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Definitions:
1. The technique of using light and shade in pictorial representation.
2. The arrangement of light and dark elements in a pictorial work of art.
3. A series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fictions, mostly about the Buffy/Spike relationship.
Rating: I’m not good at figuring out what people will find offensive, but the Chiaroscuro series is probably mostly R with some PG and some NC-17. To be on the safe side, please assume NC-17 unless I specifically note otherwise. By accessing this material, you are confirming that you are at least 17 years old.
Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Joss Whedon,
Mutant Enemy, etc. Only the lame plots
and dialogue herein are mine.
Notes:
“Thanks for offering to take Dawn to the mall, Xander,” said Buffy.
“No problem. Hanging with Dawn is one of my favorite things.” Xander smiled at Buffy’s sister. Almost absentmindedly, he took Dawn’s hand as they walked down the street. “So where are you two going that’s so urgent you can’t join us for shoe shopping and Starbucks?”
“I have a doctor’s appointment—nothing serious, just a check up,” said Buffy. “And Spike has an appointment with a demon who may have some information for Tom.”
“You made an appointment with a demon?” asked Xander.
“Well, this bloke weighs about eight hundred pounds and he doesn’t like his naps interrupted,” said Spike. “So, yeah, I said, ‘I’ll be along about noon if that’s all right with you, sir.’ In the meantime, I need to check on something at the magic shop.”
As they walked toward the Magic Box, they passed a group of young men standing in front of a market. Two of them turned to stare intently at Buffy. She ignored them, but Spike followed their gaze, and his jaw muscles tightened for a moment. He stepped closer to Buffy and threw one arm over her shoulders in an elaborately casual gesture.
Buffy didn’t shake his arm off, but she glared at him. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“Did what, love?” he asked.
“Put your arm around me to prove to those jerks that I was your girl.”
“Did I do that?”
“You certainly did.” Now she did move away from him. “Spike, what makes you think that marking your territory like that is appropriate? Do you think I’m likely to go running after one of those guys because they leered at me on the street?”
“Hardly, pet. I suppose I was just trying to discourage them from trying anything.”
“For what conceivable reason? Because you think I couldn’t handle it myself?”
He laughed at the idea. “Hardly. But why so upset, pet? It’s not as if I’ve never put my arm around you before.”
“Putting your arm around me to show
you care is fine. Putting your arm
around me to prove to the world I’m your property is not.”
“Now that is unfair. When have I ever treated you like—”
Walking behind them, Xander and Dawn listened with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. “You know,” said Xander, “I can’t figure out how they do it. They almost never repeat themselves. It’s always something new.”
“I think it’s a gift,” said Dawn. “They thrash out one subject, and they seem happy, and you think, wow, they should be able to go without an argument for at least a few hours now. Then the next thing you know, they’ve thought of something else and they’re off again.”
“My parents fight all the time, but almost always about the same things. I always thought Mom and Dad were the champion marital pugilists of all time, but compared to Buffy and Spike, they’re amateurs.”
“So, I’m only allowed to put my arm around you when I’m feeling pure, unadulterated, lust,” Spike was saying.
“No. The first rule is that no one puts his arm around me unless I want it to happen,” said Buffy.
“Goes without saying, love. That was axiomatic. I’m just trying to get the rest of the postulates down.”
They reached the Magic Box, and, in spite of the long argument about public displays of affection, Buffy kissed Spike good-bye. “Say hi to Tara for me,” she said.
It was a quiet morning in the shop. Tara was sitting at the large table in the back of the room, doing the accounts on her laptop. She looked up when the bell over the door rang and smiled as Spike came in. “Hi.”
“Hello, pet. Buffy says ‘hi.’” He wandered over. “Busy? Could I ask a favor?”
“Of course.” She looked up expectantly.
“I’m trying to make some headway with this bloody thing,” he said, holding up a red, leather-bound book. “But it keeps making references to this,” he continued, holding up an even more ancient volume, “which, by the way, I did steal from you, but which I will also put back.”
“Spike, when I said you could borrow whatever you wanted, that was supposed to remove stealing from the equation.”
He ignored this. “The problem is, to understand this second nasty bit of bad syntax and obscure allusions, I need a concordance that was written by a bloke called Witkowski about two hundred years ago. I got into the library at the University, in spite of their mindless rule about needing to be a student, but when I looked for the card catalog, there wasn’t one.”
“There is a catalog, but it’s all on-line now.”
“On-line?”
“Sure.” She looked back at her computer and started hitting keys. “Let me go to the site.”
“The site?”
“Yes, here it is. What was this guy’s first name?”
“Bogdan.”
“That should narrow it down. Got it. Good news, Spike, it’s been scanned, so you don’t have to go to the library to get it.”
“Scanned?”
“Yes, all I have to do is pull up the image, and—there you are. But it’s all in Latin.” She pushed the laptop towards him.
He squinted at the screen but did not touch the keyboard. “I’ll need a dictionary for this. The vocabulary’s a bit arcane. Not that I should be surprised, having seen what this wanker liked for bedtime reading.”
“I can help with that too.” She pulled the screen towards her again. “I can go to this site I have bookmarked where there are on-line dictionaries.”
“Bookmarked,” he repeated after her. She continued on, happy to be helping someone.
“Yes, and I can follow the link to this one, which is Latin and English.”
“The link.”
“You just use the touch pad to move your cursor here, type in a word here, then click here.”
“Cursor.”
“And I can open up a new document in the word processor, so you can make your notes right on the computer.”
“Word processor.”
“Yes, and, see, you just switch between windows by using these icons.”
“Icons.”
She finally noticed a strange note in his voice and looked up. His expression was deeply ironic. “Spike, how much of that did you understand?”
“Not a sodding word.”
She thought for a moment. “Okay. I’ll print you out a copy of the concordance. There are a lot of pens and some paper in that desk. And I think that Giles left a Latin-English dictionary on one of those back shelves.”
“Thanks, pet.” He got up and started rummaging around in the desk. A few minutes later, he had settled down with the printout she had made, some sheets of blank paper, and a small pile of books. She noticed that he had chosen a fountain pen of Giles’, which none of the other Scoobies could wield without leaking ink all over hands and paper. Spike seemed to have no trouble using it to fill page after page with beautifully elaborate and even script. Tara wondered if he had selected the pen because he was more comfortable using it than a ball point, or if he was trying to subtly reinforce the message that even if he had finally admitted to literacy, he was not yet ready to enter the computer age. Come to think of it, a fountain pen may have qualified as a modern invention in his mind. He had probably learned to write using a quill.
But he was making a determined effort to complete this task, and that was extraordinary in itself. Ever since the Scooby gang had combined forces to save him from poisoning by a Giragorsh demon, Spike had seemed, not necessarily more human, but more willing to behave like other humans. Only Buffy seemed unsurprised by this change.
It occurred to Tara that for all her analysis of the magical principles involved, she really understood little of the bond that had been created between Spike and the Slayer when he was restored to life. Not for the first time, she wondered if the moment when his heart began to beat had merely been one step in a journey of transformation that was continuing still.
Buffy sat on the examination table, wondering if the combination of the high perch and the silly gown were designed to make patients feel as vulnerable as possible. She certainly felt vulnerable. Since her mother’s illness and death, surroundings like these were as familiar and as hateful to her as Sunnydale’s cemeteries.
“Is everything all right?” she asked the doctor. “I mean, you ordered all those extra tests. Am I sick?”
“No, no,” said the doctor. “I don’t want you to think that. You’re not in any way ill. It’s just that you came in to renew your prescription for birth control medication, and it didn’t seem like your body was having a typical reaction to it. So I wanted to make sure there was nothing about your system that would contraindicate your using it.”
“You mean that I might have to stop taking the pills.”
He was silent for a long time. “Not exactly. These tests show that it may not be necessary for you to take the pills at all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Buffy, I see here that you were married recently. However, I must assume by the reason for your visit that you don’t want children, at least right now?”
“Well, yes, since I came here for contraception, that’s pretty obvious.”
“What about the future?”
“I—my husband and I haven’t made any long range plans. Why?”
The doctor looked at his feet before continuing. “This isn’t easy information to give a young woman your age.”
“I’ve had to accept things I didn’t want to know before, when I was a lot younger than this. Please just tell me.”
Spike and Tara worked on their separate tasks for some time. It was Tara who began fidgeting and finally broke the silence.
“Spike?”
“Yeah?” He was paging through the dictionary.
“How hard is that translation?”
“How hard do you think it is to try to remember things that you spent over a hundred and twenty years trying to forget?”
“Oh. Sorry. Spike?”
“Yeah?”
“Is there a reason you didn’t ask Willow for help finding that concordance?”
At this, he looked up. “She isn’t around. She went away for a few days.”
“Oh. Alone?”
“I think she said with a friend.”
“Oh,” said Tara. She looked back down at her computer. “Oh.”
Spike shut his book with a thump and looked at her. He was clearly reluctant to take up this subject, but his eyes were sympathetic.
She sighed. “I just wanted to know if she was all right. We danced at the wedding, and then—when you and Buffy were on your honeymoon we—I mean Willow and I—”
“It didn’t go well?”
Tara’s face crumpled. “No, and it was totally my fault. Every time she wanted to do something, I wanted to do something else. Nothing went right, not even, the—you know.”
“Yeah. I do know. So Willow wanted you to follow her lead again, and you couldn’t do it?”
“No!” She looked shocked. “Willow wasn’t, she isn’t like that. She just had ideas about what to do, and I—” She stopped and thought. “And I had ideas too.”
“You’ve always had ideas.”
“Yes, but, this time I couldn’t help myself. I kept insisting on my ideas just to see—to see—”
“How Willow would react to not being in charge.”
Tara’s voice was very quiet. “I don’t know what made me so bossy. It was crazy. I always loved it before when she would plan things, and get excited, and we’d go off and do something—something that she had talked me into.” She was silent for a long time. Spike didn’t say anything.
“I c-couldn’t let her be in charge any more. Not even a little bit.”
“And she couldn’t let you be in charge.”
“But I can understand that. I’m not an in-charge kind of person.”
He gave a derisive snort.
“No, really, I’ve never been a leader.”
“Past and present are two different things, Tara. You may never have been a leader, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be one.” He saw her incredulous look. He seemed reluctant to speak, but finally said, “You always thought that Willow was the strong one. That you could lean on her, rely on her strength and judgment. But you were wrong, pet, and you know that now. Willow has the brains and the training to be a leader, but she has bloody poor judgment and she always will. When Buffy was around, it didn’t matter, because sooner or later Willow’d acknowledge the Slayer was in charge. But when Buffy was gone, there was no one to stop Willow. Or no one who would stop her.” Spike saw Tara’s pained expression and went on, “Don’t blame yourself, pet. I saw it, but nobody was listening to Spike back then. But they should have put you in charge, not Willow.”
Tara shook her head. “I’m no leader,” she repeated.
“Not yet. You were beaten down too hard too early. You just assumed someone else should be telling you what to do because that’s the way it’d always been. But you’re free of that excuse for family that raised you, and you just discovered you’re free of—well, you’ll come to it some day. You showed what you had inside you when you left Willow because she was misusing her magic. Eventually, you’ll accept what you are. The problem is, I don’t know that Willow will ever accept it.”
“You know, Spike, you could make a fortune as a psychologist, except that your patients would all run out the door screaming when you hit them with too much truth during the first session.” Tara’s expression was bleak.
“The truth is supposed to set you free. Of course, freedom may be bloody well overrated. But are you willing to give it up?”
“No,” said Tara reluctantly. “But what about Willow?”
“Willow will have to find her own way. You’d like it take her back to you someday, and, well, it’s possible. But it’s not going to be this week or the next, pet. She’s got too far to travel.”
“How can I let her do that all alone?”
“She’s not alone. She’s got Buffy and Xander. They both understand her better than they realize. They’ll help her through. It’s their job now, not yours.” He hesitated. “I’m not saying this to be cruel. Believe it or not, I’m trying to be kind, but I’m not very good at it yet.”
She surprised him by laughing a little through her tears. “You are being kind, Spike. You haven’t said a thing I didn’t know already. It hurts to hear it, but it hurt more to wonder if I was really seeing things clearly. If I was just taking the easy way out.”
“Not your way, pet.” He didn’t press the matter further, although he heard more in her words than she herself realized. If she saw making a permanent break with Willow as the easy way out, the love affair was truly over, at least on Tara’s side. He wished desperately that he had a more pleasant truth to offer her. Unwilling to lie, and unable to offer comfort, he bit back any further comments. He wondered if he could possibly be learning to be tactful.
He buried himself in his books again, trying to give her time to recover.
Xander and Dawn were laughing and chattering in the dining room as Buffy started to wash the dishes. They had spent the meal reenacting the entire movie they had seen at the mall that afternoon, with satiric commentary and many pauses while they veered off on wild tangents. Buffy, who usually enjoyed listening to these antics, had smiled with an effort and been silent. Spike had also been silent, watching Buffy and the others with a deepening frown.
“Leave that.” Buffy turned away from the sink to see Spike watching her from the door. “The Little Bit and the stand-up comedian in there can take care of the dishes tonight. Something’s wrong, love. Tell me.”
She nodded. “Upstairs?”
He took her hand and led her to the staircase. Dawn and Xander watched them go. “Those two just never stop, do they?” said Xander.
“I don’t know,” said Dawn. She would have expressed the anxiety she was beginning to feel about Buffy, but Xander chose that moment to do his Spiderman imitation, and she began to laugh.
Buffy stared out her bedroom window. “The doctor said that I could probably never get pregnant. That there was no reason I couldn’t carry a child, but that he didn’t see how I could get pregnant in the first place. It seems that my plumbing is abnormal.” Her voice grew bitter and sarcastic. “Who would have imagined that something about me could be not quite normal?”
“Buffy—” Spike tried to put his arms around her, but she moved away.
“The doctor also said that maybe I could borrow someone else’s egg, have it artificially inseminated, and then have it put inside me to have a baby. But that makes some of the magical things we’ve dealt with sound normal. I don’t want to have someone else’s baby.”
Spike was watching her face very carefully. “Did you want to have your own?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, yes, I would, if I could promise it a normal life with two parents who had steady jobs and weren’t likely to be killed by demons or slaughtered by mystical energy without warning. But I can’t promise that, so I suppose the answer is no. So logically, I should be happy.”
“Logic never made anyone happy, love,” he said.
“So, what does this do to Giles’ prophecy?” she said.
“I told you, you can’t count on a prophecy to tell you anything useful. Maybe we adopt this race of heroes, or maybe there’s something else we’re supposed to do that we can’t even imagine, and maybe the prophecy is just bloody well wrong. Sod the prophecy. I care about you, not a bunch of words on a piece of parchment.”
Now she was choking on tears. “Did you want a baby? Please tell me the truth. If you say ‘no’ just to make me feel better, I’ll know you’re lying.”
“If it had happened,” he said carefully, “it would have been an adventure. But if it can’t happen, we’ll have other adventures. You and me. We don’t need a baby. Besides, we already have the Little Bit, and judging by the way she’s been trying to dodge out of her chores and saying anything that comes into that scatty head of hers lately, she’s not going to be maturing any time soon.”
Buffy gave an involuntary laugh at this and finally allowed him to take her in his arms.
He kissed her tenderly, trying to reassure and calm her. It should have been exactly what she wanted, but she suddenly felt impatient with his gentle lovemaking. Ever since she had heard the doctor’s words, she had been filled with a crazy restlessness and a rebellious feeling that had only been kept in check by her shock and sadness. Now something inside her seemed to break loose, and she found herself seeing Spike with strange new eyes. He was the man she loved and cared about, but he was also the wild creature her demon self had chosen as a mate. She tried to restrain herself from leaping on him like a predator on its prey, but before she realized what she was doing, she had pushed him back on the bed and was clawing at their clothing in near frenzy.
Spike stared up into Buffy’s golden-tinged eyes and felt a shiver of excitement. He wondered if she realized how often the wild part of her nature appeared when they made love. It had always thrilled him, but since their wedding night, he no longer felt as if she were leading him down an unknown road. He knew now that he, too, could access that otherness. Tonight, she was further down the path to it than he was, but he felt no fear of slipping into that demon world with her. If it happened, he would share that pure animal passion with her again. If it did not, the human part of him would revel in the opportunity to partake in something that should be beyond its ken.
He felt himself begin to lose control as her hips rocked over his and her strong muscles squeezed him. Trying to delay his own climax, he bit his lip and tasted his own blood in his mouth. He saw her staring at his face with fascination and hunger. A moment later, her mouth came down on his, and he felt them both explode with a more than human passion.
Buffy was drifting somewhere between sleep and waking. She rolled over in bed, reached for Spike, and encountered only his pillow. She sensed that the sun was up, but that it was still very early. A reassuring smell of bacon told her where her husband was. She buried her face in his pillow, determined to sleep at least until the smell of coffee also penetrated into the bedroom.
She was standing on a slope, with a scattering of people on either side of her. Most of them were sitting in lawn chairs, and their attention was directed to the field at the bottom of the hill. Two teams of young girls were running back and forth, their green and blue uniforms bright in the sunlight as they chased a soccer ball. They appeared to be about eleven or twelve years old. Buffy’s eyes instinctively followed the ball as it was passed back and forth. The air was very cool. It was too cold for a spring morning in Sunnydale. I don’t know this place, she thought.
Suddenly, a blonde child, smaller than any of the others, darted forward, dodged in front of one of the other players, and stole the ball away. She guided it ahead of her for a few steps, then smote it with a kick so strong that the sound of her sneaker hitting the surface of the ball could be heard clearly where Buffy stood. The ball cannoned more than half-way across the field, whizzed past the goalie, and slammed into the net.
The girl’s run slowed to a jog as the spectators began to clap and cheer. Her gaze sought one figure on the sidelines. “How was that, Dad?” she called. The question was clearly pro-forma. She was utterly confident of his approval.
Buffy stared at the man. He was wearing jeans and a cloth jacket. His eyes were filled with pleasure at the girl’s accomplishment, but there was more than simple parental pride in his look. He still hasn’t lost that watchfulness, thought Buffy. He’s still always alert for some threat, always on guard. Even in this benign setting, he seems more dangerous than domesticated. But something was different about him. It was more than the way his hair was cut, or the clothes he wore. It took her a few more moments to realize what it was. Those blue eyes, set over his chiseled cheekbones, were still as keen as knives. But there were new lines at their corners. He’s gotten older, she thought exultantly. After so many unchanging years, he has finally gotten older.
Buffy was in a familiar cemetery. She passed Spike’s old crypt and walked towards a new grave. The marker had just been placed. All the joyful feelings the previous vision had engendered drained away as she began to read the words on the stone.
She jerked awake and crouched on the bed, shivering and sweating. All the feelings of tranquility that had been instilled by Spike’s lovemaking and the first part of her dream were gone. Her peace was shattered again, and she faced the day with renewed dread of the uncertain future. She knew that something was about to happen, but she was afraid even to guess what it could be.
“Cattle mutilations?” asked Buffy.
“Why not?” asked Spike. “We’ve had everything else in this bloody town.” He and Buffy had been about to leave on their nightly patrol when Jonathan had shown up on their doorstep, bursting with new information that he had compiled in what was becoming an endless quest to map the evilness in Sunnydale and expiate his past sins.
“The first animals they found were some sheep,” said Jonathan. “Way outside of town. They thought it was a mountain lion or something. Then a horse went missing. And last night, something ate three cows. That would have to be a pretty big mountain lion.”
“Why did you say that, Jonathan?” asked Buffy. “Now I’m imagining an enormous cat.”
“Yeah,” said Spike. “Like Chip, but turned big enough by a blast of radiation to stomp on buildings, like those lizards that they used in the old Japanese monster movies.”
“No, Catzilla wasn’t exactly the image I had in mind,” said Buffy. “I was going more for the scary than the ludicrous.”
“Anyway,” said Jonathan, clearly annoyed by these segues into the imagination, “there’s no evidence it was a feline of any kind.” He held spread a map out on the table. “I marked each of the locations. It looks like it was out in the desert, maybe eating wild animals so that no one noticed. But it’s been pretty dry out there, and it may have run out of prey. See, it started moving closer to town here, and then even closer.”
“So,” said Buffy, standing up. “We need to check this out before it munches on anything else. Spike, I think we take this map and start our patrol here, in the area it looks like this thing was headed towards last night.”
“It’s getting close to the coast,” commented Spike. “I wonder if it likes to swim?”
An hour later, Spike was regretting his levity. He still had no idea what the creature’s bathing habits were, and he no longer cared. The monster was huge. It was hard and lean, with scaly skin and long talons on hands and feet. It turned, sensing them, and dropped the thing in its paws. Spike’s stomach suddenly seemed all too human; it lurched at the sight of the bloody corpse, and was only slightly appeased when he realized that the monster’s prey had not been human.
“Well, it doesn’t look like it’s a picky eater,” commented Spike. “I think that used to be a deer, and we know it likes hamburger and mutton as well as venison.”
“How do you think it feels about humans?”
“It probably thinks one makes a light lunch.”
The creature stepped forward, casually grasping the trunk of a small tree and uprooting it to use as a club.
“We can’t kill this thing,” said Buffy. “Not now. It’s stronger than both of us. We have to get reinforcements, and more weapons, and come back.”
Spike nodded. They started to back away, keeping the beast in sight. But they had gone only a few steps when Buffy stopped.
“Look where it’s headed,” she said.
Spike stared down the slope. It descended sharply, then spread out to a stretch of beach. In the distance, they could see a fire. Figures were moving around it.
“Someone’s having a party out there,” he said. “And it’s not going to be lunch after all. That thing is going to have a midnight snack. Can we tell them to run?”
“You mean, yell, ‘Run, there’s a big scaly monster on the way?’” she asked. “They’ll just stare at us. And look how fast it moves. By the time seeing is believing, it will be too late.”
He looked back at the creature. “All right then, we try,” he said in a bleak voice.
“We don’t try,” said Buffy, “We do.”
“You have a plan, love?”
“I have a monster of my own, William. And so do you.”
The ensuing silence lasted nearly a minute. “I know we’ve let the monster out of the cage and gotten it to crawl back, Slayer. But we’ve never let it go on the hunt while it was out.”
“Then we let it out of the cage, but keep it on a leash.”
“And you know that we can do that?”
“I know that thing is starting down that slope. And if it gets to the bottom, those people are dead. There’s no time for debate.”
He felt her change before he saw her face, and knew he had no choice but to follow her example. As his eyes met her gaze, eerie and golden in the moonlight, he felt his own blood stir in response to hers at a level that he had reached only twice before. The first time, they had been in another dimension, and afterwards he had been able to convince himself that his monstrous self could not appear in this world. The second time, they had been in the throes of some strange, wild passion, and he had again convinced himself that it was a unique, particular event, the artifact of the exchange of blood with which they had sealed their wedding vows. This time, there was no hiding the fact that they were both hunters, seeking a predatory prey.
Buffy’s wild, animal face turned toward him, and she ran an eager tongue along her fangs. Beneath her mane of golden hair, her eyes gleamed with pleasure and excitement. “Time for us to have a party of our own,” she growled.
They leapt on the creature like wild animals who stalked and killed entirely by instinct. He had never felt so free of conscious thought, even in his vampire days, and yet they fought like one unit, as if following some carefully designed battle plan. Even in this form, he was not as strong as she—at least not yet—but he was stronger than he had ever been or ever imagined being. Buffy brought the creature down by slashing and kicking its legs and torso; he jumped on its back and sank his fangs into its neck, easily cutting painful slashes into what had a few minutes before seemed an impenetrable armor.
In minutes, the creature lay cut and bleeding halfway down the slope. Its scales had been clawed and bitten away in a dozen places and its head had been almost torn from its body.
Spike turned to stare at Buffy. He could see with astonishing clarity. Any fear that he would encounter a monstrous ugliness was gone. Her beauty was both primitive and transcendent. Their eyes locked on each other, and both their bodies reverberated with shock as the creature on the ground several feet away from them shivered and died. They were both staggered by this naked manifestation of a phenomenon they had only suspected while in human form.
“So that’s how we feed,” said Buffy. “That’s where our strength comes from. We take it from our prey.” She glanced at the corpse momentarily, but then looked back at Spike, her eyes obviously as drawn to him in this form as his were to her.
“You’re bleeding,” she said in a strange voice.
He reached up and touched his face. His hand came back down covered with blood. He stared at her. A long red gash zigzagged down her arm. Blood was dripping from her fingers to the ground. “So are you,” he said.
She stepped up to him, kissing him first on the mouth, and then on his bloody cheek. He shivered as he felt his life’s energy pass into her. She stepped back, suddenly hesitant.
He reached out and took her hand, bringing it to his lips in a parody of a courtly gesture. No sooner did his lips touch the scarlet stain on her fingers than his brain exploded in a new wave of emotion that overwhelmed his last remaining rational thought.
They mated by the body of the monster they had slain, close enough for their demon senses to smell its blood. The life energy that they had drained from the ugly thing on the ground went into the creation of something that seemed to them beautiful and glorious. Joined first by battle, then by the exchange of their own blood, their bodies connected with force but without violence. There was no shadow of coercion or even misunderstanding; their rapidly beating hearts were synchronized to an internal clock that set the rhythm for their lovemaking.
She crouched over him, moving her hips as he thrust deep inside her, and it seemed that there was suddenly enough light that he could see himself reflected in her shining eyes. For that golden moment at least, all fears that he was still a foul and unworthy creature vanished. He climaxed knowing that, against all expectations, he was able to offer her something of inestimable value.
The sunlight filtering through the leaves overhead woke Buffy. She stirred uneasily, feeling a thousand aches throughout her body. She heard Spike moan slightly as he too came back to consciousness.
The memory of the previous night hit her like a blow. The most incredible thing was that her behavior didn’t seem alien to her even now. Her gut told her that what had happened was the most natural thing in the word, even while her rational mind was screaming that she should be disgusted and terrified.
Spike struggled to sit up. He
looked as battered as she felt. She
comforted herself with the recollection that most of the actual physical damage
had been done by the monster they killed; their mating, wild as it had been, had
also been far less violent than some of their initial sexual encounters as
Slayer and vampire. Are we learning to control it? she
wondered. Are we learning to focus the violence on our enemies and to use the
energy we gain from the kill to—to what?
Have a good time? There has to
be more to this. I didn’t die, crawl out
of my grave, transfer through dimensions, and alter my lover’s entire
physiology just so that I could have a really, really good roll in the
hay. Did I?
When Buffy and Spike stumbled through the back door, they found Dawn sitting in the kitchen with Tara. Dawn jumped up at the sight of them, and Tara gasped.
“Are you all right?” asked Dawn. She looked as if she wanted to hug them, but was afraid of hurting them. “You look terrible.”
“It was a really big bad,” said Spike simply. “But it’s dead. And we’ll be all right. Just cuts and bruises mostly.”
Buffy nodded. She was wearing Spike’s leather coat over the tattered remnants of her shirt, and she pulled it around her. “It’s really okay, Dawn. We just need to—to clean up and get some rest.” She looked at Tara. “Thanks for staying with her.”
Tara’s look was sympathetic. “She called me this morning when she realized you hadn’t come back. We were about to call some of the others and set up a search party.”
“I’m sorry we scared you,” said Buffy. “We didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” said Dawn. “I mean, I
can tell.”
Buffy and Spike climbed the
stairs to their bedroom and helped each other take off what remained of their
clothes. Buffy went into the bathroom
and turned on the shower. They both
stepped under the hot water, not caring that it stung their wounds, only
wanting to wash off the blood and sweat of the previous night.
When they finally felt clean, they stumbled out of the shower. Buffy handed Spike a towel and then pulled out the first aid kit she kept in the bathroom closet. As she watched him dry himself off, she took stock of his injuries. The cut on his face needed less attention than she had expected, and his other bruises were already fading. She looked down at her arm. The long gash was already half-healed.
“I’ve never healed that quickly before,” she said.
“I have,” he replied. She looked up at him, realizing what he meant. Vampires could heal much faster than any human, even a Slayer.
He brushed her wet hair back from her face and cupped her chin in his hands. “But it wasn’t the same, Buffy. What happened last night. We aren’t what I used to be. This,” he touched the healing wound on her arm, “isn’t a curse. It’s a gift.” He pulled her into his arms, seeking and giving reassurance.
Simultaneously, they realized that in spite of the pain and exhaustion, they were both aroused again. Gently and lovingly, they kissed. Together, they stumbled from the bathroom and fell across the bed.
His lips were soothing, like a balm to her bruised body. She lay back against the pillows, running her fingers over his face, as if her touch could somehow speed his healing even more.
Their bodies came together so naturally and easily, it came almost as a shock to feel the intense pleasure of orgasm as he moved inside her. Buffy told herself that this lovemaking was to restore them to normality, that they needed this to remind them that they were still human. But a part of her mind mocked her for this simplistic explanation. You know what this is for, it said. Night and day, dark and light. It takes both sides to make the coin. To accept the monster is to accept your humanity. This completes what came before. It does not deny it.
Then she was too exhausted to think any more about what it meant. She shuddered with the release of passion and felt Spike do the same. He collapsed into her arms, and they were both asleep.
Buffy was wandering through the house, looking for something. She opened the door to her sister’s room.
“Not here,” said Dawn. “I’m all grown up. See, I’m reading William Blake.” She held up a book. The title was Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. “Do you think that whoever made the tiger also made the lamb, Buffy?”
Buffy frowned. “I’m expecting a present. I have to go find it.” She turned and walked away.
“Buffy!” Her sister’s voice called out.
She turned. Dawn stood at the end of the hallway. “The sun’s rising out there.”
Buffy turned away again. She went down the stairs and out the back door. The sun was indeed rising, but Spike was nowhere to be seen. She stepped into the back yard. It widened and expanded into a jungle. Then, from the distance, she saw Spike climbing through the bushes, carrying a bundle in his arms. He stepped out into a clearing, and she saw his face in the slanting sunlight. His eyes gleamed with the tawny glitter of a desert sun, and his face was transformed into the fearsome beauty of a predatory animal. “I have to give you something,” he said.
“What is it?” She stepped forward, peering at the bundle, which had begun to cry vociferously.
“Joy,” he said, holding it out. The baby’s cries became louder. He looked concerned. “She needs to feed.”
Fearfully, Buffy reached out and took the baby. But when she looked down, she saw a beautiful, normal, human infant with wisps of blonde hair and clear blue eyes. As she and the child stared at each other, she felt a swelling in her breasts, and suddenly she knew what to do. She opened her shirt and pulled the baby closer. The infant’s mouth turned toward her.
Buffy believed that she had experienced every emotion that a living human could feel, from despair to ecstasy. But this sensation of serenity was new. Tensions that she had not known she felt melted away as she stared at the baby’s hand, its fingers spread against her breast like the arms of a tiny starfish.
The child sucked greedily, and a slight foam of white milk appeared at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were open, and they stared at Buffy with an expression that was both possessive and self-assured. She seemed certain that she was where she belonged.
Spike gently stroked the baby’s head and then reached up to push a strand of hair away from Buffy’s face. She saw that his own features had smoothed and that he looked as at peace as she felt.
Buffy realized that the landscape around them had transformed itself into an idyllic garden. “After everything that’s happened, how did we come to this place?” she asked.
“Sometimes you have to go all the way around the world to get back where you started,” said Spike.
Buffy awoke in her bed, Spike still curled up beside her. His head was pillowed on her shoulder and his right hand was spread across her abdomen. Her own arms were linked across her chest, as if ready to hold some burden. But they didn’t feel empty. They felt expectant.
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