Buffy was still asleep when Spike peeled back the blankets, flicked on a small desk lamp, and craned his head from side to side until a series of satisfying snaps and cracks emanated from his neck. He peered down and appreciated the sight of her blonde hair spilling around her sleeping face like a halo, the soft, calm cast of her features, and the curve of her pale shoulder. Even the scar across her lip he'd come to love as her unique, singular calling card. He leaned over, kissed her softly on the forehead so as not to wake her, and pulled the blanket back over her body.
When she was at peace, which wasn't nearly often enough for his liking, she was so beautiful that it hurt his now-beating heart to look upon her. More and more, he just wanted to see her be able to rest.
School was out, the sun would be setting soon, and he had an errand to run before the night's patrol. He'd never been one for schedules, or patrols, or work … or much of anything in the way of a regular routine, for that matter … but it was Buffy's job, and she needed his help. So he'd finish what he had to do and be back for the nightly pre-patrol pow-wow in the library. Thank the gods, this Sunnydale group was far more tolerable than the first. A lot of them struggled with temper issues, which he approved of, nearly all of them actually shut the fuck up and listened to him with respect when he spoke, which he really approved of, and if Angel had never come back, the nightly killing and the fighting might be downright pleasant.
I mean, it wasn't like he or Buffy were going to live to see grey hairs, anyway. He loved her … loved her more than he thought it was possible to love anyone … but the damn girl just couldn't slack off on the bloody slaying. Being the hero was part of her, and it was inspiring most of the time, but it was also going to get them killed. Sooner or later.
But she isn't dying today.
Keeping her alive was his mantra, his purpose, his raison d'etre. That, and …
He peeled the blanket back, lower on the bed this time, and smiled at the sight of Buffy's panty-clad rear curled on the mattress. With tickling fingers he stroked the underside of one soft cheek, stifled a laugh when she squirmed in response, then replaced the blanket.
Buffy doesn't die today. And when tomorrow comes, I'll make sure she survives that day, too. One day at a time.
He pulled on a pair of black jeans that had been washed at some point in the last month, a white t-shirt that, miraculously, seemed to be freshly cleaned, socks, black boots, and his leather coat. He'd lost track of almost everything he'd brought from the old world, as he'd come to think of it, everything except the coat. A memento of sorts, he supposed.
Carefully, so as not to wake Buffy, he walked over to the lamp. He took one more long look at her sleeping face, then he flicked off the light, navigated to the door, and slowly swung it open. The basement's fluorescents flooded their flat with light, he hastened to swing the door closed, and then he worked the door knob with a gentle twist to avoid creating any loud clicks.
For some reason, it felt unusually difficult to turn and walk to the stairwell leading out of the high school basement that had become their home. A few of Buffy's underlings, as he often thought of them, were awake and greeted him with perfunctory nods and muttered pleasantries. He responded in kind, a habit he'd developed to keep Buffy satisfied that he'd dole out the appropriate amount of civility when required, and climbed the stairs.
He knew the best routes through the school to avoid company, the most shadowed paths to an alley that featured a particularly-easy-to-access storm drain, and once he had clambered down into the storm drain he scampered into a never-used-except-for-him pipe that led to the outskirts of downtown Sunnydale. From there, he intended to grab the car he'd stashed for emergency errand use, finish his retrieval mission, and be back in a few hours.
It was a boring as fuck walk, though.
He amused himself by skipping from one side of the pipe to the other to avoid the fetid, refuse-filled current of water, periodically checked drainage sluices in which vampires might be nesting, and thanked the Powers or whoever that the Shard had left him with see-in-the-dark vamp-vision. Of course, the vamp-strength and all the other vamp-abilities didn't hurt, either.
The end of the tunnel was marked by a thick, rusted iron grate blocking his path. The sun had set, but he could make out a row of apartments buildings in the distance and a clouded sky overhead. He grabbed a rung set in the wall and started climbing towards the manhole cover directly above his head. About halfway up the climb, he paused, wrinkled his nose, and sniffed at the air.
Fresh-turned earth and starched clothes … vampires … smells like two or three of them.
Fuck it, he decided. Some vamps were strong cause of age, some because of who sired them, some because maybe the human part of them got along with the demon something fierce, and he'd been strong because of all three reasons. The chance of a newly turned vampire representing an actual threat was pretty damned minimal and the walk had been pretty damned boring.
He cracked his neck again, made sure his hand axe, knives, and stake were tucked into the holsters sewn into his coat, and resumed climbing.
Some vamp must have seen me using the car and reported it to whichever big bad they answer to … I got sloppy. Should have switched up parking spots and used different routes.
He could have turned back. Should have turned back. If Buffy was there, she'd be screaming and pleading at him to turn back. Hell, she didn't even know he'd intended to slip away this evening … he figured he'd save them both the fight and get his chore done on the down-low.
With his shoulder held tight against the manhole cover he leapt upwards and used the thick steel of the disk as a shield. He needn't have bothered, the attackers were waiting for him, alright, but they were stupid enough to be waiting far enough away that he could land on the asphalt and get his bearings. The manhole cover spun into the night air, the red glow of the just-set sun lit the empty roadway, and the three vampires sprang at him from the shadows. If they'd attacked coordinated-like, or even smarter, used a bloody gun or two, he might have been in real trouble, but they were fresh-turned, dumb, and weak, as vamps go.
He caught the baseball bat swung by the first vampire with his hand, wrenched the vamp close, and with one deft move retrieved the stake from his coat and jammed it into the creature's chest. It had died a young man, couldn't have been more than twenty, and it looked downright surprised as it disintegrated into dust.
The other two vampires were older, smarter … bigger. A heavyset black dude with a shaved head, jutting jaw, and a freshly starched gray suit faced him along with a thin, grey-haired bloke with the busted nose of an ex-boxer. They were slow, though, and if there was one thing Spike had learned over the years it was that speed was the real problem, not strength. Strength you could leverage around, punches you could learn to take, but speed killed.
His hand axe took off the arm of the ex-boxer, a stake in the throat distracted the black vamp, and from there it was just butchery. The last bit of sunlight was vanishing from the horizon, the night air felt cool against the light coating of sweat he'd accumulated during the unsatisfying tussle, and he had just finished cleaning and tucking his weapons away when a fourth figure in a long, black leather coat stepped out from behind a tree. The lit cigarette reflected a red glow in the vampire's eyes as it eyed Spike.
It's him.
"I figured we'd meet, eventually," Spike called out in a conversational tone. A gust of wind whipped down the abandoned road, not a light could be seen in any of the houses lining the street, and the thought crossed his mind that it would not have been out of place for a tumbleweed to drift between the two of them. He patted at the back of his coat to ensure the small, cushioned pouch he'd sewn into an out of the way place was still there, then crossed his arms and waited to see what the other Spike would do. "Where's Dru?"
"Figured this was something she didn't need to see," the vampire replied as he took his damned time strolling across the sidewalk, down the curb, and across the street until it stopped a cautious distance away. "You're really me," the vamp said in between drags of his cigarette. The notion seemed to upset him, as his face twisted in a frown and his eyes narrowed to slits. "They all swore it was true, but some things you just have to see to believe."
"I'm you, but the original version," Spike replied. He gestured at the vamp-dust wafting along the asphalt of the road. "What was with these three bozos? You trying to soften me up? Was that the idea?"
The vampire-Spike ignored the question. "You're alive, but you're me. How the bloody hell did this happen to you, and who do I kill to make sure it doesn't happen to me?"
I can already tell that this is going to be a tiresome conversation.
"Did it to myself," he replied, and he did his best to make his statement as plain and believable as he could. "No regrets, either."
"Why?" the vampire-Spike asked with a puzzled look on his face. "You gone mad, or something? We … you … had everything."
"We had nothing," Spike informed him in a flat, merciless manner. "Just puppets dancing the same dance to the same tune over and over again. Then I met the slayer."
The vampire understood immediately. "The Buffy girl … I hear she's beautiful, but that doesn't change the fact that you're a cunt-addled idiot. We kill slayers, we don't love 'em. Or, at least I kill them."
"Yeah, I offed the same two you did," Spike admitted, "but then I met her, and everything changed. Not right away, not at first, but eventually. If you met her, you'd understand."
"You're a bloody fool."
Spike laughed a short, barking laugh in reply. "You can play the hard case all you want, but we're the same, you and I, and we've always been love's bitch. You know it, I know it, but I'm the only one who's man enough to admit it."
The vampire took another drag on his cigarette and shook his head.
"I feel sorry for you," Spike added.
The vampire blinked a few times in surprise. "Sorry for me? You're the one who traded an eternity of doing whatever you wanted for the gift of growing old and dying a tottering, useless prat. Well, you won't grow old because I'm going to kill you, but you get the idea."
The night sky really was beautiful, Spike decided as he smiled a sad smile and stared at the creature he once had been. "You're getting it all wrong in the same way that I used to." He considered trying to explain himself to the vampire, then decided it would be a waste of time. Some things a man just had to live through in order to understand. Besides, he didn't really want to.
Instead, he asked, "Can I bum a smoke?"
The vamp didn't seem particularly surprised. "Sure, why not?" He never took his eyes off Spike as he extracted a pack of cigs from the pocket of his black leather coat, tapped the end until a fag emerged, and then tossed the pack over to Spike.
Spike snatched the cigarettes out of the air. "And a light?"
A lighter spun through the air next.
Spike lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then tossed the pack and lighter back to the vampire. "Thanks."
"Last smoke seemed like the least I could do."
The two of them eyed each other as they puffed away for a time, each savoring the novel uniqueness of the moment. The smoke was acrid and burned Spike's throat as he puffed … he almost never touched the things as Buffy hated the smell and, truth to be told, they weren't nearly so pleasant on human taste buds and lungs. When he'd been a vampire, the heat curdling inside his dead chest had made him feel alive.
After a final drag he tossed the cigarette down, smashed it with his boot, and squared up to face the vamp. "Let's get on it with then."
The vampire-Spike tossed his own cigarette onto the asphalt and let it burn. "No pitch to join you? No final screed about how I'm getting it all wrong?"
Spike checked the time on his watch.
Win or lose, I'm going to miss my appointment. Damn.
"Naw," he replied. "I know you … like I said, I was you. It wouldn't matter. Besides, maybe it's better this way." He loosened his arms in his coat sleeves and assumed a wider stance. "Maybe this world's only big enough for one of us."
The vampire smiled and drew a long, curved knife from his coat. "On that, at least, we can agree. Shall we get started?"
Spike shook his head and pulled the axe loose from his coat. "Get started? Naw. You're a program on the telly that I've already watched. Let's finish this."
. . . . . . . . .
"We were supposed to start patrolling hours ago," Buffy informed the sullen-faced, crossed-arm duo seated across the library table. "It's bad enough that I have to wonder where Spike is … he's Spike, but Kendra, Wesley, you are a slayer and a Watcher. It's been months. This has to stop. We have to work together."
Wesley, dressed as was typical in an oversized suit … tan this time … primly starched tie, glasses, and with hair parted razor-sharp, opened his mouth to speak, but Kendra put her arms on the table, leaned forward, and cut him off.
"It's not you and me working together dat's the problem, Buffy," Kendra said as her arms flexed beneath the khaki green shirt she wore, "it's you working with all dees … dees … civvies … dat's the problem."
"All these what?" Buffy asked as she blinked in confusion.
"Civilians," Giles interjected. She'd finally managed to get Giles to dress down in sweaters and slacks on occasion, but for this meeting he'd gone the formal suit route as well. "Kendra's concern, as Wesley has relayed to me over these past months, is that your comrades-in-arms … the White Hats … represent a liability. She believes that involving them is unwise."
"I don't tink it, I know it!" Kendra exclaimed before Wesley could interject a word in edgewise. "Slaying is our job, yours and mine, or have you forgotten dat? It isn't theirs. If we die, that is our callin'. If they die, their blood can be on your conscience, but I won't be havin' it on mine."
Wesley raised a hand and added, "Kendra does have a point, Buffy. Some of those helping you need, in my view, psychiatric assistance, not training in witchcraft. Others are so young they might as well be children. You're tasking people who aren't old enough to buy beer with a mission to slay vampires."
"I'm not old enough to buy beer," Buffy replied.
Though thankfully, Spike knows places that don't care about checking IDs.
"Yes," Wesley admitted, "but slaying is your birthright, not theirs."
"Nobody is here unwillingly," Giles replied, "and I resent the implication that I am not carefully monitoring for signs of mental instability, of …"
Kendra stood up so abruptly that her chair fell over to clatter against the floor. "Dis is nonsense." She pointed at Buffy. "You and I were born for this … your boyfriend, Spike, assuming he stops wit da sneakin' off, is meaner in a fight than you are …"
"Well, I wouldn't say …" Buffy tried to interrupt.
Kendra bulldozed ahead, "The man with da tattoos, Angel …" her voice took on an odd note and for a second a faraway look came into her eyes, "he knows his way around a fight, but da rest?" She shook her head. "I won't be part of it, and you should put a stop to it before you get dem all killed."
"Now wait just a moment," Giles said as he stood to confront her. "You have never even bothered to see what precautions, what weaponry, what …"
Kendra turned on her heel and stalked out of that library while Giles sputtered to a stop mid-sentence. He glanced at Buffy with a defeated look, then sat back down and laid his arms on the library table. "I'm thinking this is going to be the last time we try to have this chat with Kendra."
"I agree," she said in an angry, frustrated tone while she stared at Wesley. "Instead of figuring out where Spike is, or actually doing the scheduled patrol and, you know, saving lives, you dragged your unwilling slayer in for this little chit-chat, and this is her attitude?"
"Buffy," Wesley said in an irritatingly calm and borderline condescending manner, "I know that you saw another place where things were done differently, but as I understand it, a lot of people died there."
"A lot of people died saving the world," Buffy replied, "and nobody was forced." She pointed at the library door. "As Kendra just demonstrated, the door is right there."
"This can't continue," Giles muttered. "We have Kendra patrolling alone while we are trying to coordinate a unified front, and eventually the distraction of having slayers on separate missions is going to prove to be a fatal one."
"Kendra seems to like following Watcher orders," Buffy replied, "so order her to cooperate." Buffy tried to soften her tone. "We can take it slowly at first, maybe just team her up with the people she's comfortable working with, but Wesley, we can't have her out there on her own. She's going to get killed, or she's going to get taken, and then we're going to lose a lot of people trying to save her."
"I can't give that order," Wesley replied. "You know I can't."
Buffy and Giles exchanged a long, knowing look.
"When I revealed to you the truth about this world," Giles said in a solemn, serious tone as he removed his glasses and laid them on the table, "I told you that you were eventually going to have to make a choice. The beliefs of the Watchers Council are fundamentally at odds with what Buffy and I believe is right. You have seen the diary entries, we have shared with you what we know of their misconduct, and I have been very candid about why I left their ranks. You've had sufficient time …"
"You've had months," Buffy interjected.
Giles continued, "… to determine what you wished to do, Wesley. We're getting close to the point where you need to make a choice."
"Leave the Watchers?" Wesley said in his fluttery, reed-thin voice as beads of sweat began to dot his forehead. "My father, my family history, my life's work. There has to be a way to bridge this gap and find common ground."
"You were on a list," Buffy reminded him. "And every week that goes by, I have to wonder what the hell happened in that other world to turn you into the man that Angel and Buffy wanted on that list, because whatever it was, it hasn't happened here."
Giles tapped at the table. "I think the time has come …"
The library doors swung open and Xander walked in. His normally sullen and angry countenance was absent, and instead his face was pale and his expression was one of shock. Behind him White Hats clustered, silent and fluttering, in the hallway outside the library as if they were afraid to enter.
Xander opened his mouth to speak, and it was as if words failed him.
Something is wrong.
Buffy held her breath as a hundred possibilities sprang to her mind. She found herself standing from the chair without meaning to, and then she realized that Giles was doing likewise.
"Xander," she said, and she had to force the words from her throat, "what is it?"
"Buffy …" Xander started to say, and then he stopped. He glanced down at the floor and forced himself to start again. "I … I don't know how to tell you this."
Giles laid a hand on her shoulder and said, "What has happened?"
Xander's eyes rose to lock on hers, and she could feel the sadness welling from him as he spoke, "It's about Spike, Buffy."
"What about Spike?" she asked, and the frantic edge to her voice cut through the air like a knife. "Did you find him? Where was he?"
Her heart froze in her chest when he replied, "Buffy, I am so, so sorry."
. . . . . . . . .
Spike's body had been left in an alley near enough to the high school that they'd find it, but not near enough that his killers would be interrupted during their gruesome work.
"He promised me," Buffy whispered in a strangled, choking voice while she stared, frozen in grief, at the tableau that had been left for them to find. "He promised me that he wouldn't go looking for his other self, the vampire Spike from this world, and he did it anyway."
"We don't know if he did, Buffy," Giles said, and he sounded on the verge of tears. He put his arm on her shoulder. "Turn away from this."
She resisted the pull and continued to stare. "I guess it doesn't matter now." She needed to weep, had to find some outlet for the unbearable pain, the terrible pressure that was pulsing and beating out of control inside her, but she couldn't. If she started to cry and sob, she'd never be able to stop, and what good would it do anyway. Spike was gone. "This can't be happening," she whispered. "It just can't. I won't let it."
Giles and Oz tried to convince her to walk away, Giles most of all, but she forced herself to watch as they pried free the sharpened rebar that pinned Spike's corpse to the brick wall of the alley. The metal had been driven through the bare skin of his wrists, ankles, shoulders, and waist and into the stone beyond so deeply that they had to chip at the bricks with crowbars to free his body.
Judging by the blood spatter, Spike had been alive for most of what they had done to him. Someone, probably Oz, had been kind enough to close Spike's eyelids so she didn't have to look upon the ruined, empty sockets left after they'd taken his eyes … the blue eyes that could sparkle with frightening energy, or be warm, depending on what he thought she needed to see. The fingers that hadn't been severed from his hands, fingers with which she'd intertwined her own so many times, were bent and broken. Spike's jacket and shirt had been cut away and tossed aside, likely to make it easier to hack off parts of him.
Once Spike's body had been freed and laid upon a blanket they had brought with them, Giles glanced towards the road and said, "We should move Spike into the van and head back to the school … it may not be safe here."
"I agree," Wesley said in a voice filled with horror. His face was white, and his back was pressed against the exterior of a nearby building. "This could be a trap."
"Let them come," Buffy announced in a hoarse voice. "That way I won't have to look for them."
Giles head snapped towards her, and his eyes were sympathetic when he spoke again. "Please, Buffy," he urged as he stepped next to her and again tried to coax her back towards the street. "You don't need to see this.
She forced herself to be cold as she replied. "If Spike had to bear it being done, the least I can do is to bear to look at him."
She knelt beside the body, touched Spike's cheek, and his jaw fell open to reveal broken and shattered teeth.
I can't take this.
She closed her eyes and fought to keep the tears from flowing.
"I don't understand why he came down here by himself," Oz said. "It doesn't make any sense."
"He probably wanted to kill this universe's version of himself before I had a chance to meet him," she explained as she stood. The words clutched at her throat like fingers threatening to throttle the life from her body. "He didn't want me to see him as a vampire."
Instead, now I see him this way. You swore that you wouldn't do this, Spike.
"I never told him I loved him," she said. The alley grew still and silent and the assembled group stared at her with sympathetic gazes. "It kind of became a game for me to tease him with, but I never did." Tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped upon Spike's bare and bloody chest. They tried to pull her away, but she grabbed onto the metal of a nearby dumpster and refused to move.
"I'm sure Spike knew," Giles reassured her. "Buffy, I know what Spike meant to you, and I think I speak for all of us when I say how sorry we are."
Giles put a hand on her shoulder, and this time she allowed herself to be gathered against his chest. She sank her head into the fabric of his suit while he wrapped his arms around her, but still she could not bring herself to cry.
"Buffy, we should go, including … including Spike," Xander said. The White Hats gathered around them nodded in agreement. "We'll bring him with us, maybe talk about what he might have wanted."
"You guys are right, we should go," she said as she fought to control a wrenching sob. "We've been out here too long already."
Spike would want to be buried in his jacket.
"Wait," she said as she turned away from Spike's body. "I have to get his coat."
The leather had been hacked into pieces that were now strewn about the alley, so she lowered herself to her hands and knees to make it easier to find and gather them all. Maybe she could sew the jacket back together … Spike would like that. Some of the scraps were small and slippery with blood, but she would make sure that she left none of them behind. She hadn't realized how frantic her movements had become until Giles knelt down next to her and laid a gentle hand on her wrist.
"Buffy, please stop," he whispered.
"No!" she said with a shake of her head. "I need to do this."
She'd missed one of the larger scraps from his ruined jacket … it had fallen beneath where his body had been pinned … so she brushed Giles away and scrambled on hands and knees to add the blood-soaked segment to the bundle she was accumulating.
She hadn't realized how much she needed Spike simply to feel alive, and now he was dead, and she was dying bit by bit. She crawled and crouched to pick up bits of ruined leather and refused to stop until she was sure she'd gathered every piece. When the task was done, she gathered herself and stood upright to find everyone staring at her with a mixture of sympathy, horror, and fear. More than a few were crying, and she was startled to see tears flowing freely down Xander's face.
"We need to get her out of here," Oz announced as he walked forward and put an arm around her waist.
Giles moved to her other side, and with the bundle of leather in her arms the three of them walked out of the alley.