelus!"
"I don't know," Angel cried. "I don't. Know one knows. The last time a Slayer claimed a champion was over a millennium ago. And like I said, vampires aren't privy to the ritual in full. We know of the potential of it happening. And I think thousands of years ago we might have even prepared for it. Potentials were groomed for it. Strove for it. To be selected by the Slayer was to be immortal in a way that undeath could never grant us. But it's been so long. And the Slayer…"
"What about the Slayer?" Giles felt tendrils of unease creep up his spine.
"She isn't what she used to be. She's been…corrupted."
"Corrupted by what?" Giles drew a quick breath when Angel shot him a scathing look.
"By you," Angel accused.
"What?" Giles gasped.
"By the Council, by her prejudice, by ignorance, by too many deaths. The Slayer line has been weakened, and the Source of all Good no longer seeks to blend its essence with its vessel. It's been dormant."
Giles sat back into his seat, absorbing everything Angel told him. It was too unbelievable to be true. All of it. But most of all, he couldn't fathom how it was possible that a vampire had become bound by oath and deed to his Slayer. Nor did he truly know what that meant for her future.
"Will he hurt her?"
Angel didn't speak. He glanced into the back seat, his face hardening at what he saw.
Both men sat forward in their seats, watching as the darkness flew by.
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"What do you think happened to Spike back at that clearing?"
Angel's lips tightened at Giles' question.
"There's nothing like it in the watcher diaries. I'm sure of it. But then again, I've never heard of this Oath of Vassalage either. Nor of any Slayer taking a vampire for a vassal." Giles huffed a breath, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. He checked the back seat for the thousandth time, assuring himself that his slayer rested unharmed.
"There's other versions," Angel finally said.
"More?" Giles' tone took on an edge.
"Like I said, it's all rumor and fairy tale. No one really knows the truth."
"Well," Giles prodded when Angel didn't expound further.
Angel rubbed his aching head with two fingers. Tiny spider feet tickled the back of his neck, warning him that dawn was coming.
"You know how I said that vampires used to prepare for vassalage? Strive for it. Want it. Want to be a Potential."
"Yes."
"It's because vassalage endows you with power. It's all part of the becoming." Angel spat the word like it was poison on his tongue.
"You said you didn't know what they become."
"I don't. Just rumor."
Giles straightened in his seat, peering closely at Angelus. "What's the rumor?" he demanded, eyes hard.
"That taking a vampire vassal corrupts the Slayer. Makes her into some sort of vampire/slayer hybrid. They combine powers, becoming stronger. She absorbs the evil energy of the vampire, becoming more demon than angel."
"If that was true, then wouldn't the vampire absorb her energy? Getting a bit of her light?" Giles mulled the idea of that. A vampire endowed with goodness from his connection with the Slayer.
"No!" Angelus spat. "Absolutely not. A vampire is evil to the core. There's not a thing redeemable about the demon."
Giles eyed Angel, whose strong profile was set in stone.
"Unless that vampire has a soul?" Giles murmured, testing.
"That's right," Angel confirmed sternly.
"I see." And Giles did. He saw much he hadn't before, blinded as he was by the romance of a souled vampire, then destroyed by the falsehood of it.
"She deserves better." Angel let loose a pained growl that seemed to resonate from his soul. "She deserves better than some vampire. Any vampire. She deserves everything I could never give her. A man who can love her without fear, a big wedding with a flouncy dress and a ridiculous cake topper, and family picnics in the sunlight. She deserves the world at her feet, Giles."
Giles jumped when Angel slammed the side of his fist against the door. The watcher had never seen the usually collected vampire act so irrationally.
"Do you think I wanted to leave her? I love her. Love her with everything that I am. She's beautiful and perfect, and I was slowly destroying her. God!" His voice broke, his entire body shuddering. "She almost killed Faith for me. A human. Her sister. She was becoming the very thing she hated because of our love. Because of me. It nearly destroyed me, but I had to leave her. Had to be the strong one and do the right thing."
Angel scrubbed a hand over his face. "She deserves a chance at life. At love with a real man. Her calling has taken so much from her, but I thought I could at least give her that, give her everything she couldn't have, and now Spike will ruin it. He'll ruin her."
Angel slammed on the brakes, fishtailing the vehicle to a stop beside the road.
"Angel!" Giles barked.
"I won't let it happen," Angel threw open his door, flinging himself out of the vehicle. "She deserves more. She deserves everything that I can give her."
The back door flew open, and Spike, losing his support, half fell from the car. Awake and alert, his hands went to Buffy's waist to keep her from falling, a warning growl rippling from his throat. Buffy's hands went to his shoulders, balancing herself.
They were close. Close enough that Spike could watch as the white band around her eyes expand, swallowing the sweet, innocent green.
No ethereal mistiness seeped from her eyes. No complete washing away of Buffy, leaving behind only the uberbitch.
No, this was Buffy infused with power belonging to her by right of destiny.
She arched her neck, exposing her throat to Spike. Her pulse throbbed, and he had to bite back a moan. He'd tasted her in the glade, so much more powerful than she had been back on the plane. She was changed now, right down into her DNA.
Averting his eyes, he dropped his head so he could see the threat, albeit at an awkward, upside-down angle.
Angel stood over them, lips curled back in a snarl. Behind him the ghost-white light of dawn filtered through the twisted, needle-fringed pine trees.
"Angel!" Giles barked, coming around the back of the vehicle.
"No!" Angel roared. "I won't let her be corrupted by him. I'll save her, even if it means sacrificing myself."
Several things happened at once. Angel reached for Spike. Spike tightened his grip on Buffy. Buffy dug the heels of her hands into Spike's shoulders, rearing up to face the threat.
Then hell broke loose.
Sound died an aborted death, only to be reborn in an ionized hum, growing until it pierced the ear. Wind whipped through the trees, bending them to the ground as a white light expanded through the cab of the vehicle, bowing the windows of the SUV like burgeoning soap bubbles.
"You cannot have what is mine!" Buffy raged, her voice ringing like a bevy of clarions.
Power discharged in a burst of electric white light.
Angel flew back, hitting a pine tree with a loud crack, nearly uprooting it. The SUV rocked hard.
Giles stumbled against the vehicle.
The trees unbent with a groan; the windows retracted and resettled, leaving a slight rainbow residue in the glass, like oil on water.
Spike went still, blue eyes wide as he stared at the goddess perched above him.
"Soddin' hell," he whispered through stiff lips.
Dropping her head, Buffy looked down at him with unseeing eyes. He watched the power bleed away until her natural green returned, still banded in the faint white glow.
Blinking a few more times, she came back to herself.
"Dawn's coming," she told him, voice sleepy.
"Yeah, Slayer." Spike decided that agreeable was the ticket to staying whole and healthy.
She yawned, looking too bloody much like a kitten for Spike's mental wellbeing, especially in light of what he'd just witnessed, and settled against his chest to sleep.
Hands still at her waist, Spike twisted his head to look at Giles, who gaped at them.
"Little help, mate?"
Giles jolted. "Yes, yes. Of course." He dug out a blanket and settled it carefully over the top of them, trying not to wake Buffy.
"Up," he ordered Spike.
With a crunch of his abs, Spike curled up so Giles could close the door. The back of the SUV opened, camping gear was dragged out, and a few minutes later Giles returned with a slumped Angel leaning heavily on him. Blood coated half the vampire's face, and the way he wrapped his free arm around his waist told of several broken ribs. Giles settled him in the back with a blanket over him.
Just before he covered Angel's face, Giles leaned close. "I suggest you behave yourself. Or next time I'll see you fry, and dance a jig while you do."
Not waiting for an answer, Giles flung the blanket over Angel's face and slammed the hatch shut.
After hauling himself into the driver seat, he twisted to look into the back seat, but all he saw were perfectly still lumps under the blanket. Twisting back around, he started the vehicle and headed to Sunnydale.
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The sun had sunk low in the sky by the time they pulled into Giles' assigned carport near his apartment.
Giles turned to Buffy in the passenger seat, eyes roaming across her face, not too subtly looking for changes in the girl who was like a daughter to him.
She had woken outside of Sacramento, crawled out from beneath the blanket, and immediately asked for food. Giles had stopped at a convenience station to get her bottled water and snacks, which she accepted with a big smile and even bigger appetite.
Giles went back for thirds.
Still several hours from Sunnydale, they'd taken the time to talk. Buffy related everything she could remember about the last three days, sheepishly admitting it wasn't much because she'd been unconscious through most of it.
What she did tell him shocked him to the core.
William the Bloody, the feared Slayer of Slayers, had rendered care and attention to an injured Slayer. Even going so far as to risk his own life to keep her safe.
Giles honestly didn't know what to do with this information. Instead, he segued to his greater concern: the being manifesting inside Buffy. About this, Buffy had nothing to say. Not even a comment on whether or not she remembered. When asked, she merely turned her face away to stare out the window. The discussion ended, they drove in silence until they reached Sunnydale.
In the back seat, Spike stirred when the vehicle came to a stop. Further back, Angel groaned.
"Giles, will you take Angel inside?" Buffy requested, her entire demeanor subdued in a way that disturbed Giles.
"Yes, of course."
Buffy exited the vehicle when he did, only to slide into the back next to Spike, who rubbed a hand through his sleep-tousled hair as he sat up.
Giles cast her an enigmatic look as he hauled Angel upright, but she didn't glance back at them. Not even when Angelus bore holes into the back of her head with his glare.
Buffy and Spike sat together in the back seat, the silence stretching long after the door to Giles' apartment slammed shut.
"I'm keeping the jacket." Buffy adjusted his duster across her chest, making sure it was still closed.
Spike hollowed his cheeks, casting her a sideways glance from beneath his lashes.
"I know you're leaving," she stated, still staring straight ahead. "But you'll come back for what's yours…eventually."
Spike shifted, averting his gaze so not even her profile could be seen in his peripheral.
"Nothin' here is mine."
The quick intake of Buffy's breath made his entire body snap taut. She moved quickly – quicker than she had ever been capable of in the past – swinging out of her seat, and aiming her small fist at his nose.
Spike's parry was just as impossibly quick. He wrapped his hand around her fist, yanking back until she tumbled into his lap.
He shot a surprised glance at their hands, startled at how fast he had moved. It was something to explore at a later time, most likely when he didn't have an enraged slayer in his lap.
She squirmed, bringing her other fist around for a quick punch. He grabbed that too, pinning her arm between them.
"That's to say," he hissed out, "you own everything that is me."
His declaration froze Buffy's struggles. She peered up at him with huge green eyes banded in white, her pink little mouth hanging open in a round 'o'.
How embarrassing. Spike had no idea where the declaration came from. It just shot out of his mouth, merry as you please. Worse, it was without a shred of guile.
He searched deep, trying and failing to suss out how he felt about that. How he felt about being owned by someone other than Dru. He couldn't find a clear response. It was all too muddled yet to make sense.
"You're mine," she breathed. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a clarification. It was a statement of truth that they both recognized, even if it was hard to digest.
Spike nodded slowly, still staring into her eyes, now dilated with her mixed emotions. "I'm yours, of that I'm certain, but…"
She dropped her gaze, and Spike had to fight with himself not to place his fingers under her chin to tilt her face back to his.
"But you can't stay." She pulled herself from his lap, and he reluctantly let her go. They resettled, side-by-side, each not looking at the other.
Spike rubbed a hand across his brow, staring at the puddles of late afternoon sunlight just beyond the carport. The world outside the car window looked alien – artificial and contrived – after spending so much time in the wild. The manufactured humanness smacked of wrongness.
The light was harsher here, down in the valley of the sun, where humans built their metropolises. The air was acidic, smelling of burning tar and melting plastic. It reeked of hundreds of sweating bodies, heaped on top of each other in their little boxed apartments. All their writhing humanity – the thudding of their sluggish heartbeats, their piggish squeals when fucking or fighting – shrieked a discordant cacophony in Spike's ears.
"Not right now. I need time." It was too confusing. Too intense. He hated the idea of belonging to anyone while at the same time he reveled in it. He wanted to belong, to become, so badly that for a moment he fantasized of launching himself at Buffy, latching on with fists and fangs and never letting her go.
Buffy nodded. "I think I need time too." She rubbed her chest, eyes distant. "I can feel it inside me. Just beneath. So close. It's strong and powerful and…"
"Terrifyin' is the word you're looking for, luv. She's terrifyin'."
Unable to look him in the eye, she clasped her hands in her lap. They sat silently in the growing darkness, neither certain of what to say. Buffy shifted.
He shifted too, sliding his knees towards her, slouching just a bit to see her face. "What is it, luv?"
"I'm…confused." Her eyes met his before flittering away. She too stared at the scenery just outside the window as if it was alien territory. "Unsettled."
"Why?"
"I'm letting you go…off to do your murder and mayhem shtick." She chanced another glance at him, face drawn into tight lines.
Spike watched her a moment, his eyes roving over her angelic features, before he shook his head slowly. "I don't think so. The commandments have changed, and 'thou shalt not murder' is at the top of the list."
"That's always been at the top of the list," she snapped, lips pursed.
"Not mine." Spike's slow and sure smile looked like something the devil must have worn right after he'd tempted Eve into taking a bite of the forbidden fruit.
Buffy watched him for a moment before releasing a long sigh. "No, I suppose not. So things have changed?"
Spike shrugged. "Well, yeah. Can't you feel it?"
Buffy reflected, poking and prodding her insides, only to find the entire landscaped rearranged. That too was unsettling. Knowing she was irrevocably changed, but unable to pinpoint the exact nature of the change. "Yeah. There's…a certainty inside me."
"A certainty?"
"That you're mine." The words slipped out unbidden, shocking her now that she wasn't in the heat of the moment. Eyes wide, she waved her hands in front of her. "Not in a mine, mine kind of way, but you know, you're my…"
"Champion?"
Buffy shrugged. That she wasn't so certain of. After all, she was the champion, wasn't she? Did champions get champions? "I guess I'm just certain that I can count on you. I know you've got my back. I know you'll…"
"Obey?"
The atmosphere crackled. Obey was a dirty word for both of them.
"That you won't break your promises to me," she whispered.
Spike edged closer, taking in her scent of honey and vanilla. "Haven't made any promises," he whispered back.
"Yes, you did," she countered, chin jerking up, eyes flashing. "You swore an oath. That's better than a promise. That's like an…" Buffy frowned, uncertain of the word.
"An oath," Spike purred.
Buffy shot him a dirty look.
Shifting his hips in his seat, Spike had to look away. "Remember that, do you?"
"It's starting to come back. Bits and pieces. It's down there, simmering just beneath my skin with her. She's waiting…"
Spike's head jerked back around to stare at her, body taunt with expectation. Awareness that everything had changed for them, and uncertain of what it meant. "Waiting for what?"
"To show me."
"Show you what?" he prodded, frustration tinting his tone.
"Everything," she breathed, her eyes flaring with a white hot heat before subsiding to their usual green.
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Buffy braced herself outside of Giles' apartment. She had waited until Spike had disappeared into the growing twilight, knowing with certainty that he'd be back. He had to. He was tied to her in an elemental way that no one had ever been before.
He wasn't a dog on a leash to be commanded, nor was he suddenly a bosom buddy that couldn't be parted from her side.
They needed time apart to come to terms with the changes inside them as individuals. They needed to learn themselves before they could learn each other.
Spike told her that he had something he needed to dig up before he left town. He promised to stay close, and for the first time she believed a promise made to her. Spike may be leaving, but he wasn't leaving her. The difference was just subtle enough to reassure her.
Spike would be back, and together they would face whatever the universe threw at them. Until then she would learn about herself, grow into her new skin, and come to understand what it meant to be a Slayer.
THE END
Stay tuned for the second part Becoming, set in S5. There will be adorkably confused Scoobs, Riley inferiority, and, of course, sizzling hot Spuffy. And some Becoming…whatever that means.
I want to thank everyone who's read, liked, and reviewed. You guys are awesome. Happy Reading!