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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:
“So what are we all doing here tonight?” asked Xander, walking into the living room.
“Just hanging out,” said Dawn, shutting the front door and following him. “Willow was coming over anyway, and when you called, I thought I’d invite you too.”
Xander dropped on the couch and looked around. “Where’s the about-to-be birthday girl? Patrolling with Mr. Un-undead?”
“No,” said Willow, setting a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. She started looking through the small pile of movies Dawn had rented. “On a date.”
“A date? Buffy’s on a date?”
“Yeah,” said Dawn.
“But, she’s married. Not to mention the bun in the oven.”
“Married people can date,” said Willow. “There’s no law against it. And the sleaze factor is reduced if they date the person they’re married to.”
“I assume that means Buffy is dating Spike.”
“We’re not even going to dignify that with an answer,” said Dawn, offended by his sarcastic tone.
“So where are they going? Dinner and a movie? Lamaze class?”
“We don’t know.”
“Buffy didn’t tell you?”
“She couldn’t. Spike wouldn’t tell her. It’s supposed to be a birthday surprise.”
“But her birthday is tomorrow.”
“Yes, and that always goes so well,” said Willow ironically. “It seemed a lot safer for her to try to get in some fun a few hours early. Anyway, Spike said something about it having to be tonight. Scheduling problems, he said.”
“So he planned this all on his own?” said Xander. “Isn’t that a little worrisome?”
“Buffy had a few moments of minor panic over it,” admitted Willow. “His judgment is still a little shaky sometimes. I mean, there was that recent incident with those guys, er, things he invited over to watch soccer on Pay-Per-View. But it’s not like he’d take Buffy to a demon biker bar or something like that.”
“Not any more,” said Dawn.
“Well, that’s—” Xander stopped and stared at Dawn. “He used to do that?”
“Well, the last time someone offered her some tequila, she told me that she couldn’t look at the stuff since they went out drinking together a long time ago and—”
“Never mind,” said Xander. “That story definitely goes into the ‘sorry I asked’ category. I wonder what he’s got in mind for tonight?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing like that,” said Willow firmly. “Besides, the worst thing that can happen is that she doesn’t like wherever they go and she has a terrible time.”
“I had the most wonderful time,” said Buffy.
“Yeah, you mentioned that ten or twenty times,” said Spike, trying to sound annoyed, while obviously reveling in her happiness.
“It was the perfect date,” she said. They had just gotten out of his car, and she was standing with her back against it, smiling up at him. “The perfect date I imagined but never got back in my carefree single days.”
“When did you ever have any carefree single days, love?”
“Before I was called to be Slayer. I used to imagine nights just like this, back then.”
“So what you’re saying is that I came up with a fourteen-year-old’s idea of a dream date?” He looked uncertain whether to be insulted or pleased.
“Yes, and no mean feat it was. You may be the first man in history to have managed it. I’d tell the world, but I’d be afraid every woman on the planet would want to steal you.”
He was happy to take this compliment. “Then it’s a good thing I’ve got you to keep me here where I belong,” he said, bending to kiss her.
“Uh, uh.” She shook her head. “We should go up the front walk and sit on the porch first.”
“Sorry, love. Obviously, I failed to divine that part of the scenario.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through the rest of the scene.” She took his hand and led him up the walk.
“Let me guess. I walk you to the door, we sit down here on the bench, and then there’s some sweet, romantic kissing.” He suited his actions to his words.
“Mmm. That’s good.”
“What’s next, pet?” he said after a few minutes.
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.” Under the porch light, his eyes were alight with laughter. He was clearly enjoying this game.
“I love you too, William. Now, more kissing.”
“Good. I like this part.”
“At this point, the boy was supposed to try to feel me up under my sweater.”
“I like this part even better.” His hands slid down to her waist, hesitating a moment when they encountered the slight swelling of her abdomen. Then he moved his hands back up, under her top.
“Stop that!”
“Huh?” He looked bewildered.
“I said the boy was supposed to try. But I was too nice a girl to let him get away with it.”
“Tease,” he said, smiling as he pulled his hands away and went back to kissing.
They moved apart as the front door opened. “Who’s there?” called Xander. He stepped out on the porch and saw them. Dawn was peering over his shoulder.
“We heard something,” she said. “Are you two making out on the front porch?” She sounded incredulous.
“Not any more,” said Buffy, clearly
annoyed.
“Well, you asked for it,”
Spike murmured in her ear. “The
outraged parents surprising you in the act may not have been in the plan, but
they certainly fit the scenario.”
Buffy bit her lip, and stared at Xander and Dawn, who certainly did look like parents who had caught their teenager in a compromising position. She burst into laughter and went inside, dragging Spike by the hand after her.
Xander and Dawn exchanged mutually appalled and worried glances and went inside as well.
A slender figure stepped out from behind a tree and stared at the warm light pouring from the windows. “Bad boy,” she hissed. “I hardly had to dull your mind to keep you from sensing me. You’re so full of the Slayer, and she’s so full of what you’ve put inside her, that you can’t see anything else. And there was a time when I was your world.” Drusilla smiled. “I’m going to be a part of your world again, William.”
Inside the house, Xander and Willow were trying to find out just what Buffy and Spike had been up to and getting nowhere. Spike finally parried an outright demand for information by saying that he and Buffy were trying to keep the mystery in marriage and that perhaps even they weren’t sure where they had been. Buffy said little, and Dawn couldn’t help noticing that her sister seemed distracted.
“I need to go upstairs for a minute,” said Buffy finally. She turned and ran up to her room.
Buffy opened the door to her bedroom and dumped her purse on the bed. She opened it and started to pull something out.
“Are you feeling ok?’ asked Dawn from the doorway.
Buffy jumped and turned. “Yes, I’m fine, Dawn. What are you doing here?”
“Just making sure you weren’t sick or something.”
“No, I’m remarkably free of nausea this evening,” said Buffy, shifting her body in front of the purse. “Completely vomit-less. You can go down and join the others.”
“Buffy, what are you hiding?” demanded Dawn.
“Nothing,” said Buffy. “Just—something I got while we were out. Nothing.”
“Nothing and something?” Dawn started for Buffy and began to peer over her sister’s left shoulder. When Buffy dodged in her way, Dawn immediately dove in the other direction and grabbed the object from the purse.
Slayer reflexes took over, and in less than a second Buffy had snatched back her property, stuffed it in her purse, and thrust the purse in the closet. But it was too late.
“Ice Capades!” chortled Dawn. The joy of discovery was followed by incredulity. “I was so scared from thinking about all kinds of bizarre, demony stuff you two might have been doing, but this? Spike took you to Ice Capades?”
“He did not!”
“Buffy, that was an Ice Capades program!”
“It was not. It—it couldn’t be. They don’t do Ice Capades any more. They haven’t for years.” Buffy saw Dawn’s disbelieving expression and gave in. She got her purse and displayed the program. “Ok, so he took me to Champions on Ice. It isn’t exactly the same thing.”
“No, of course not,” said Dawn sarcastically. Then she seemed awestruck by the image conjured up by this news. “Buffy, I can’t believe Spike went to an ice skating thing, with the sequins and the sappy music and everything! Oh, wow. Wait until I tell Xander and Willow. They’ve been imagining all sorts of things about tonight, but this beats it all!”
“No, please, don’t tell them,” said Buffy urgently. “They’d laugh like crazy and there’d be a long, drawn-out mocking thing, and I couldn’t stand that.”
“Well, Willow might not laugh too much,” said Dawn. “She seems to take Spike pretty seriously these days. Of course, Xander would be a complete jerk about it. But since when do you mind Xander being a jerk?”
Buffy looked down at the program in her hands. “It’s hard to explain. William—Spike and I, everything about us was so wrong, for so long. We didn’t do anything the right way, and I still have a hard time figuring out how we finally managed to put things together. But tonight, it was all good. It was the way things should have been from the start. The way things might have been if when I first met him, he was what he is now. That means a lot to me. I just don’t want someone mocking it.”
Dawn smiled in understanding. “I get it,” she said, sitting down on the bed next to Buffy. “It really was your first date, wasn’t it?”
Buffy nodded.
“Then I promise I won’t tell.” Dawn grinned mischievously. “If you tell me all about it.”
“All right,” said Buffy. Suddenly, she grinned too. “It was great. And Spike behaved. Honestly. He was pretty bored at first, and he tried to pretend he stayed that way, but I could tell he really liked some of the female skaters. He made a couple of comments about thigh muscles that I didn’t listen to too closely. He couldn’t help muttering other stuff under his breath during the male solos, though. I think some of that was jealousy, because he could tell that I really liked that part. And I stopped the guy sitting next to us from starting a fight when he heard Spike call Victor Petrencko a ‘poofter.’ But, look, Spike got me Elvis Stoiko’s autograph when it was over.”
Dawn admired it, trying to keep a straight face.
A few minutes later, Buffy and Dawn came downstairs to find Xander and Spike glaring at each other, while Willow tried to make small talk. It seemed to Dawn that Xander was taking Spike’s refusal to describe the evening as a personal insult. Dawn frowned at Xander and announced, “Well, it’s past my bedtime, guys, so I think you should be getting on home.”
This was such an uncharacteristic statement that both Xander and Willow stared at Dawn incredulously. Willow, however, also noticed the look that Buffy and Spike exchanged, and caught the girl’s real meaning. “Yeah, Xander, we need to go. I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” said Xander, staring morosely at the television. “Doing what?”
“Stuff,” said Willow. “Important kinds of--of stuff. Come on, you heard Dawn. It’s her bedtime.”
“So I have to go? It’s not Buffy and Spike’s bedtime, is it?” He finally listened to himself, blushed fiercely, and got up. “On the other hand, if you’re leaving, Will, maybe I can bum a ride off you. My car’s in the shop, and I had to walk.”
Dawn hustled them both into coats and out the door, then turned to smile radiantly at her sister and brother-in-law. “Well, I’m really, really tired,” she said, looking intensely perky. “Just exhausted. So I’m going to head right off to bed, and I’ll probably be fast asleep in less than a minute. See you guys at breakfast.” She tore up the stairs with enormous energy, and her bedroom door slammed.
Spike was still sitting on the couch. He looked up at Buffy where she stood by the living room doors. “So,” he said, “Did you tell her?”
“She found out,” said Buffy. “But she’s sworn to secrecy.” She stepped into the room and stood in front of him. “You know, we were interrupted before we could finish our little play.”
“Yeah,” he said, his gaze running up and down her body suggestively. “Remind me, love. What was next on the script?”
She leaned over, putting her hands on his shoulders and bringing her cleavage precisely to his eye level. “Well, we were interrupted kissing on the porch, but now there’s no one to interfere with a little making out on the couch.”
His eyes were straying exactly where she wanted them to go. “And just how far will I be allowed to get during this session?” he asked. “You are a nice girl, after all.”
“Well, I think this part of the play is a little bit more of an adult fantasy than the last scene,” she said, sitting down astride him and tipping his chin up towards her. Her hips slid forward, towards his, then back slightly, then forward again. Her open mouth came down on his, and she took his lower lip gently between her teeth. His arms went around her, and he rocked his hips underneath hers. His hands slid under her sweater, and this time she made no objection as they reached for the clasp of her bra. As he was about to unhook it, the front door of the house slammed open.
Buffy pulled away from him, jumping up reflexively into a fighting stance. “Bloody hell,” yelled Spike, rolling off the couch and assuming a similar posture that placed him between her and the door. He saw Xander and Willow standing there, and relaxed a bit. “Bloody hell,” he repeated in a different tone of voice. “What are you two doing back here?”
“Running away from your ex,” said Xander.
“It’s Drusilla,” gasped Willow. “Drusilla is here.”
“I’m so glad that Spike’s girlfriend could come to town and disrupt our lives,” said Xander bitterly. He poured a bag of chips into a bowl and began to chomp on one.
“Stop calling her that,” said Dawn. “And don’t eat those yet. The party hasn’t started.” She grabbed the bowl and carried it from the kitchen into the living room. He trailed after her.
“Then what should I call her? The psychotic vampire who he loved and adored for over a century? The insane creature-of-the-night that he made it his business to pamper and protect?”
“Stop it!” Dawn turned and glared at him. “If you can’t see how hard this is on Spike, at least try and see what it’s doing to Buffy and shut up!” She went back into the kitchen, just as Willow opened the back door and came in. “Oh, you brought the cake. Thanks, Willow. I knew I said I’d do it when Tara found out she’d have to be out of town this week, but there just wasn’t enough time today.”
“You couldn’t know that we’d have to move the time of the party up so that Buffy and Spike could start patrolling at dusk,” said Willow. “No problem, Dawn. How is the birthday girl?”
“She looks terrible,” confided Dawn. “She and Spike were out all night hunting, and he’s been gone all day too, trying to find Drusilla’s nest. He finally got Buffy to lie down for a while, but I don’t know if she’s actually slept at all.”
“How did he get her to rest?”
“He’s got a trump card now. He just tells her she has to do it for the baby. But he must be almost completely exhausted by now. And the look in his eyes is kind of scaring me.”
“Afraid he’s going to do something evil?” asked Xander from behind her.
“No!” said Dawn emphatically.
“Don’t be stupid, Xander,” said
Willow. “She’s afraid he’s going to
take some unnecessary risks and get himself hurt.”
“He already is hurt,” said
Dawn. “He tries to hide it, but I can
see it. He looks like he’s bleeding
inside.”
Buffy was in a hospital room. There was a window by her bed, and she could see mountains. She wondered for a moment what mountains they were, then turned her head to see Spike smiling at her. His expression was so happy that for a moment it took her breath away. Then she saw that his hands were covered in blood, and some voice deep in her heart told her with absolute certainty that the blood was hers and Joy’s.
Once again, Buffy was in a Sunnydale cemetery. She was alone, grasping her sad, drooping bouquet of flowers. She knew what was before her, and she was trying desperately not to raise her head. More than anything in the world, she did not want to see the words on the headstone by her feet.
Buffy woke up and jumped to open the blinds that covered the bedroom window. She stared out, drinking in the sunlight as if it could heal the wounds caused by her nightmare. She leaned against the wall, her breathing slowing. She knew that this cure was only temporary, and that all her fears would come rolling back over her at sunset.
Buffy bent over and blew out the candles on her birthday cake. Unsmiling, she stared at the smoke drifting up towards the ceiling. She was finally pulled from her reverie by the sound of Dawn’s voice. “Huh?’ she said vaguely to her sister.
“Did you make a wish?” asked Dawn.
“Yes,” said Buffy. “Oh, yes.” She looked around at her friends and realized that they were waiting for her to cut the cake. Dutifully, she performed this task and passed the pieces around. She ate half a bite of her piece and pushed the rest around a paper plate, aware of Spike’s anxious eyes on her face.
“Come on,” he said finally. “This looks not like a birthday party. Aren’t there some presents to open?”
The next fifteen minutes were a phantasmagoria of pretty clothes and ornaments. Buffy smiled as best she could and hoped that she was thanking the right people. Finally, Spike pressed the last present into her hand, and she looked at the card. She could make no sense of the words in her current frame of mind, but she knew from the beautiful script that it was from him.
Buffy opened the box and took out a silver pendant. The ornament was a stylized sunburst. She let it rest on her hand for a moment, then looked up at Spike and gave him a smile that was almost free of angst. “Thank you,” she said. She stood up, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she dropped the box on the table in front of her and threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him. He held her gently, his own expression anguished.
Willow looked at the others and gestured towards the kitchen. All of them, even Xander, rose and quietly filed out of the room, leaving Buffy and Spike alone.
Buffy cried quietly into Spike’s shoulder for a few minutes as he stroked her hair. Then she pulled away and held up the pendant, silently asking for him to help her put it on. She turned, and he clasped the chain around her neck. She held the pendant in her hand for a moment and turned to look at him. “Does this mean I’m your little ray of sunshine?” she asked with a shaky attempt at levity.
“More like a supernova,” he said. “Buffy, I’m so sorry.” There was no need to say what he was sorry for.
“You don’t have to apologize for her,” said Buffy in a hard voice. “On the contrary. She’s the one responsible for your crimes.”
The worry in his expression increased. “Buffy--”
She interrupted him, and now her vulnerability was replaced with steely anger. “Make no mistake, William,” she said. “I will destroy her. Not just because of what she is and because she killed Kendra. But because of what she did to you.”
“Buffy, you have to be careful. She’s bloody dangerous. Even after more than a century, I could never tell what she was going to do next, and I could only control her when she was sure I was on her side. And she can play tricks with your mind.”
“Not the way I feel now. I’m going to teach her a few tricks.”
He shook his head. “Love, you must be careful. Let me fight this one. I know her. And if she were to hurt you, that would be--”
“I don’t care. She already hurt you. She did the worst possible thing to you that could ever have happened to anyone. That would make this my battle even if she had never hurt anyone else I loved. I’m not going to let her survive this night, William.”
Before he could respond, they were startled by the sound of someone calling their names from outside. “That’s Dawn!” cried Buffy. They both turned and ran for the kitchen door.
Willow was standing by the steps. “Xander was in some kind of snit,” she babbled. “He insisted on taking out the garbage even though the sun had just gone down and—”
“It was Drusilla,” cried Dawn, running back towards the house. “I saw her. She took Xander.” She grabbed Buffy by the arm as her sister descended the porch steps. “You have to find her before she hurts him.”
“Why hasn’t she done that already? Why didn’t she just kill him?” asked Buffy.
“Because she’s after more than that,” said Spike. “She needs more time for what she wants to do to him.” He turned his head from side to side. “I think we can find her, but we can’t track them quickly enough like this.”
“Then we do what we have to do.” Buffy’s eyes glinted yellow in the moonlight. Dawn gasped as she turned and saw that Spike’s face was similarly changed. Spike seemed to sniff the air, and the two took off at incredible speed.
Willow stumbled down the porch steps. She had not been close enough to see Buffy and Spike’s faces. “Where are they going? Do they know where she’s taken him?’ Without much hope of catching up, she began to run after them.
Dawn ran back into the house and up to her room. She grabbed a small jewelry box and tossed it on her bed, spilling its contents across the quilt. She snatched a scarf out of a drawer and used it to pick up the small silver and red charm that had been lying in the bottommost drawer of the box. “Time to give another vamp a dose of reality,” she muttered.
When she got outside, she took a deep breath and thrust her hand in her pocket, allowing her naked palm to rest against the talisman for a moment. Then she pulled it away as if it had burnt her flesh. Her gaze hardened, and she ran down the street with a definite goal in mind.
Buffy caught up with Spike just outside his old crypt. He turned and looked at her, his features evening out and becoming more human as their eyes met. She could feel herself moving back to humanity from the otherness. They did not speak, but turned and entered his old haunt together.
Drusilla was standing in the center of the crypt, with Xander on his knees before her. There were two bloody wounds on his neck, and he looked barely conscious, but his eyes were focused on the vampire’s breasts. Drusilla was in the act of cutting a bloody line over her heart with one exquisitely manicured fingernail.
“No!” It was Spike who covered the distance to reach Drusilla first, but instead of striking, he stopped a few feet away. Buffy halted her own momentum closer to the door. The vampire had seen them coming, and she had thrust Xander’s body to the ground and placed her foot over the wound on his throat. She did not need to utter a threat. It was clear that if the rescuers stepped any closer, she would snap Xander’s neck.
“Hello, Spike,” Drusilla said. “I thought this might get your attention.”
“You could have found another way,” he said, moving slightly to the side and marginally closer to her.
“But I couldn’t lose with this trick. Even if you were too wrapped up in the Slayer to worry about this one, I’d have a new playmate.”
“Let the boy go.” Spike was standing close enough to stake her. But he remained immobile, staring into her dark eyes as if transfixed. He didn’t look down at Xander, whose eyes were open and full of terror.
“So, you don’t want me to change him? That at least hasn’t changed about you. I remember, you always had an excuse for not making a new playmate. You never liked anyone enough to keep them around forever, you said. Or you would tell me that I was the only one you needed with you for eternity. Was that really it, Spike? Or did you have some other reason?”
“What reason do you think I had, Drusilla?” he said.
Dawn ran into the crypt and skidded to a halt just behind Buffy. Drusilla’s eyes flicked over the newcomer and dismissed her as of no importance. The vampire focused on Spike again.
“You’d send your victims to heaven fast enough, but you never brought anyone to join us in hell. That was it, wasn’t it, my Spike?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“It was our own fine and private hell. But now I’m all alone in it, with no one to embrace. I want company, Spike. Is that so wrong? Well, yes, of course it is. But that’s the beauty of it, my sweet.”
“Bringing someone into that hell isn’t the only solution, pet.” The old endearment slipped out. “You could try to escape it yourself.”
“But it’s my home. Why would I run away? Not just because you abandoned me.”
“You threw me out, Dru. Remember? I didn’t want to go.”
She laughed. “You left me long before I sent you away.” Drusilla turned to look at Buffy. “She understands. You can be with someone, pretend even to yourself that you’re still in love, but your whole being is really someplace else. That was what it was like for you, wasn’t it, Slayer? You tried to love a human, but even when he held you in his arms, your heart was with my Spike.”
Buffy said nothing.
Drusilla laughed again. “You don’t want to admit it to me, Slayer, but you know it’s true. You wanted my Spike from the first, and you were stealing him away from me long before you admitted to yourself that’s what you were doing. We have a lot in common, you and I. You must be the only other creature who’s ever really seen our William for what he is. He looked like just some fool lost in an alley when I found him, but I knew better. I knew that there were riches in his eyes and in his heart that I could mine and wear like jewels. And for a very long time, he didn’t disappoint me. Do you know, he used to taste sweet to me, even after I changed him. That was never true of any of the others. But a sip of my Spike’s blood was like a reviving cordial. I couldn’t get enough of him.” Her expression changed to anger. “Then he met you, and he tasted of ashes. And now, I can tell that a nip from him would be like drinking a nasty poison. Tell me, Slayer, how does he taste to you? Is his blood hot and sweet in your mouth?”
Dawn heard a low, rumbling noise and realized with a shock that Buffy was growling. Dawn glanced sideways at her sister, saw a glint of gold in the Slayer’s eyes, and was overcome with a new fear. If Buffy lost control of herself and the Slayer unmasked at this moment, Drusilla would certainly not survive. But Dawn feared that Xander might not survive either. She reached out and grabbed Buffy’s hand, trying to anchor her sister to her human existence.
Buffy had been about to leap across the gap between herself and Drusilla when Dawn’s touch stopped her. She shivered and felt the otherness slip away. She looked at Xander’s body on the ground under Drusilla’s foot and then back up at Spike. Reluctantly, she held back, knowing that however quickly she could cover that gap, the vampire could kill Xander even faster. Whatever she had vowed to Spike earlier in the evening, she could not let her friend die because she was overcome by jealousy and desire for revenge. Mere speed and power would not win this battle. They had to find another way to fight Drusilla’s psychic attack.
Dawn slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the talisman for the second time that night. Its contact with her unbroken flesh was not enough to move her to another dimension, but she felt reality shift around her slightly, as if the world had been distorted and was now coming into focus. She saw Drusilla frown slightly, sensing some other force at work. Dawn ignored the vampire and kept her eyes on Spike.
Spike blinked. The air around him seemed clearer, as if he had been viewing Drusilla through a distorting mirror and was now seeing her directly for the first time. That was ridiculous, of course. Drusilla had no reflection. In fact, she seemed somehow insubstantial to his suddenly altered senses. He started to step back a pace, then paused, careful not to break eye contact with her.
“So,” said Drusilla softly. “The Slayer has some interesting tricks of her own.”
Spike shook his head. “Hers aren’t tricks, Dru. They’re real. They’re solid, and they don’t vanish in the light of day.” He stepped a pace to the right, forcing her to turn to continue to meet his eyes. Her foot shifted slightly on Xander’s neck.
“So, she gives you something I couldn’t. But I gave you what she can’t. You’re not immortal anymore, Spike. I can smell your inevitable demise on the breath she forced back into your lungs.”
“Better future death than unchanging unlife, Dru. At least I am alive, for as long as I can keep breathing. I’m sorry, pet, but I wouldn’t give up one minute with her for an eternity with you.”
Drusilla hissed in anger. “You pretend it’s so much better. But I can tell.” Her lips moved close to his ear, and her voice dropped to an intimate whisper. “I can feel the pain in you. It used to sleep when you were with me, but I’d let it wake up sometimes and feed on it. Now that part of you that suffers the pain is awake all the time. How must that feel, my poor Spike?”
“Better live pain than a dead soul,” he said. His tone was quiet and intense. “You must know that, Dru, or you wouldn’t have tried to feed on my pain. You wouldn’t have sought it.”
She shook her head. “I feed on pain, but I don’t feel it, Spike. You never understood that. It was what made you so special. Your pain was a tasty dish. Exotic and rare. I wonder if this one,” and she moved her foot back over Xander’s neck, “would have served it for me.” Xander stared up at her blankly. “You won’t let me find out, I suppose.”
“No,” Spike agreed. “I bloody well won’t.”
“But you can’t kill me either, my sweet. I know you too well.” Drusilla leaned forward, trying to reach him with her hypnotic stare. “You’ll let me kill him because you can’t bring yourself to stake me. Because you used to love me. Because your sentimental poet’s soul won’t let you act any other way.”
“You were everything to me, Dru,” he said. “My whole world. Tell me now, just what are you? Just what was that world I thought I had?”
“Look into my eyes. Can’t you see?” She smiled alluringly as she raised her foot to crush Xander’s throat beneath her heel. She seemed supremely confident that Spike was too riveted by her gaze to even notice.
Buffy jumped now, made desperate with the realization that she would be too late. She dove low to the ground, trying to grab Xander’s body away from Drusilla. She reached him and pulled him away, not from the crushing force of a vampire, but from a cloud of ash drifting to the floor.
Xander and Buffy looked up at Spike. He was standing with a stake in one hand, staring in shock at the emptiness in front of him. “Sorry, Dru,” he murmured. “I just can’t see you any more.”
There was a noise outside the crypt and Willow dashed in. She stared at them all in horror. “What happened? Xander, you’re bleeding! Where’s Drusilla?”
The stake slipped from Spike’s hands. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he said. “But in bloody sure and certain hopelessness—” He dropped to his knees, and touched the ashes and dirt on the floor with one hand. Slowly, his whole body crumpled to the ground, and the others heard him begin to cry.
Buffy thrust Xander into Dawn’s arms. “Get him to the hospital,” she said to her sister and Willow. “He may need a transfusion.” She knelt down next to Spike and put her arms around him cautiously, as if she were afraid he would reject her. But he clung to her, sobbing into her shoulder as she tried to soothe him.
Willow started to say something, but Dawn shushed her. Together, Dawn and Willow helped Xander out the door of the crypt, leaving Buffy and Spike behind.
“I thought for sure he’d be down by now. It’s scaring me a little. This is the first day I can remember since he’s changed that he didn’t come downstairs to watch the sun rise.” Dawn stared out the kitchen window.
“Yes, by all means, let’s worry about the guy who used to be a vampire instead of the guy that got bit last night.”
“I worried about you plenty until I was sure you would be all right.” Dawn turned and picked up the empty breakfast plate in front of Xander. “And you should cut Spike some slack. He came rushing to your rescue, remember?” She dropped the plate into the sink and poured herself a cup of coffee.
Xander shrugged. “Yeah, I could tell saving me was his top priority. Right after chatting with his old girlfriend.”
Dawn shook her head. “You don’t understand, Xander. Spike doesn’t see things exactly the way we do.”
“I’m not having a lot of sympathy with the ex-demon point of view at the moment.”
“It’s not because he used to be a demon. It’s because he used to be dead. He doesn’t think that dying is the worst thing that can happen, because he’s done it already. Spike didn’t go there to save your life, Xander, at least not primarily. He went there to save your soul, or at least to save the part of you that would have survived in an undead existence without a human soul. Once he was sure Drusilla wouldn’t have the opportunity to change you, he, well—”
“He stopped worrying about me.”
“No. He still wanted to save you, Xander. He still did save you. Buffy might not have been in time if Spike hadn’t staked Drusilla. But, don’t you see, he had to try for her too. He had to see if there was some spark of a soul in Drusilla for him to save. And in his mind, her soul had to come before your life.”
“And that doesn’t bother you, that Buffy’s husband has this creepy set of priorities?”
“Xander, I know you haven’t noticed and that you don’t want to hear this, but Buffy thinks the same way Spike does. She told me once that it was a great comfort to have someone else around who knew what it felt like to crawl out of a grave and wish you were still rotting away in it.” She saw his expression and gave a moan of exasperation. “You still think of Buffy as that girl you met in high school. Xander, you idiot, she’s changed, and so have you. It doesn’t mean you can’t love her and be her friend. But you have to see her clearly.”
“Even if it wigs me out?”
“Even if it wigs you out so much that you finally realize you’re not in love with her any more. That the thought of being with her that way scares you silly.”
He stood up and paced up and down the room in some agitation. She could see him finally accepting the thought. It seemed to Dawn that it was actually a relief to Xander to acknowledge that Buffy had gone somewhere that he could not and did not want to follow. But he looked so forlorn that Dawn gave in to impulse and got up to put her arms around him. He hugged her back, and finally said, “You’re right, I think, Dawnster. How come you know so much about me?”
She looked up and gave him a Mona Lisa smile. He stared down at her for a moment, and, without consciously making the decision to do so, kissed her.
It was a few seconds before he realized exactly how he was kissing her. He jumped back, horrified. Instead of looking embarrassed or appalled by either his kiss or her own reaction to it, she smiled broadly at him.
“I have to go,” he said.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said, still smiling. “You need to get used to the idea. Take your time. You should probably take a lot of time. Move slowly. Not quite on a geologic scale, but fairly glacier-like. I’m young. I can wait.”
He didn’t move slowly. He almost ran out of the kitchen, stumbling down the back porch steps as if blinded by the sunlight.
Upstairs, Buffy sat on her bed with Spike’s head cradled in her lap. She felt as if she had frozen in this position. She was so tired that all words had drained from her mind. She wanted to fall into the oblivion of sleep, but the tension in his body communicated itself to hers, setting every nerve on edge. If he had ever given in to grief before, it would have been easier to accept his obvious anguish. But this reaction was so unusual for him that she was left at a loss, and could only hold him and gently stroke his hair, hoping for some sign that his distress was easing.
As the morning light filtered into the room, he began to stir. He turned to look at the dust motes dancing in front of a crack in the blinds. “From dust to dust,” he muttered. He sat up and looked at Buffy almost sheepishly. “I’m sorry, love,” he said. “I didn’t mean to give way like that.”
These words were more chilling than his previous behavior. Buffy felt that if she didn’t get him to talk about what had happened, he would build a barrier between them that she would never be able to surmount. “Don’t you dare apologize,” she snapped.
He looked surprised. “It’s just—not many women would be this understanding over a bloke’s tears for his undead ex-girlfriend.”
“You were with her for over a century. What kind of man would you be if that wasn’t worth a night of tears?”
“It’s not even that, love,” he said. He was quiet for a long time, but Buffy realized that she had somehow said the right thing, and that he was moving back towards her again. She put up a hand to caress his cheek and waited.
“I wasn’t crying because of what I lost,” he said. “I was crying because the Drusilla I was trying to reach all those years was dead before I ever met her. I was crying because there was nothing to lose.”
His head dropped back on to her lap, and she put her arms around his shoulders, offering what comfort she could. After a few minutes, she realized that he had fallen asleep. She sat immobile, staring at the dust motes swirling in the sunbeams, not wanting to interrupt this sudden peace that had followed his night of anguish. She knew that instead of a wall being built, a door had opened up, and she wondered where it would take him.
“Happy Birthday, Buffy,” she muttered to herself ironically. She remembered what she had asked for when she blew out the candles on her cake the night before. Spike’s last emotional link to his vampire existence had indeed been severed, but she didn’t feel like rejoicing. “Be careful what you wish for next year,” she advised herself.
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