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Annie
Sarah took a seat on the chair by the table behind which she had conducted most of her research. Buffy and Spike both went around the desk, him then leaning against it and her jumping up to sit on it.
Buffy tried to shake the feeling of his mouth, his lips locked around the tip of her finger, but it proved hard with him just a few feet away. Then Sarah spoke.
“The lord is holding a private party tonight for a very, VERY close circle of friends. Apparently one of his friends had been handed a little too much on a gathering a little while back and, according to Mrs. Wilkins, he couldn’t stop bragging about how close he had grown with one of England’s most powerful men…”
Buffy frowned at that.
“But if the party is tonight…” she started but Sarah held up a hand.
“Don’t worry, there’s more. The blabbering fool was talking about a secret that he had to keep, however he COULD tell about the trip he was going to take. He called it ‘magical’ and that he had already done it once with the lord. But they can only do it at dawn, when the mist is at it’s thickest on the LAKE,” Sarah finished, her expression triumphant.
“Wow,” Buffy said. “Wow! That’s incredible! So we have a place AND a time!”
“Yeah, at DAWN,” Spike grumbled. “When I’m at my most bloody useful, of course.”
Buffy turned her head to him.
“You can still be of help, and you know that.”
“Yeah? How? By letting my burning corpse scare the hell out of those wankers?” he asked, clearly annoyed, and she bit back a smile.
“No, but we need to get there BEFORE dawn, of course,” she answered him and a small glow started up in his eyes.
“See, that’s my girl,” he said, straightening his posture and taking a step away from the desk while turning to her. “Always heavy on the thinking,” he added with a smirk and she shook her head.
“I am NOT your g-…”
“I know,” he interrupted her, the warmth spreading in his eyes and extending into her, making her feel like she was slowly being set on fire.
“Don’t…” she mumbled, looking away.
Sarah got to her feet.
“We need to dress for supper,” she said, grabbing Buffy’s hand and pulling her up from the chair.
Spike smiled a little to himself as the two ladies exited the room, then the front door opened and shut and Jacob came into the library.
“So, any news?” Spike asked and Jacob shook his head.
“And you?” he asked and Spike nodded.
“Yeah,” he said and then quickly laid out what Sarah and Buffy had found out.
***
“Are you crazy? We don’t have time for supper, we need to get armed and then get the hell out of here and go kick some serious aristocratic ass,” Buffy hissed as Sarah pulled her with her up the stairs.
“Buffy, don’t be silly,” Sarah said. “First of all, we can’t just storm off and think that we can win a battle we still know much too little about…”
“I do that all the time!” Buffy exclaimed. “I’m a MASTER at the SURPRISE- Slayer-in-the-house strategy! We need to hurry!”
Sarah stopped and turned to her.
“Second of all, we don’t have a plan…”
“Hello! SURPRISE-Slayer-in-the-house IS a plan!” Buffy interrupted and Sarah shook her head, opening the door to Buffy’s room and pulling her inside.
“Third…” Sarah started, once more getting interrupted.
“Oh, there’s a THIRD?”
“Buffy.”
“Yes?”
“Be quiet.”
“That’s just a polite way of saying ‘shut up’.”
“Buffy!”
“What?!”
“Shut up, and sit!”
Buffy stared at her for a moment, then walked up to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, looking very co-operable. Sarah nodded, satisfied with that.
“Third of all, you can’t keep running away from him, Buffy. You need to face him once and for all, otherwise both of you will suffer.”
“That’s what I’m trying to TELL you! I mean he was MORE than a disgusting sleaze-ball the last time I saw him… I mean he wasn’t very nice. Okay, since you’re looking at me like that, he tried to force himself on me, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but I just didn’t think that it would be such a good idea… You were so upset over that little note and I just…”
Sarah’s eyes had gone from huge, to large, and now they stared at Buffy with a mixture of surprised disgust and wonder. Then she softly interrupted.
“I meant William.”
Buffy looked up at her, unable to hide the baffled expression on her face and Sarah smiled a little at seeing it.
“Why so surprised, my dear?” she asked and Buffy tried to search for the words but she couldn’t. “Buffy,” Sarah now said, walking up to sit beside her and taking her hands in that firm grip. “You have recognized the goodness in him, you’ve acknowledged his love for you, but those things all have to do with HIM. What do YOU want? I recall you telling me that you miss him, sometimes.”
Buffy pulled her hands away and got to her feet. Emotions tumbling inside of her in a fierce tornado, and they had been for so long, she didn’t know how to stop them, how to untangle them from each other, how to read them.
“Sometimes I don’t know myself,” she said, turning to Sarah. “Sometimes the world is just too much…”
“And that’s when you come to him,” Sarah said, nodding.
Buffy nodded slowly as well.
“He makes me forget, and I’ve already given him this speech…” she closed her eyes, turning away. “I told him I had to be strong about it and that it was killing me to use him the way I did… that I couldn’t do that anymore. Making it almost sound like I was doing it for him, that I was using him and had to stop…All along it was for me, because I couldn’t face myself, and what I was doing to him… That’s what makes me wonder how long I’ve actually believed in his love for me. How long I’ve shut my eyes to it just because I couldn’t face the fact that I was using his love as an escape, as a release… from myself, and the world…”
Sarah stared at the Slayer.
“Why do you think he loves you?”
Buffy furrowed her brow.
“What do you mean?”
Sarah smiled, raising her eyebrows.
“Have you never wondered WHY he fell in love with you? Why a vampire, the kind that he was, and a part of him still is, ruthless, remorseless and fearless, suddenly is at his knees for a mortal woman?”
Buffy stared at her, then drew a breath, shaking her head to herself before answering:
“Yes, of course I have.”
“Have you ever asked him?”
Buffy smiled at that.
“Are you kidding me? Up until a few days ago I called him crazy whenever…” she trailed off, hurt at the memories of all the times she had thrown his words back in his face surfaced in her eyes and she looked down again. “No,” she mumbled.
“Then let me ask you one final thing,” Sarah said and Buffy felt her heart start to pace in anticipation. “What do you want from him?”
Buffy looked up at her. The blizzard inside of her showing so clearly in her eyes that Sarah got off the bed and walked up to her, embracing her. Buffy hugged her back.
“Dear Buffy,” Sarah now said, still holding her. “You’re so strong and brave, my friend. Face this, and you can face anything. I promise you.”
She gently stroked Buffy’s hair before releasing her grip.
“Supper will be served in an hour, dress and then meet the rest of us down stairs. We do need to plan this attack, Buffy. If anything, at least we will have that.”
Buffy nodded slowly, not watching her friend exit the room.
She stared at something she couldn’t see as she tried to calm the storm inside of her, but… things seemed to get in the way.
Memories.
Giles and Xander and Willow the first time she met them. Spike telling her he loved her. Dawn. Spike at the Double Meat. The tower she had jumped from to save Dawn, and the world. Spike jealous of that guy, whatever his name was, that Xander and Anya had brought to her birthday party. Xander getting ready for his ‘wedding’. Dawn talking about the skank Spike had brought to the ‘wedding’. Dawn with Spike, safe. Willow and Tara. Giles telling her he was leaving. Angel. Spike taking his first steps into her room. Riley. Death is my gift. Spike fighting vampires. Spike fighting her. Death is my gift. Riley telling her he was leaving. Dawn at the tower, after the resurrection, begging her to come down. She was jumping to save the world. The Bronze. Angel in the dark, Angel telling her he was leaving. ‘I died, so many years ago…’. Death is my gift. Spike telling her he was staying, telling her that she had to leave.
She wanted to scream but all that came out was a hushed sob as she hung her head and let the feelings do as they pleased with her, the turmoil as always too confusingly powerful to stop.
***
They were quiet around the table.
Everybody seemed lost in their own thoughts.
Buffy stared at the fork in her hand, at the food on her plate, and felt queasy at the thought of actually chewing it. Spike was silently observing her from across the table, picking in her food instead of bringing the fork to her mouth and finally he felt he had had enough of it.
“Eat up,” he said, it coming out a little harsher than he had meant for it to.
She looked up, her expression a little surprised by the sudden sound of words in a room so drenched in silence. He cocked an eyebrow at her with a gesture to her plate.
“Eat up, Slayer. We’ll be fighting in less than twelve hours, you need your strength,” he said in a slightly more gentle tone.
She sighed, putting her fork down.
“Don’t worry about me,” she stated. “I’M worrying about that girl, whoever she is. I can’t get the thought of her out of my head for some reason.”
Spike tilted his head a little.
“Did you see her face?”
Buffy shook her head.
“No, I WAS her, in my dream, but…I don’t know, I just know it wasn’t me,” she mumbled, growing thoughtful again. “I could feel the pain and terror she was in, Spike. It was…God, it was awful.”
He smiled a little, nodding slowly.
“That’s what makes you good, Slayer,” he said, getting to his feet. “You care,” he added as she looked up at him.
She didn’t know why, but those two words made her suddenly feel like everything was going to work out. At least, everything that had to do with this damn Fire thing!
As for the matter of HIM… Why couldn’t she just KNOW what the heck she wanted? Have it spelled out for her in her head what to do, what to say to him to make him feel the way he made her feel…
He had a way of making her so angry she could just strangle him, that was true, but he also had this never failing way of always saying the right thing, or not saying anything, when she needed it the most.
Had she EVER done that for him? Just been there for him?
She felt another jolt of guilt at the thought, and then the guilt turned into something else… A need to show him, to tell him what he had done for her. That no matter what, he DID mean something to her, and he always would, she supposed.
‘You will forget to remember him…’
She hadn’t noticed that he had left the room, her thoughts getting the better of her. She blinked in surprise when her eyes suddenly stared at the empty spot where he had been just a moment before, or so it had seemed.
She drew a breath, getting off her chair and turning to Sarah and Jacob.
“I…” she said, looking at them.
Sarah smiled, nodding.
“Good,” she said and Buffy smiled a little back.
Then she got out from her place and walked quickly out of the room.
She was more nervous than she had thought she could ever be when it came to Spike as she slowly walked up the stairs to the third floor and their bedrooms. Taking her time she continued down the hallway. She was trying to figure out what exactly she was going to say. She was scared that the words wouldn’t carry, that her thoughts would somehow disfigure on the tip of her tongue and only serve to hurt him more, cut him deeper.
She swallowed at the thought of what his love meant, at what it must mean to him.
He didn’t kill two people because of it, she thought, a tremble running through her making her stop to lean against the wall for a moment. God, it must be tearing him apart.
She almost turned around right then.
What could she possibly say that wouldn’t make his decision seem harder on him?
If she told him what he had done for her all those times when she had needed him, when he hadn’t backed down even for a second, even though she was pushing him so hard it would probably have broken an ordinary man, if she told him what that meant to her now that she could finally see it for what it was…
And then something made her move forward, take the last steps to his door, and there she realized it wasn’t about what she was going to say, it was about being there, once, for him.
She raised her hand and now she didn’t hesitate a second before bringing her fist down in a knock.
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