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Nan
AU, continues from The Blood Is the Life. As Spike and Buffy try to
hold onto their partnership and their love, recently unsouled Spike tries to
secure his position as self-proclaimed Master Vampire of Sunnydale...against
the wishes of The Powers That Be and the Slayer's ancient mandate. Magic, new
arrivals, old friends (and enemies), dreams, visions, e-Bay, tribute blood,
and cookies all play a part in the tense give and take between vampire priorities
and human necessities.
Disclaimer: All is Joss's. None is mine. No profit. Just more Spikejoy for everyone.
“It’s like double super-strength Ben-Gay or something!” Buffy told Giles, scrubbing her hands futilely on the bottom of her jacket as Giles, carefully not touching, contemplated the logistics of getting Spike, who wouldn’t uncurl and was covered in the stuff, from the floor to the car. “Willow--is there a spell? Something?”
As Willow responded with a wincy-faced lip bite, Dawn held up a finger and in a TA-DA voice, specified, “The Official Designated Tatty Emergency Blanket! Keys?”
Buffy pitched them to her and she raced off.
“Will?” Buffy appealed again. It wasn’t the uber-stinging oil so much as that Spike wasn’t responding. To the rescue. To her. He was out there someplace inside his head and she literally couldn’t touch him and that was driving her spare (she thought that was the phrase). Playing harpsichord on her last nerve. Driving her totally around the bend. She could feel more tears welling and she hated that, hated that, and Giles would eventually run out of handkerchiefs and then the world would end.
With a helpless gesture, Willow said, “He’s so all…stunk up with magic, I don’t dare, since I don’t know what it is.”
Frowning thoughtfully, Giles set spread fingers on an uncovered part of Spike’s face and said a Word. Glancing up, he commented, “He’s asleep now. We can deal with the rest later.”
As Giles began to rise, Dawn came back with her arms full of blanket, announcing with proud casualness that she’d brought the SUV right up to the door. Though Buffy gave her a dire look, unlicensed teens manhandling SUVs over curbs was low priority and Buffy let it go. They laid out the blanket. Then Buffy pushed Spike onto it and rolled him up, conspicuously with no help from anybody. Giles was vexedly scrubbing at his fingers with another handkerchief and Willow took care to stay well clear. But once Spike was wrapped and non-contaminant, Giles consented to take the legs while Buffy took the head end, and they toted their awkward burden out the empty doorway.
Where they found their way barred by Mike, a bunch of vamps in the colors, and the other two SITs, the SITs pushing forward and asking anxiously if Spike was dead--nonsensically since (1) he was already, always dead (2) if he had been, what was left of him could have been put in a teacup and wouldn’t have to be lugged around like a roll of carpet. Tucking Spike’s legs under one arm, Giles fended the girls off, explaining, “You don’t want to touch him: it rather stings.”
Gazing calmly past them, Mike said, “We can take it from here.”
Buffy quickly let her end of the carpet-roll down, then exploded, “I’m not gonna argue goddam jurisdiction with you! He’s mine! Now get the hell out of my way!”
“Mike,” Willow intervened, “there’s magic. And things. We have to take him home. And don’t you have a sweep or something to see to?”
Bending, taking up the whole roll in his arms (which Buffy could have perfectly well done herself, but Giles had wanted to help and Spike would have absolutely hated her doing that), Mike replied, “Thursday. No sweep.” Looking around to the other vamps, he added, “Lockdown at the factory till sunrise: Digger may not like what we done. Tell Huey he’s lead till I get back. Or Spike does.” Then he stepped back, waiting for somebody to open up the SUV.
Buffy glared. But rather than have a stupid snatching match over it, with Spike in the middle, she stomped off to the far side of the SUV, triggered all the doors, and waited, fuming, behind the wheel until everybody got themselves in. Then she shoved the SUV roughly into gear. The vehicle’s wheels tore up the yard--she had to turn, and back (crunching over the flung door), and turn, dodging a tree that had no right to be there--then bump-thumped down the curb.
In the back, Dawn asked, “Was that you? In the park?”
Mike’s voice replied softly, “I guess.”
“What was it?”
“Couple-few of Digger’s crew, sent to mix things up.”
“How did you know to come? Were you following?”
“Got my own ways. Slayer, she do for that Rayne?”
“No. He poofed. Teleported.”
A chuckle from Mike. “Poofed. I guess so. Get another crack at him, then.”
Dawn blurted anxiously, “Don’t unwrap him! He’s all burny or something!”
“Know that.”
“Oh, right. In the basement. Yeah. Doesn’t…doesn’t it burn you, too?”
“Doesn’t signify. Washes off.” After a minute, Mike added, “Can barely smell him, for the stink of the magic on him. He smells hurt, though.”
“It’s fairly ick, smelling him like that,” Dawn mentioned delicately.
“Don’t need your say-so. Not doing you no harm. He get hit with something?”
“Not that I saw, but it was dark. Except for his soul, of course.”
Buffy avoided plowing into a parked car. Checking the rearview mirror, all she could see was Dawn turned in earnest conversation with the air.
Spike’s soul had been put back? This was finally over?
“Is it?” Mike’s voice responded. “Can’t tell, what with the rest of the stink. Lady do that?”
“Yeah. He earned it once, so I guess he was entitled to have it back, no extra charge. He won’t be happy about it,” Dawn reflected.
“Why’s he not waking up, then?”
“Giles put a sleep on him. Until we can wash off the oil. Maybe he’ll wake up then. Does it sting really bad?”
“You can wait, Dawn. Don’t get it on-- Do as you please, then.”
“It’s been so long,” Dawn commented apologetically. “I’ve missed him so much…. It’s not so bad. Burny, sure, but not like you’re gonna catch fire or anything. Do you think he chose the collar himself? Because it matches.”
Beside Buffy in the front seat, Giles said unexpectedly, “I think not. The whole Nijinski effect, that would be Ethan. He likes to play-- Never mind.”
Buffy fumed. Everybody getting to paw at Spike except her. She stepped on the gas.
But still--the soul was back! Everything would be OK now!
Pulling into the driveway at Revello, she tolerated Mike carrying now-unwrapped Spike as far as the porch, then wheeled and took a stance in front of the doorway, blocking it.
“The hand-off is here. My place. My vampire. I’ll disinvite you if you try to make a thing about it.”
With Dawn beside him, irritably scrubbing her right hand on her overalls, Mike handed Spike over with no fuss--not quite as impassive as maybe he wanted to be.
Patting his arm consolingly, Dawn said, “You can get washed up in the kitchen. Then maybe you’d take Kennedy and Xander home? Do you know where Xander lives? I can--”
Buffy didn’t listen to the rest, thumping up the stairs to the bathroom.
Starting the shower, she stepped right in with him. And he started fighting. It was crazy and bad: with the oil, it was impossible to get a good hold, and he was flailing out in every direction. He kicked the whole glass panel of the shower door out of its track, and it smashed on the tiles. When she had to drop him, she fell on top and held him down, which was easier. He didn’t go game-faced on her, just struggled and twisted, trying to get away.
A squeeze bottle of shampoo had been knocked down. With nothing better in reach, she slowed him with an elbow to the temple long enough to twist the cap off. Then she poured the whole thing over him, explosions of suds. As the burning faded from her hands, the fight gradually went out of him. As she scrubbed the shampoo everyplace she found the flare and fade of the oil, his agitated breathing slowed and at length stopped completely. He hadn’t fallen back into the spelled sleep, though: his eyes blinked every now and again, mostly when a drift of suds washed into them.
But he wasn’t there. Just inert. Which was good: let her straddle him backwards and get the unbelted pants off (he was barefoot) and smear the remaining shampoo over the rest of him without worrying about being bitten in the rear.
When the shampoo ran out, she could flip him and do the other side, less frantically, with a bar of soap and a sponge. Finally unfasten the damn collar and hurl it away.
Collaring him didn’t seem like such a funny idea to her anymore.
When the water ran clear and her fingers found no more places that made them want to jerk back, like touching a hot kettle, she stood up, dripping, considering how to proceed. The bathroom floor was covered with glass from the broken panel, but her sneaks should be enough protection if she didn’t dance around in it. Drying off was just a habit, not a necessity.
Risking leaving him alone for a moment, she peeked into the hall and found Dawn and Willow waiting there. “If you don’t want a free show, cover your eyes,” Buffy directed shortly, then ducked back to collect Spike. Wet, he was slippery, but nothing like the oil, and she could heave him up over her shoulder in something like a fireman’s carry. Get a good view of his ass, if they peeked, but that was their look-out.
She shouldered into the hall, heading for her bedroom. And it all started again, the flailing and fighting. And this time, there was no solution as simple as shampoo. She finally had to knock him down and sit on him, holding his wrists locked on the runner and staring into his wide, panicked eyes as he threw his head back and forth, still struggling.
Like Mike, she thought, in the troll dimension, only plainer. Something about the bedroom was setting him off. She hung her dripping head and accepted it, even though she didn’t understand it. Someplace else, then.
“I’ll get something set up,” Dawn offered, “in the basement.”
As Dawn ran off, Buffy wearily met Willow’s eyes. “Can you put him to sleep again?”
Wide-eyed and pale, Willow shook her head hard. “He shouldn’t have been able to throw off what Giles set on him. I don’t dare. I don’t know what’s been done to him.”
“You dared at the gym, and you didn’t know then either,” Buffy snapped.
“It’s different. He was still tracking then--pretty much normal. This isn’t normal. Did Dawn say he had his soul back?”
“I think so. Yes. That’s what she said.”
“Good! It’s of the good, I think. But it complicates everything.”
“Doesn’t it always. You think that’s why he’s this way? Because of the soul?”
“Buffy, I just don’t know. When he quiets down, I can check him again. Like I did before, at the gym. Right now, I can tell you that his aura is all but nonexistent. For all the fighting, he’s putting out almost no energy--like it’s all just reflex. There’s basically nobody home. Everything shut down, except the fighting…like that’s the last thing to go.” Willow’s face twisted in alarmed unhappiness. “I didn’t mean it like that!”
“How did you mean it, then?”
“Not like that.” Willow wrung her hands, then darted off into her room and shut the door.
“I’m not peeking,” Dawn called from midway up the stairs. “The cot’s broken and gone, but I think I’ve got something set up that will do. Not peeking at all.”
There were fewer and fewer niceties that seemed to matter. Buffy dragged Spike toward the stairs. The farther from the bedroom, the less he struggled. So Buffy heaved him up again in the fireman’s carry and carefully negotiated the two flights of stairs.
One hand over her eyes, Dawn pointed with the other.
Down by the sink end of the basement, Dawn had laid out two lounge chair cushions side by side with a pillow and a blanket from the linen closet. Buffy gratefully deposited him there and got the blanket over him. Then she at last allowed herself to lean forward and kiss him, long and deep.
No reaction. Absolutely none. Still locked tight, inside of himself.
From the upstairs hall, Willow called, “Rona put the tribute blood in the vegetable crisper. Should I bring some?”
“No,” Buffy called back. “He’s fed. Might as well throw it out. I don’t care if there are starving vamps in Africa.”
“Is it OK to look now?” Dawn asked, absurdly whispering.
“Yeah: he’s decent. Or as decent as he gets.”
As Buffy straightened, Dawn came with a big towel and caped it over Buffy’s shoulders. “You’re in drowned rat mode.”
“Well, at least I don’t have to go to work tomorrow,” Buffy commented sourly.
“Oh, yeah. There’s that….”
They both stood looking down at Spike. As though the towel had chilled her, Buffy pulled it around her.
With the eyeliner and the oil washed away and his hair drying in ungelled curls, Spike no longer looked like something exotic and alien. Almost normal. Almost like hers. Except it wasn’t like him to be so still. His eyes were half-shut. Buffy didn’t think he’d stirred since she’d laid him down. Not moving, she commented, “I should get into something dry. And the bathroom’s all full of glass. Have to be swept up.”
“Willow said she’d take care of it.”
“Yeah. All right. Good.”
“Is he asleep?” Dawn whispered. “He always looks like he’s dead when he’s asleep.”
“He’s home,” Buffy stated, mostly to herself. “He’s in one piece. He has his soul back. He’s not trying to give you severed hands. All of the good, right?”
“But generally he breathes, every now and again,” Dawn commented, as though she hadn’t heard. “Sometimes he even snores, though he swears up and down that he doesn’t.”
“Yeah,” Buffy sighed. “I know.”
**********
Sitting in an opened lawn chair, Dawn wrote addiction on the notebook page. Under that, watching Spike rock and occasionally bang his head against the wall, listening to him break into occasional sieges of tuneless humming, she wrote:
withdrawal?
tattoo gone
watch gone
X me
X time
collar
rocking = rhythmic motion
wall banging = self-stimulation? self-punishment?
Willow came downstairs with a bowl of magical oddments. Looking at Dawn with head cocked, she asked, “Dawnie, shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“It’s my birthday. I can stay up if I want to,” Dawn responded absently.
Willow looked a little longer, then went and knelt down by the lawn chair pads. She already had the liquid pre-mixed this time. Before beginning the ritual, she said, “Spike? It’s just me, Willow. Spike?” When he didn’t respond, she looked disappointed and worried, then commenced anointing Spike with the feather at pulse points and heart.
However, there wasn’t exactly no reaction. Spike leaned back against the wall, both hands clasped tightly together. His gaze still wandered around the basement without fixing on anything. No more motion or head-banging. During the time it took Willow to complete the ritual, no humming.
He knew Willow, or somebody other than Dawn, was there. He didn’t want to interact with her.
Giles had come down earlier, before going to find somewhere to stay, and stood quite a while studying Spike, much as Dawn was doing. Spike hadn’t moved or breathed the whole time Giles was there. There’d been the hand-clasping, too. After awhile, Giles had gone away without saying anything.
When Buffy had come down and insisted on touching him, he’d locked up completely--the Willow/Giles reaction only more so. Rigid. Shaking. Breathing in tense little hitches. If he could have flinched through the wall, Dawn thought, he would have. Like Willow, Buffy had tried to talk to him. It had taken a good half hour before Buffy seemed to catch on that she was upsetting him and announced to the air that she was going to bed.
It was only afterward that the rocking, head-banging, and humming had started.
Once, he’d turned and patted at the wall, reaching: searching for something, maybe. Whatever it was, he hadn’t found it and had let his hands drop again.
Writing functional autism? in her notebook, Dawn asked, “How’s his aura?”
Willow was quiet perhaps a minute, presumably observing. “The same. Minimal. About vamp normal.”
“And magic?”
“Nothing at all. No reason why he’s like this. Not magical, anyway.”
Dawn made a neutral noise. As Willow passed, Dawn asked, “Could I borrow your laptop awhile?”
Willow rubbed a wrist across her eyes. “Sure, if you promise not to delete anything. Yes, I know you know better, but just saying. Council archives?”
“Just something I want to look up. Would you bring it to me?”
“I guess. All right.”
While Willow was gone, Dawn added to her list:
clasped hands = manacles?
fear
humming--?
music is rhythmic
no focus
oil--punishment? Not strong enough: Mike indifferent. Vamps have a higher tolerance for pain and sometimes enjoy it (e.g., Dru, per Spike. Also Spike, per Spike, convo that time he was drunk that summer.)
oil--counter-irritant?
The humming had just started again when Willow returned, delivering her laptop. The humming stopped immediately. Clasped hands again and retreat--back against the wall.
Setting up one of the outdoor tray-tables to open the laptop on, Willow commented, “It has about six hours on the battery pack, so remember to turn it off when you’re done. If it’s completely drained, I can’t recharge it. In other words, don’t go to sleep with it still on. If you’re gonna save things, make your own directory, OK?”
“I save things in the notebook. I won’t forget to turn it off.”
“What are you doing?” Willow bent to kibitz.
“Observing. Residual effect of the Lady, maybe.”
“Is…. Do you still hear her?”
Dawn shook her head. “Not a peep since we left the mansion. Other fish to fry, probably. I don’t think she’s ever confined herself to the microcosm before. Certainly never for that long at a stretch. I think she was getting claustrophobic. She doesn’t have to be here to watch--that’s what she has me for.”
“And you don’t know when she’s watching?”
“Good night, Willow.”
“Do you want a blanket or something? It’s pretty chilly down here.”
“There’s a dryer full of towels. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, good night, then.”
“Yeah.”
Dawn wrote mute: X words.
After Willow had gone back upstairs, and Spike had relaxed into alone mode, Dawn thought awhile, watching him rock.
When he’d been retrieved from the First, intermittently hallucinating, Spike had been uneasy about her coming down unless the shackles were in place. He’d been visibly relieved, reassured, to get them locked and secure. Because he knew that no matter what weirdness popped up, he couldn’t mistake her for Angel or a Succoth demon (or whatever) and take a swipe at her.
Although the chains and manacles were long gone and gladly discarded, it might be possible to improvise.
Laying the notebook on the chair, she went to her room and poked through the contents of her jewelry box, concentrating on the metal pieces. She only had one click-shut bangle bracelet and one other solid one, of brass. She chose out a couple of her sturdier necklaces, removed their pendants, and hitched them together into one loop about two feet across. Should hold, she thought, against a moderate pull, though of course they’d be no real restraint.
The important thing wasn’t actual restraint, she thought, but the perception. The meaning.
On the way down, she took a freezer marker out of the kitchen pencil pot, then returned to her chair in the basement.
She waited a little while to let Spike settle if he needed to, although she’d heard the humming before she’d descended the stairs. She ventured being a little glad that her presence was about the same to him as being alone.
She spent awhile reading up on autism, confirming her impression that it was a matter of degree, not a yes/no absolute. Everybody had a certain amount of disconnect, refusal (or inability) to process sense data. A good example, she thought, was Buffy and vamp names and recognition. Unless Buffy really beat it into herself and made herself memorize it by sheer stubbornness, she found it almost impossible to retain a vamp’s basic identifying info from one night to the next. Dawn blanked out on algebra but sailed through plane geometry because it was visual and logical, not just numbers. Something about numbers made her brain go into a stupor. She could add a column of figures six times and come up with six different totals. Yay, calculators!
When she’d finished the third article, she unfastened the looped chain and threaded it through the fixed bangle, then refastened it. She went over to Spike and picked up his lax right hand. Though his hand was broader than hers, she folded it as narrow as it would go and worked the bangle up, millimeter by millimeter, wryly thinking, Where’s oil when you need it? Then she thought of something funny about the oil and giggled, trying to decide who she’d share it with.
Fortunately, vamps were more flexible than other sorts of people. Eventually she edged the bangle past the protrusion of Spike’s folded thumb and onto his wrist, where it fit snugly. Probably have to cut it off. No matter.
Through all this process, Spike had rocked and ignored her, letting her do anything she pleased with his hand. She probably could stick her pinkie in his eye with no result beyond maybe a heavy-lidded blink. Not that she wanted to, of course: she was only testing parameters.
Catching up the chain, she waved it in front of him. She let it fall a few times, to let him hear the chime of the links, feel the weight and the coolness of the metal. Finally, making as much of a show and a noise about it as she could, she put it through the open bangle and clicked the bangle shut around his left wrist.
“All fastened up safe now,” she commented, patting his cheek casually.
Then she returned to her chair and read some more. After another article, she checked and was momentarily disappointed to see only the same “alone” behavior. Then she smacked her forehead and called herself a dodo: there’d be no true test until somebody else came downstairs.
“How is he?” The shadow by a three-panel screen set next to the dryer was Mike. He glanced at her. “Sorry, thought you knew I was there. Was watching you…do whatever you were doing. Didn’t set out to surprise you.”
Dawn gulped and let go her death grip on the laptop. “You could make a noise, you know.”
“Did.” He wandered past, studying Spike.
“What were you gonna do if he was up in Buffy’s room: peek in? Sneak in?”
“Light’s been off, up there, quite some time. Could tell you were down here.”
“Me? Or just somebody?”
“You. Smelled you. Spike, too, when I got closer.”
“From outside?” Dawn demanded incredulously.
Mike glanced around at her briefly. “Down along that tunnel over there. Harris better set those doors. No vamp can get in without an invite. But there’s plenty of bad things that ain’t vamps could come, invitation not required.” Turned back to Spike, sitting slowly down onto his heels, Mike added, “Thought I’d stand sentry till daybreak. Should be all right then.”
“Thanks. I guess.” She thought, Tunnel?
Then she noticed: the humming had stopped. But that wasn’t definitive: that was on and off anyway. The rocking, though--Spike was still doing that. Not all rigid and still, as he’d been when Willow and Giles were here. She hoped for a moment, but Mike didn’t hold his attention: Spike’s vague, half-lidded gaze passed him by indifferently.
But the hands weren’t clasped. Wrists still set on knees, hands hanging.
“Still not definitive,” Dawn muttered, vexed. It might be that Spike wasn’t as anxious about hurting Mike as the occupants of Casa Summers. He might figure, down deep where he was, that Mike was capable of defending himself and the protection of even symbolic shackles wasn’t required.
“What?” Mike said, when Dawn left the chair and started for the stairs.
“I need a better test. I’ll be right back. Watch his hands.”
Willow was always easy to rouse, startled by the least noise. Not that she really woke up, but her eyes were open though the brain wasn’t in gear. She was apt to be up and down at all hours. Without explaining, Dawn was able to persuade her, in robe and fuzzy slippers, to come back to the basement. And when Dawn looked at Spike, while Willow blurrily tried to find a non-existent website Dawn claimed she needed, there was confirmation: Spike was backed off against the wall again. No handclasp. Instead, he was tightly holding opposite wrists: assuring himself the token shackles were in place.
“It says the site doesn’t exist,” Willow reported, bent over the laptop. Yawning, she noticed and asked, “What’s Mike doing down here?”
“Helping me watch. It’s all right, maybe I got the reference link wrong. Sorry.”
Dawn shepherded Willow back up the stairs and watched her fill a glass of water, then raced down again, triumphant, ready to launch a test of her next theory.
“Mike, I need you to leave. All the way to the end of the tunnel, wherever that is--where Spike can’t notice you.”
“He’s not noticing me now,” Mike pointed out.
“He is. You just don’t know what to watch for.”
“I watched his hands. Like you said. Minute you and Willow hit the hall, he clenched up, and--” Mike demonstrated the wrist grab. “Only he’s not doing that no more. Still smells hurt, but I don’t smell any magic about him. So why’s he like this?”
“It’s a theory. I’m testing it. I don’t want to say, in case it turns out to be dumb.”
Mike straightened. “With me?” he responded, merely surprised.
“For myself. Please, Mike--” Dawn asked, looking up at him.
“All right. If you say. I’ll go to where I can’t hear your heartbeat. Should be far enough. But I’ll still stand sentry. Nothing’s gonna bother you here. Except for me, and I’ll quit doing that.”
Dawn didn’t see or hear him go, uncapping the marker. Sitting down beside Spike on the pads, Dawn waited until he relaxed, then reached across him to claim his left forearm. All in capitals, she wrote on it D A W N. From his wrist to the bend of his elbow.
He smelled the marker odor, she thought: his head moved slightly. After a while of not moving at all, he appeared just slightly puzzled. After a longer while, his right hand lifted and rubbed slowly at the letters.
Maybe ten minutes later, hoarse and uncertain, he said, “Bit?”
Dawn hugged him hard.
**********
Dawn formulated, “Vampires have a desperate hunger for meaning. For things to make sense to them. More than blood, or fighting, or anything. They need things to matter. Because otherwise, what are they? Parasites. Empty motion across a landscape of empty time. They invest themselves in elaborate hierarchies, to matter to each other, because nobody else cares. They’re the mutts of the demon world. Finally, even if they’re successful at that, top of the tree, it’s not enough. Because they’re not impressing anybody except a bunch of mutts. So either to make an impact on the world or in despair of ever doing so, they set out to destroy it. Sour grapes, writ large.”
“You know what that is?” Spike commented, still rocking and staring blankly around. But out of that could come words now, to her. A connection had been made and was open--like a phone line. “That’s a total crock of shit, that is. That what the Lady thinks?”
“Shut up: I’m practicing.”
“Oh, fine, practicing. Gonna out-git Rupert, are you?”
“Shut up. What do you know about it, anyway?” It was a leading question: Dawn smiled to herself.
“Oh, nothing much. Hundred twenty-some years of nothing much. Hardly any vamp has big plans. Live in the now. In the moment. Sometimes bad, sometimes….”
He’d drifted away again. Eyes open, but blank. He couldn’t stay with her very long at a time. It was two in the morning.
Dawn poked him with an elbow. “The three F’s: feeding, fighting, and fucking.”
“Yeah,” he said, vaguely. “Yeah. S’not enough, though. Don’t make anything. Accomplish anything. Water all smooths out again." He seemed quite unaware that he was confirming her crocky theory. Jumping the tracks, he continued, "S'not like fucking, not really. No fun to it. Sort of takes up all your attention, though. Just happens and happens and happens.”
“Yeah?” Dawn encouraged, though she knew she wasn’t following all the connections. Neither was he.
“Yeah. Oil, that was nice. Balanced it out. Was real. Could feel it, all the time. Not like fucking in your head. Nothing to touch. Sure, hurt a little, but what doesn’t? Smell it, touch it, even taste it if you were desperate. Have to be, wouldn’t you? Like licking battery acid. But you sure knew was definitely something there. Not all in your head, like that other. Since you weren’t there to sort it for me. He’d took that.”
“The verse,” Dawn guessed, and Spike bobbed his head, his empty eyes bereft. He rubbed his arm, where the printed name was: where the spiraling tattoo had been.
“Took it all. Nothing left but me, and what he was doin’ to me. S’not enough. Or too much, maybe. Dunno.” A few minutes’ silence, rocking, trying to find a loose end of thought to hold onto. “Can have it put back, if you want. Didn’t mean to lose it. Was a promise, wasn’t it.”
“Yeah,” Dawn said quietly. Confirming that connection, that meaning.
“Didn’t mean to lose it. Just forgot, some way. That other, it’s real distracting. Demon liked it, too. Liked it real well. Better than the real, because, well, no waiting. Nothing to do, to get there. Earn it, like. Nothing to give and nobody to give it to. Just come in and come in and come in….”
Dawn hugged him until he could settle.
“Without the oil, though, there was nothing at all. Couldn’t take that. Sure, quit hurting, but…. Nothing at all. Tried music in my head, but I can’t do that. No good at it. Has to be outside to be any good.”
When Dawn hopped up, he started breathing anxiously. She patted him, reassuring, “I’ll only be gone a minute. I have an idea.”
“No.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“No.”
She lost him then to the rocking, the rhythms that kept him aware of his own body. Stimulating the kinesthetic sense. The way the oil had kept him aware, inside his skin.
The oil had looked pretty, too. On him. She suspected Ethan Rayne was into pretty. To buy exactly the right collar and then put it on and make Spike not mind wearing it.
Beautiful pain. The price of the awareness of being alive, not lost in a fog of meaningless but powerful stimulation.
Since he’d already lost contact, five minutes would be the same to him as an hour or a minute. A sense of the time was another thing Rayne had stolen from him, along with his watch. So Dawn didn’t hurry, going upstairs to her room and pawing in her school backpack for the CD player Buffy had finally broken down and bought her in replacement for the one Buffy had crunched some months back.
The player itself was no good: Spike wouldn’t like her music.
Detaching the headphones, she dug in a bottom drawer until she located the Tiny Tuner: a radio receiver smaller than a deck of cards. Plugging in the headphones, she searched up and down the minute dial until she found a 70’s heavy metal station. It wouldn’t be appreciated if she blasted everybody out of their beds.
Almost immediately, the sound began to fade. The batteries were too old. She shouldn’t have left them in, they’d corrode the connections. That was an ironic thought. Tripping back down to the kitchen, she replaced the exhausted batteries with fresh ones from the oddment drawer, then returned to the basement.
We were having a session of head-banging now. Well, Dawn had a pretty good replacement for that. She put on the headphones first, cranking up the volume as high as she could stand without wincing. Of course he could hear it, even without the headphones: the banging stopped, his head turned, and he looked at her.
“Bit?” he said, in the same uncertain way he had before, looking for confirmation.
“Yeah, me. I’ve only been away a few minutes. I have a couple of more things I have to do, but I brought you something to keep you company.”
“No.”
“Most of the time, I’ll be here. You can see me, see that I’m here. Or if you want, Mike could come--he’s doing sentry on the tunnel….”
She’d lost him. Too many free-floating nouns he hadn’t yet reconnected with. He looked puzzled and wary, which was one of the ways he showed scared. Nouns had never been his strong suit anyway: he was much more attuned to verbs. He was a verb, much of the time.
Leaving out extraneous nouns, she said, “There’s blood in the fridge, I think, unless it’s already been thrown out. Do you--?”
“God, no!”
That was a bad one. He didn’t unlock for over ten minutes, and she didn’t want to surprise him with the headphones--add to the undifferentiated storm of sensory input already bombarding him.
Induced autism was as good a name as any. An analogy, a guess, not a clinical diagnosis; it wasn't as if Spike could look for professional treatment, and Dawn’s choices of ways to reach him, based on observation and conjecture, so far seemed to be more helpful than disastrous. Whatever it was called, it involved overwhelming Spike with charged sensory input he couldn’t avoid or retreat from, then taking it all away. Absolute overload followed by absolute deprivation. Fracturing and impairing his synergies with his demon. Then throw a soul into the mix--couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t truly imagine it, but the result was pretty devastating.
“Bit? Did I do something? Hurt you?”
This, this was just plain scared, no interpretation needed. She set the headphones down to seize his hands. “No, nothing like that. Spike? You only went back inside your head and slammed the door for a little while. It’s OK: you do that when you need to. You have a door, so you’re entitled to shut it. Whenever the inside or the outside is too much.”
“Thought I’d hurt you. Never mean to, but I don’t properly know what I’m doing, some of the time,” he confided. “Losing the time. In big chunks, sometimes. Lost the whole agenda. Never get caught up now.”
He was breathing again. Beginning to be overwhelmed as more pieces of the puzzle made themselves known to him, looming out of the fog.
“It’s OK. Mike’s taken care of--”
Spike started looking around him wildly. “Where’s the cell? Have to call Michael, he’s gonna--”
Dawn got up and took two steps toward the screen. “Mike? Spike needs-- Oh.”
Prompt as a genie when its name was spoken, Mike appeared from behind the screen and hunkered down in front of Spike: silent, waiting. They looked at each other for awhile, Spike rocking slightly, getting accustomed to the fact that Mike was there. Spike’s breathing slowed, growing less anxious.
“Michael. Said something bad, something that shouldn’t happen. Maybe it’s happened already. Dunno--”
“Noun, Spike,” Dawn prompted gently.
“Yeah. Yeah. Those fledges. That were digging. Told you to see they got dusted. Sue and all. Did…did that get done?”
“No,” Mike responded warily. “We got use for them. So I didn’t, till I’d argued it out and you’d said it twice. Didn’t do it like you said.”
Spike hauled off and hit him. Knocked him off his feet, flat on his back. Mike lifted his head and they looked at each other some more. Then Spike tipped his head crooked and shut his eyes, and too fast to see, Mike was suddenly bent over him and biting down. Dawn got out of the way not quite as fast, but as fast as she could, retreating to the lawn chair and finally remembering to turn the laptop off. Willow would kill her otherwise.
Watching Mike feed from Spike was scary and important in ways she had no words for. It was noisy and messy, some blood escaping and running down Spike’s naked chest. Dawn didn’t know if Mike was gonna stop and except for screaming, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it: she didn’t have her taser. And screaming probably wouldn’t do any good in time and would upset everyone. So she just held onto the chair arms as hard as she could.
Finally, in a shaky voice, she got out, “Leave some for later?”
That registered in Mike’s back. Then his head moved. He leaned away onto his heels again, licking his bloody mouth, in magnificent leonine game-face, wonderful and deeply scary. He said to Spike, “That’s all right, then.”
Spike, leaned back on his elbows and looking very dim, didn’t respond. Dawn guessed if anything was apt to be too much, what she’d just witnessed fit the description. Maybe the headphones would be good now. They was were still blaring away, tiny and tinny: even Dawn could hear it. So it wouldn’t be a surprise. Kneeling on the lounge chair pads, she slipped the headset into place, adjusted the fit, and kept a hand on Spike’s shoulder and watched hard to check his reaction.
Nothing for a minute or so. Then, eyes still shut, he smiled. A happy, almost drunk-loose smile. He tipped over on his side and maybe was asleep, it didn’t matter. He was connected to the music. Plugged in. Dawn rearranged the blanket and reached for the pillow, but it was too far. Mike handed it to her.
“Mike, what time is it?”
“Going for four. Something like that. You need exactly?”
“No, that’s good enough.” Dawn got the pillow set so the earpiece of the headphone wasn’t pressing on it. That always hurt, when you did that. Pulling her knees up, she snuggled against Spike’s chest, and he knew she was there, shifting to let her find a more comfortable way to lie. “It’s been a real long day, and I’m not on a vamp schedule. I think Buffy’s gonna have to write me a note. Even if she lost her job, she should still be able to write me a note, right? Just gonna nap here a little while….”
She felt Mike drawing a corner of the blanket over her. She knew nothing would get in, not while Mike was watching. She could practice her explanation more later. It was OK to sleep.
**********
Spike looked, Buffy thought, like the visiting head of state of a country with which they might soon be at war.
He wandered into the front room after-breakfast Scooby conference accompanied by his interpreter (Dawn). Plonking himself down in the big chair by the weapons chest (Dawn perched solicitously on the arm, leaning against his shoulder), he proceeded to ignore everybody.
He had headphones emitting tiny loud music, like a hornet yelling, hung around his neck--to Buffy, an unpleasant reminder of the collar, that she’d flung in the trash this morning with vicious satisfaction. Sitting with bare feet stuck out and crossed at the ankles (another pair of boots gone missing), mostly still, he was nevertheless pacing, or at least the feel of it was the same: working a circle of loose chain over and over between his hands. Like doing a violent rosary or something. Thin bracelets on each wrist--one brass, one silver. New fashion statement there. Or maybe he missed his watch.
Dawn leaned in and whispered to him from time to time. Spike said nothing and rarely glanced up when anything was said to him. When Buffy asked him if he wanted coffee, a tight headshake was all the answer she got. He didn’t look at her. With his head bent, she couldn’t see his eyes.
He’s not happy, Buffy thought. He doesn’t want to be here. He’s mad about the soul. Or he’s mad about being rescued. If he keeps this up, I’m gonna belt him. Why won’t he look at me?
Despite the addition of Giles, it was a diminished group since Xander and Anya were separately absent. Xander had to work, and on the phone, Anya had declared herself much too busy to attend. Just Buffy, Willow, Giles, and the delegation from Mars.
Willow had given a tense report on the fight from her perspective, mainly making the point that if Rayne became able to access and focus the stone’s random energy flow, she doubted she’d be able to do anything effective against it.
“A Chaos Mage,” mused Giles, collecting the last muffin half, “attempting to turn what is currently an instrument of chaos into one of order, capable of being directed and of processing energy in a coherent manner. Ironic. The trouble with that, for Ethan, will be that he likes it best the way it is. Even against his best interests, he’ll be reluctant and possibly slow to attempt to manipulate it himself.” Giles put down the muffin to sip tea. “Much more likely, he’ll try to acquire another cat’s paw to work it for him. A circle of mages might possibly be able to do so. Or he may attempt to reassert influence over the one he had.” Giles looked at Spike a moment, then shifted his attention to Dawn and asked, “What may we expect from the Lady at this juncture?”
“I think,” Dawn responded slowly, “she’s done as much as she’s going to. She’s left it up to us.”
“You’re not expecting her back, then.”
Dawn did a quick headshake. “I don’t think so. No. She hated it here.”
“We noticed,” Buffy put in sourly.
“We can’t expect any further intervention, then, from that quarter?” Giles asked.
“Nope. Not likely. That’s what she has minions for. And please ignore me doing the Dance of Jubilation and Freedom over here.”
Giles said, “So it becomes fairly urgent that we know how susceptible Spike remains to Ethan’s influence,” and waited.
Everybody looked at Spike, and he knew it: shoulders pulling tight, working faster with the chain.
“I’m all right,” he said finally without looking up.
“He’s not,” Dawn contradicted. “He’s better, but he’s still having an awful time making any sense of things. Connecting. Sorry, Spike, but they have a right to know.”
“S’all right, Bit. You do whatever you have to,” Spike muttered.
“Are you still aware of him?” Giles inquired gently, if bluntly.
Spike hitched a shoulder. “Suppose so. Some. Demon’s…pretty shagged out, though. Not taking much notice. An’ it gets lost in the…whirl. Of the everything.” One hand lifted listlessly to mime spinning, then went back to the chain, moving it quickly along the sprockets of his knuckles.
“‘Shagged out,’” Giles repeated, tight-faced and narrow-eyed, inspecting the dregs of his tea for omens. “Just how literally do you mean that?”
Spike didn’t say anything for long enough it was plain he wasn’t going to.
Buffy looked from Giles, to Spike, to Giles again, and gulped faintly, “Oh.”
“S’not like that, pet,” Spike said suddenly without lifting his eyes. The chain was quiet in his hands, gripped tightly. “Don’t mean nothing. Means a whole lot of nothing. Demon don’t care, just like it don’t care what it feeds on. Demon’s not particular. Real distracting, is all. Can’t focus on much else. At all, really. I--”
The chain popped. Part slithered to the floor.
Dawn and Giles broke in together to stop the dreadful explanation, then went into the verbal equivalent of a doorway dance, each trying to move aside and invite the other past and only continuing to get in each other’s way.
“No,” said Giles, “do continue, Dawn. Please.”
“I made some notes,” Dawn said distractedly, stroking Spike’s neck as he hunched tighter in the chair, his empty hands seizing one another so hard you could practically hear the bones crunch. “Vampires need meaning. Starved for it. They--”
Announcing, “Can’t do this,” Spike erupted out of the chair and stalked toward the hall. “Need a fag. What kind of house is it, bloke can’t find a fag anyplace?”
“Cigarette,” Giles translated faintly, as Dawn scampered after Spike. “I should have thought. I’ll get some.”
“No, I will,” Buffy decided, and grabbed the keys out from the weapons chest saucer.
It took longer to park than it did to drive to the corner pharmacy, a few blocks away, and buy a couple of packs of cigarettes. He’d need a new lighter, too, she realized, and chose the silver Zippo most similar to Spike’s Old Faithful.
He’d lost everything, she thought, returning to the SUV. Pride, dignity, self-control, and god, the credit card, on which she’d just charged the purchases.
She drove home fast and reported her realization to Willow. Collecting the laptop from the basement, Willow didn’t take long in confirming the worst: the account had been cleaned out, and even a little more. There were overdraft charges.
“I’ll take care of reporting it,” Willow commented grimly, as Buffy sat stunned and chilled. Carrying the laptop over to the weapons chest, Willow got on the phone there.
“Not to worry,” Giles commented. “Given the circumstances, I arranged for theft protection when the account was set up. The funds should be recoverable. Though it may take some time, getting it all sorted. A lawyer’s services may be required. Has a lawyer been retained?”
“I have no idea,” Buffy said, not really taking Giles’ reassurance in. All she fixed on was gone and lawyer. “I should give Spike his fags.”
She headed for the basement but passing the kitchen, she heard the miniscule din of the headphones. Spike was holding onto the edge of the kitchen island like grim death, his back to her, inches short of where a big crooked rectangle of sunlight slanted in through the window. “Here,” Buffy said, slapping down the two packs of cigarettes and then the lighter.
“Ta,” he whispered, not moving.
“You can smoke in the basement, if you want.”
“Yeah.”
“The credit card’s been maxed out,” Buffy informed him. “Willow and Giles are trying to get it fixed. And I’ve lost my job. Because of the dance. Or whatever it was.”
For no one reason, she was terribly angry at him. It seemed to her that everything was falling apart for lack of him at the center. She didn’t know where he was, except noplace he’d let her reach him.
He started rocking forward and back, hanging onto the edge of the island. In and out of the slant of sunlight. His hair was starting to smoke. She grabbed him convulsively and yanked him back. He pushed and fought to get away, but not in any coordinated way. More the way he’d balked, last night, at being taken into her bedroom.
“What is wrong with you?” she demanded, holding on tight, backing into the hall. “Do you miss your boyfriend, is that it? Miss the goddam oil? I’m not totally stupid, you know! What’s--”
He sagged: suddenly dead weight in her arms. Slowly, she bent and let him slide onto the carpet runner. He puddled into crash position: curled up tight, fingers laced over the back of his neck, head clutched between protective arms.
“Way to go, Buffy,” Dawn commented cuttingly, leaning over the banister and then coming the rest of the way down. “A whole night’s progress, pfft!” Pushing between, Dawn bent over Spike, stroking his back, patting his shoulders, softly speaking his name. The headphones continued a miniature orgy of attenuated sound.
Numb and frightened, Buffy backed away as Willow and Giles came out of the front room and stood beside her, observing Dawn’s attempts to get Spike to uncurl.
“Not a good sign,” Willow commented, biting at the edge of a thumb.
“What’s the matter with him?” Buffy demanded in a small voice. “Why is he like this?”
“It’s my fault,” Giles said, removing his glasses for ritual polishing. “I was wrong to force that particular issue. I suppose….” His lips set in a grim line, he resumed the glasses and put the handkerchief away. “My objectivity in that area seems to be nil. It’s not as though he courted it. I believe I owe him an abject apology. It’s Ethan I should be dealing with. I shall make arrangements to do so. Perhaps I can persuade him to abandon this game before matters become even worse. Now that he’s lost his current pet.” His tone was savage. Adding, “I have some materials in the hire car,” Giles turned and left.
“Will, can you get into his head?” Buffy asked.
“He hates when I do that,” Willow responded uneasily.
“Anything has to be better than this. If he doesn’t like it, I’m the one who said so. He can take it up with me, if he wants.” She was thinking of vamp protocols: Spike vamp-Mirandizing her and Mike in the dark graveyard, spelling out their respective rights, then grimly slapping the taser into her hand. “He can talk to Dawn. He can talk to Giles. He’d probably talk to you if he had anything to say. I’m the only one that’s poison, that throws him into a fit. I have to know why. It’s pretty plain he’s not gonna tell me. Even if he could. When he’s conscious. You still can, right?”
“Once a connection like that has been opened, it can never be completely shut,” Willow confirmed, gnawing the thumb some more. “I don’t listen in, though. Not unless he specifically tells me to. And…I think he’s still got Rayne in there. Two might be a bit much.”
“Can Rayne hurt you? On the bounce like that?”
“I don’t think so. If the link were strong enough for that, Spike wouldn’t still be here: Rayne would have reeled him in again. He’s holding against that. The soul, maybe…. Dawn?” Willow appealed for a second opinion.
“Go ahead. I thought I had him stabilized. He said he was OK to come to the meeting. Now we’re back to square one. Maybe square zero or even minus,” Dawn responded in a dispirited voice.
“OK,” Willow said with no enthusiasm, and closed her eyes. Her fingers made a stiff gesture at her side. She recoiled with a wincing expression, like a twitch, a few times. Buffy and Dawn both kept still, watching her. After awhile, the corners of Willow’s mouth drooped and her shut eyes squinched tight, as though she was about to break into tears. Instead, she blinked and looked at Buffy. “It’s no fun in there,” she reported. “Something like strolling into the leading edge of a hurricane. Like they show on TV, I mean. I’ve never been in one. Not a lot of left coast hurricanes. But with all the sideways rain, and the wind, and the lightning, signs and traffic lights flapping, and like that.” Willow waved her arms around, demonstrating. “But there’s something I think you should see. It’s quiet there, otherwise. Maybe I can cut through just the edge to it, like the center. The ‘eye,’ they call it, though that’s only a metaphor here, it’s more deep than it is middle. Pay no attention to the babbling witch behind the curtain. Except to take my hand, that is. It won’t make a lot of sense, at first, but wait and it will. You’ll make the sense, because that’s what people do. They have to.”
Willow offered her hand. With about a ton of reservations but resolutely, Buffy took it.
And Willow had been right: it was like getting whirled around, blown from every direction, slapped hard by a drenching rain. Crashes of thunder and lightning bolts scarily close. Or maybe that was only the influence of the image Willow had given her for what she was experiencing. What interpretation she was therefore predisposed to apply to the primal confusion, to make any sense of it at all. But she was also conscious of direction, Willow pulling her steadily along, a light and a force dauntingly vast. I won’t peek, Willow’s intention said clearly in Buffy’s mind, I’ll just connect, because it’s personal. Private.
The rushing confusion was gone, just like that. At first, nothing replaced it. Only a void. Only emptiness. But there was a voice steadily muttering. Spike’s voice. She couldn’t make out anything more than that and tried to hear better, go closer. The quiet resolved into a room. Small, like an attic. She had to bend down, otherwise she’d bang into something. She had to crouch and get as small as she possibly could to get closer.
She couldn’t make him out plainly but she could see the position: all curled up tight, arms around his head, forehead against knees, bare feet lying pale and vulnerable looking. Without pause, over and over in manic repetition, he was muttering, “Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t--”
She grabbed him. Curled around him as tight as he was curled around himself. Was somehow all around him everywhere like a liquid and a barrier, so nothing could get at him, hurt him. Loving him entirely. You didn’t. You won’t. I’m not afraid. Nothing scares me except the distance. You pulling away from me, shutting me out. Nothing between. No distance. I’m here.
She had no thought or awareness of anything else, anywhere else she could be. Any other way to be. Yet she found herself in the hall, on the floor, clutching Spike just as hard as she could. Trying to gather him in, be everywhere around him, which was impossible as well as undignified and slightly embarrassing with people looking on. She held on just the same because it was impossible to imagine letting go.
Within her anaconda embrace, Spike stirred, asking uncertainly, hesitantly, “Buffy?”
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