Greetings, all. I have some fic to share for my posting day. I’ll be posting the first part now and the rest of it later in the day. This fic is a series of three moments from the life of Buffy and Spike, connected thematically. All take place post-NFA.
The quotes at the beginning of each chapter (and at the end of the last) are taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence”, which I highly recommend.
I hope you enjoy it!
Title: Kindle in Us the Fire
Author: st_salieri
Rating: R
I.
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood
October, 2006
Hallstatt, Austria
The pavement flew under Buffy’s feet, the cool night wind whipping her hair about her face and stealing her breath. She could feel the stitch in her side worsening, so she swallowed hard and pushed forward with a grimace. A narrow stairway loomed before her, disappearing into the dark space between two buildings. She took the stairs two at a time, leaping fleet-footed from one to the next and rounding the corners without so much as touching the handrail for balance. She had no time to lose; every second was precious. Clutching her knife tighter in her fist, she took one last deep breath and burst onto the dark landing at the top of the stairs.
Spike was there, leaning against one of the buildings with a satisfied smirk on his face.
“Hello there, Slayer. What took you so long?”
Buffy gave him the evil eye, bending down to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath. “There were people,” she said defensively. “I couldn’t just go plowing through the tourists. There’s this thing called subtlety?”
Spike shrugged carelessly. “Never had much use for it myself. I take it you didn’t see the Droog?”
Buffy shook her head. “You?”
“Not a glimpse.”
They’d been tracking the Droog demon for almost a week now, ever since the local coven had detected a powerful shift in the magical forces that kept the dimensions intact. It could be nothing, but…in Buffy’s experience, nothing good ever came of magical shiftiness. Better to be safe than sorry, and a Droog sighting this close to Halloween gave her a bad feeling.
“So,” Spike drawled. “You’ll notice I won.”
Buffy coughed and straightened up, stretching her calves. “Whatever.”
“Fair’s fair, Slayer. You’ll be paying me later.” He pursed his lips and gave her a quick up-and-down look. “If you’re up for it, that is. What’s the matter? A little out of conditioning?”
She glared at him defensively. “No! And it’s the Droog’s fault. Why did it have to come to such a mountainy place anyway? Besides, you lose all right to criticize my cardio routine when you don’t have to breathe, mister.” Sheathing her knife, she stepped up close to him and tucked one finger into the waistband of his jeans. He immediately straightened up, his eyes dilating and his mouth dropping open slightly.
Buffy hid a grin. He was so easy.
“Now, Spike,” she purred, tilting her head up and letting her warm breath wash across his face. “Are you doubting my…stamina? If you’d like, I can give you a taste of your reward right now.” She reached down and ran her fingers lightly across the front of his jeans, barely touching him. He gave a jolt as if struck by lightning, and she rewarded him with a soft squeeze. She dropped a kiss on his Adam’s apple and squeezed him again, starting to knead gently. Just as Spike groaned and reached for her, she stepped back with an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry,” she said sweetly at Spike’s pained look, looking over her shoulder toward the darkened stairwell. “It looks like we have visitors. I’ll have to discuss this with you later.”
Buffy had timed it perfectly. As soon as she was finished speaking, two girls came plodding up the stairs, panting for breath and dragging their swords behind them. They were both Slayers — Hannah fourteen, Grace sixteen — and had been assigned to accompany Buffy on what everyone was hoping was just another ordinary search and destroy mission.
“Hi, girls!” she chirped, ignoring Spike’s baleful glare. It served him right for being so smug. “Everyone ready to move on? We should probably head up the mountain and check the salt mines on more time.”
Hannah and Grace both groaned and slid down to rest on the floor. “Do we have to?” Hannah asked plaintively. “Maybe it’s gone to sleep for the night.”
There was a sudden scream from the nearby road. The girls jumped to their feet and grabbed their swords. “Maybe not,” Buffy muttered. “Come on, follow me!”
She led the group through a narrow alley and came out upon one of the streets at the upper end of the town. The moon’s pale glow illuminated the entire area, its reflection shimmering in the dark lake that lay at the foot of the mountains. Up among the houses and away from the shops and restaurants, the town was much quieter — except for the sound of a woman shrieking. The woman in question came tearing down the road, hiccuping for breath, and almost slammed directly into Buffy.
“I think we’ve located our Droog,” Spike muttered.
“Beinhaus,” the woman stuttered, pointing back behind her. “Das beinhaus!” Taking one look at the knives and swords the group carried, she shrieked again and took off down the road.
“What’s a beinhaus?” Buffy asked as the woman disappeared around a corner, her screams dying away into the distance. “Is that our demon?”
“Charnel house,” Spike answered absently, sniffing the air. “Bonehouse, literally.” He frowned when he realized that Buffy was staring at him. “What?”
“I thought you couldn’t speak German.”
He shrugged. “Did a little traveling back in my day. Didn’t bother to learn much more than the important words, though: bone, blood, death, kill, fight, drink…” He broke off and glanced over at Grace and Hannah, who were looking a little green. “Yeah. Never mind.”
Following the road the woman had come down led them to a small church, a graveyard nestled into one corner. Buffy wove her way through the crowded markers with their carved crucifixes — so different from the cemeteries she had practically grown up in, with their wide paths and broad headstones. At one end of the graveyard was a tiny chapel. Grace nudged her and pointed to a nearby sign. Yup, das beinhaus.
“I can’t see the Droog,” Spike muttered.
“Yeah, but it’s here somewhere,” Buffy said, nodding towards the chapel door which swung open gently in the breeze. She led the group quietly toward the tiny chapel, easing the door wide open and stepping inside. “Whoa,” she breathed.
The entire room was filled with bones. Long tables encircled the room, every available surface lined with skulls. Skulls lay stacked tall in the corners, their empty eye socket staring out blankly in a parody of attention. The spaces beneath the tables were filled with neatly arranged rows of what looked like femurs and ulnae and every other piece of skeletonry imaginable. Buffy took a step closer and noticed that what she had originally taken for dirt on the bones was actually painting. The skulls had been decorated — some with garlands of greenery and wreaths of painted flowers, others with a simple cross and the names and dates of the original owners. A few candles had been lit here and there, but otherwise the room didn’t seem to have been disturbed. Yet.
“It says they buried them in the graveyard for a few years,” Hannah whispered, reading from a brochure that she must have picked up at the door. There was probably no need for silence at this point, but the atmosphere seemed to call for it. “But there wasn’t a lot of room there, so they dug them up and bleached the bones and put them all in here. They’ve been doing that for hundreds of years.”
“Gross,” Buffy muttered absently, studying the skull of one Mr. Josef Klein, then cleared her throat and straightened up. “I mean… neat! Because this is an important cultural monument which we should all respect, and I’m sure Giles will want you to do a report on it when we get back.” Hannah and Grace exchanged amused glances, and Buffy wilted. She was officially the suckiest role model ever.
“Do me a favor,” she said under her breath to Spike. “Make sure this never happens to me. Once I’m in the ground, I’m staying there.” Spike winced slightly, and Buffy squeezed her eyes shut. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean…”
“Later,” Spike said briskly, and Buffy opened her eyes to see the Droog step through the chapel door. It wasn’t large — only a bit over five feet — but it looked almost as wide as it was tall. Its squat body supported a large head with double rows of teeth and an oversized pair of arms that almost dragged on the floor. Not particularly pretty, as far as demons went, but no big surprises either. In fact, Buffy was tempted to draw the thing outside and let the two girls get in a bit of target practice. She knew what it would mean to them to go home with an actual kill under their belts. Buffy raised her knife, about to rush the Droog, when it held up what looked like a large silver coin and began to chant.
Okay, that was new.
“What’s it doing?” Grace asked nervously, then gave a small shriek when the skull on the table next to her jumped. She and Hannah edged towards the center of the room, swords held aloft. Buffy watched in horror as all of the bones began to rattle and shake. As the chanting grew louder, the leg bones slid from their places under the tables and stood upright, quickly joined by ribs and arms. Buffy gripped her knife tightly, watching the bones pull themselves together into complete skeletons — pelvises, toes, spines, fingers. As a last step, each of the skeletons reached towards the tabletops and grabbed a skull, fitting it into place at the top of the neck. The head bone’s connected to the neck bone, ran through Buffy’s head, and she bit back a hysterical giggle. The chanting stopped.
The only thing that could make the entire thing more creepy was if someone started playing Night on Bald Mountain.
“Okay,” Buffy said slowly. “What’s with the science project?” She turned to face the Droog, who gestured proudly to the skeletons.
“Army!”
“Not much of an army,” Spike scoffed, giving one of the skeletons a once-over. “Don’t look to steady, these ones.”
The Droog shrugged. “Practice,” it said. “For apocalypse! Next Tuesday.”
“Oh, God,” Buffy groaned. “Another one? And I just got finished replacing my wardrobe.” Turning to Hannah and Grace, she swung her knife casually. “Come on, girls. What do you say we clean house?”
Even outnumbered as they were, it was an easy fight. The practice army, though creepy beyond the telling of it, didn’t have much in the way of weaponry, and they pretty much fell apart when you hit them hard enough. Bones flew through the air and crashed against the far walls, skulls rolled across the floor and tripped up friend and foe alike. Buffy grunted and pulled the head off one of the skeletons. “Sorry, Josef,” she muttered, placing the skull back gently onto the table before jumping back into the fray.
“No fair!” the Droog wailed, surveying the messy piles of scattered bones. A few of the separated pieces were still moving feebly, but most of them had stopped. “You broke my army!”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Buffy apologized cheerfully. “That’s kind of my job.” Catching Spike’s eye, they made a coordinated leap and caught the Droog by its squat shoulders. Lifting it up, they gave it a shake until its teeth rattled and it dropped the silver coin. Hannah picked it up and pocketed it, and the Droog wailed in despair.
“Oh, stop with the crying,” Spike said in disgust. “Honestly, the big bads these days are getting downright pathetic.”
The Droog gave a sharp twist and managed to squirm free, running out the door more quickly than seemed possible for its shape.
“Let it go,” Buffy said heavily. “We’ve got work to do here.” She gestured to the bones that were scattered around the chapel. Spike was staring at her with a you’ve got to be kidding me look on his face, and Buffy elbowed him in the ribs.
“What?” he said defensively, nodding towards the girls. “That’s what the next generation is for.” He held up for approximately ten seconds, then wilted under Buffy’s glare. “Fine,” he sulked, picking up a skull, only perking up slightly when Buffy whispered the word reward in his ear.
The clean-up took far longer than the actual battle, which was depressing. By the time they had the bones and skulls replaced as neatly as they could, it was already edging towards dawn. Buffy shooed Hannah and Grace outside and closed the chapel door after taking one last lingering glance inside.
“You alright?” Spike asked softly, laying his hand over hers.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s just… I couldn’t leave them like that. They didn’t ask for that — for their bodies to be brought back to life and used that way. They deserve to rest.”
Spike slung an arm about her shoulder and squeezed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Well, you know what they say,” he mused, caressing her backside before giving a sharp pinch. “No rest for the wicked, eh?”
Buffy gave him a sideways glance and reached out for a pinch of her own, avoiding his grabby hands. “Sorry,” she said with a grin. “You’ll have to catch me first. I demand a rematch.” And without another word she took off down the street after Hannah and Grace, followed closely by a laughing Spike.
They left the graveyard behind them.
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/156638.html
