Fic: Spike’s Girl (2/3)

PART TWO

A one-eyed, underdressed man walks into the joint. It’s almost the beginning of a very stupid joke, except that it’s Xander Harris.

Spike doesn’t stop polishing the surface of the bar as Harris crosses the dim room. In the red and yellow lights from the beer signs, he looks shaggy, and dark as the local Inuits. He sports a slight limp now to go with the eyepatch. Spike would very much like to abandon his rag and slip out the back, but he’s the only one on the bar for the day shift, and he’s got two customers in the corner booth.

Xander is breathing hard and his teeth are chattering when he scrambles up onto a stool. “Jesus fuck. You couldn’t have run off to some place where they put little paper umbrellas in the drinks?”

“What’re you doin’ here, Harris? There’s no slayers in Deadhorse.” Even as he says these discouraging words, Spike pours a mug of coffee, tips some brandy into it, and slides it across the bar. Xander catches it eagerly, just holding the steaming mug for a few moments before he lifts it to his lips. “Haven’t you heard about Alaska, you berk? Gets cold here in winter.”

“This is the warmest damn coat I could get in a hurry in Addis.” Harris looks up from his coffee. “I don’t need to tell you that I’m here because Buffy asked me to come.”

“Asked you.”

“She’s been counting the days. Since she saw you in LA. It’s been six months. She thought that was the least amount she should wait. She would like you to come to London.”

“An’ it’s you tellin’ me this … why?”

Xander fidgets, eyeing his coffee, the shiny surface of the bar, his own reddened fingertips. “Because Buffy thought it would make a difference to you, knowing that her friends would also like to see you … see you back in the club.” He reaches into his clothes, holds something out. An envelope, rolled and squashed from being carried in a front jeans pocket.

Spike tries not to show how much this knocks him back. Xander Harris—never his biggest fan—has dragged himself from Addis Ababa to Deadhorse Alaska, to hand-deliver a billet doux from the slayer. It doesn’t make sense.

When he doesn’t take the envelope, Xander sets it gently on the bar, and takes up his coffee again. “She’s changed this last half year. Since she found out about you. She talks about you all the time.” He sighs. “Hell, we’ve all been talking about you. The emails, they fly like the wind. It’s been a regular Spike symposium in Scoobietown.”

“That so?”

“She kept wanting to come out here herself. She almost did a few times. But I told her six months might not be enough. It’s been four years since Anya, and I still think about her every single day. Every other woman I meet, the first thing I’ll notice about her is that she isn’t Anya.”

This, Spike thinks, is extraordinary. It’s more than that—it’s fucking weird and uncanny, and he’s starting to wonder if Xander isn’t under some kind of spell, or maybe he’s The First, somehow come back to try again to ensnare him. Spike grabs Xander’s wrist.

Xander’s head whips up, and all of a sudden, he smiles.

“Knew that’s what you’d think. Nah, it’s really me. Willow did a locator spell on you, that’s how I knew where to come.” The smile fades. Back to serious, he says, “And Buffy didn’t have to twist my arm—much—to make this trip. I’ve done a lot of thinking, been through a lot of changes, since the Sunnydale Big Bang. Finding out you weren’t dead, I knew there was some stuff I wanted to say to you. I hope you’ll let me.”

He wonders what Clio would make of all this. He never told her much about Buffy and the Scoobies, just like he never told her much about his history prior to meeting up with them, the Drusilla decades, Angelus, Darla. They lived, as demons mostly do, in the present; and of course they didn’t mix with other vampires. He’d explained a little bit about why he had a soul, but that was something Clio accepted without much curiosity, just as she accepted his rules about leaving humans alone, without wanting to have gritty discussions about why. She wasn’t stupid, but she was trusting—which was probably what got her turned in the first place. They didn’t talk much about her past either—he gathered it wasn’t a happy one, and there didn’t seem to be anyone from her human life whom she missed much, except for a mother she’d lost before she was ten, and a girl cousin, nearly a sister, who had died because her boyfriend was driving drunk.

In that respect, she was almost made to be a vampire.

In this cold dark place, Clio is still with him. Sometimes unbearably present, so that at first he couldn’t get out of bed for the heaviness of her fate, and his loneliness. And at other times, increasingly in the last couple of months, she’s just there, a light familiar presence, the imaginary friend he keeps up a running dialogue with as he goes about the small business of the small life he has here. He thinks only of her, so he doesn’t have to think about the slayer, and what she told him in L.A., and how for those few minutes they’d held onto each other, while through her skin and heat and scent and tears Buffy impressed on him that she was not the same girl he’d believed her to be during all the time he’d written her off.

But now, facing Xander across the bar, Clio’s nowhere. She’s not part of this at all. He can’t lean on her memory for anything. The time he spent with her isn’t as real, as immediate, as the time before, which Xander embodies by slumping on this stool across from him like a sack of old clothes. Xander fresh from Africa, where, as Andrew told him that time, he scouts for slayers, helps train them and bring them into the fold.

If he were to walk away from Xander right this minute, just drop everything and walk away … no, it wouldn’t work. Not here. Deadhorse isn’t L.A. Xander will be able to find his house by asking any single person he sees, and Spike can’t leave town without some few hours’ preparation, because the plane from Fairbanks only goes once a day.

He’s not going to be able to dodge the slayer’s world this time. Clio’s already falling to dust all over again, dust that isn’t going to re-coalesce at the insistent bidding of his memory. And Buffy’s starting to crowd into his head, the way she always used to.

Spike takes out his wallet, flips it open and looks at Clio. If he sees her, she’ll have to be real again. She was right here, right here when Xander came in.

“Is that her?” Xander says. “May I see?”

Spike doesn’t want to, but he lets Xander look.

“Pretty girl. Great smile. The way she looks at you there … I’m sorry, man.”

Spike grunts. Xander being complimentary to one vampire about another … it’s a bit much to swallow.

“Buffy said you rescued her.”

“Never rescued the slayer from a damn thing.”

Xander pauses for a second. “No, man. I meant—your girl here. Clio? Buffy said you rescued her from the vamps who turned her. That you kept her away from the biting and the mayhem. Kept her innocent.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s impressive.”

He wants to say oh fuck off. This isn’t you, Harris. Taking back the wallet, he flips through the pictures again. His sight dims, he wants to kick something. Sending Xander here, Buffy’s finished the job. Clio is a half dozen little snapshots, and nothing else. He’s lost her.

“Can I have a refill?” Xander slides the cup towards him. “And is there any food here? I’ve been on planes for what feels like days.”

After he pours coffee, Spike steps into the kitchen. The frycook is reading a magazine. He orders up a burger platter, then goes into the men’s room, turns the water on full, and bends over the sink. He feels like he might be sick, but nothing happens.

It’s finished.

He takes the snapshots of Clio and himself out of his wallet, and one by one, he burns them over the sink. Watches the ashes swirl down.

When he emerges from the men’s room, the burger order is up; he brings it back to where Xander is. He’s taken his coat off now, and is sitting up straighter. Spike sees that he’s a real man now, all trace of the fat boy gone. He’s whip-thin, muscled, tanned and seasoned. He bites into the burger with gusto.

“Africa been good to you?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly. But what I do now sure beats general contracting.” He fixes his one eye on Spike, appraising, intelligent. “Don’t you miss being part of the fight? I used to get your pride in it, even back when I didn’t like you.”

Spike thinks, Now you like me?

Xander touches the crumpled envelope. “You should read this, Spike.”

In the last six months he’s very deliberately not given any thought to what Buffy imagined she wanted from him. Didn’t replay that last scene, what she’d said, how she’d touched him. How, in spite of himself, he’d responded.

But it’s all right there inside him, he’s got it now, as deep and full and clear as he doesn’t have Clio. Buffy Summers, touching him the way he used to yearn to be touched. Looking at him with the expression he’d seen her give to others but never him. Telling her heart, even though she believed it wasn’t going to get her what she was asking for.

It’s all right there, but he still can’t quite believe it. He knew—hell, he saw—that she was getting on with her life just fine post-SunnyD. Running around Rome with The Immortal. If she was doing that within weeks of his supposed death, she wasn’t sitting around pining for him years later.

Chewing, Xander says, “Running into you in L.A. just threw her. Finding out you weren’t really dead … she was beside herself. She came to see me right afterwards. We traveled together in Nigeria and Cameroon for ten days and she never shut up about you, all this yearning and regret came tumbling out. She was honest with me for the first time about what went on between you two. Maybe honest with herself for the first time too, about what she wanted. She was upset about how she’d slain Clio and just how fucked up it all was. She didn’t ask me to say any of this, but I’m telling you, Spike, seeing her like that—it wasn’t easy for me. I wasn’t thrilled to hear you were still around, I didn’t want her being in love with you. No surprise there, right? But she was all spun around, and by time I said goodbye to her, I was too. Talking it all over with her, my fixed ideas about you got knocked loose. I never gave you an inch, and that was wrong.”

“Shut it.”

“No, I … okay, keep that for later. Point is, I really do wish you’d go to her, because she’s never gonna be happy if you don’t.”

Spike fingers the envelope. He’s not sure how much more of this vindication shit he can stand, but then he decides to get it over with, and tears it open.

It’s a courting note, sure enough, but it’s not from Buffy.

Dear Spike,

One hardly knows how to begin a letter like this, which must in a few short lines begin the process of turning an enemy into, if not a friend, then a trusted associate.

Given our history, you have every reason not to trust me. I went on mistrusting you long after I should’ve seen that you were on our side, and my machinations nearly cost Buffy her best ally.

You made what you assumed would be the supreme sacrifice, and we allowed you to do so without acknowledgement, let alone thanks.

This is one of my great regrets, of many in my career.

I don’t think I can ever offer to ‘make it up to you.’ I certainly hope there will be a time—soon—when we can talk about it over a drink, and come to an understanding. When you will consent to shake my hand, if you can bring yourself to do so.

Spike, we need all our allies again now. We need your skills, your unique knowledge, your passion to do what is right in the struggle that, as you certainly know, goes on even now that the Sunnydale hellmouth is shut. If you will come to London, I’m prepared to discuss generous terms with you, to attach yourself to the reformed Council of Watchers and fight alongside us, as a colleague and—I do hope—a friend.

I can assure you that the reception you’ll receive will be commensurate with the respect and esteem in which we all hold you. It has taken us too long to acknowledge the ways in which you changed, but I hope you will allow that we too have—finally—changed as well.

Xander is my agent in making all arrangements for your passage to London, should you decide to accept.

Sincerely,

Rupert Giles

“S’touching, Harris, you journeyin’ all this way to see me. Bring me this.” He says it like he doesn’t give a fuck, but the hell of it is, he is touched. Touched to his core. As much as Xander’s coming here has robbed him of Clio, it’s left something else in the hollow place where she resided. It’s something he’s not sure he wants, because it’s going to require that he try, that he care. Since Angel and Co. went down, he’s pulled in his horns on that front. But as much as he had no control over Clio’s slipping away, he has no control over how his soul and his reason and the part of him that’s got no reason at all, that’s pure emotion, responds to this visit, and to the letter, and to the strong sense memory of Buffy holding him in her arms, wanting to console him for Clio even as she knows he’s going to pull away from her. He puts the letter back in the envelope. Xander is watching him with curiosity.

“You seen this?”

“No, but I know what it says.” He crams a last few french fries into his mouth. “Buffy hopes you’ll team up with her, but that’s not a pre-condition. We’ve got slayers by the car-load, and a serious watcher shortage. A serious experience shortage. We need what you know just as much as we need your muscle. More.”

“I figured you lot must be strapped, what with Andrew bein’ one of the leading lights.”

A grin crooks Xander’s mouth. “Oh, he’s come a long way.” Then the smile fades. “Wait. How do you know about that?”

It’s surprising to realize that Xander and the others have no idea that he was with Angel. Andrew, instructed to keep schtum, really has. Spike wonders if Rupert has realized his mistake about Angel as well. His refusal to send help when Angel called for it almost certainly contributed to the deaths of the lot of them: Wesley, Charles, and Angel himself; that Giles doesn’t mention this in the letter indicates that he doesn’t know Spike was in on that apocalypse either.

He’s got a lot to answer for, that Rupert Giles.

“You lot got Angel wrong at the end, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can talk about it later.” Spike puts the letter back in the envelope. “I’ll come to London an’ see Giles. But I need some time to wrap things up here, an’ I can get there on my own.”

“I’ve got the Council’s plane, though.”

“Council’s got a bloody plane now?”

“They always did. More than one. Now Giles runs the place, the people who do the real work actually get to use the real tools.”

Might as well, Spike thinks. Might as well go back with bloody Harris on the bloody Council plane. It’s only pride that would keep him from saying yes to that, and he feels too tired suddenly to exercise any more pride.

 

They leave in the morning. Though Xander claims he slept overnight, in his room at Deadhorse’s finest tourist accomodations, he falls asleep almost as soon as they’re airborne, which suits Spike fine, because he has no clue what he’s going to chat to him about for five or six hours. Unlike the Wolfram and Hart plane, this one has regular window-glass, so Spike has to stay in the back, with the shades pulled down, and can’t watch the snowfields and seas of Deadhorse recede. Also unlike the W&H vehicle, this one lacks grown-up refreshments—he finds soft drinks and sugary snacks suitable for pubescent slayers, and not much else. He still carries a flask, but it’s not enough to get drunk and stay drunk through this whole transformative journey, so he doesn’t even start.

He tries to prepare himself, but he’s not really sure what he’s preparing for. Rereading Giles’ letter, he can’t imagine Giles talking to him like that face-to-face. Can’t imagine really being a part of the organization. The words esteem and respect alarm him. Who uses words like that in the normal course of things?

Will Buffy be there when the plane lands? Will she expect that his coming there means he’s going to assent to whatever she wants? And what is that, exactly? What does she imagine, when she thinks of being with him? He’s only ever fucked her in abandoned houses and musty crypts; their few meaningful moments took place in borrowed spots, on borrowed time. They don’t belong to the same world. He used to tell her that she should dwell in the darkness with him, but he didn’t believe that even at the time. Wasn’t she right, when she decided to stay aloof from him, at the end? He still felt it was right, keeping her from knowing he didn’t really die.

Yet the thought of seeing her again, knowing she might look at him the way she did in his L.A. flat, might touch him so longingly with her small warm hands, has Spike at such a pitch of excitement that he needs the seat belt to keep him from bouncing around the inside of the plane. Time and distance and Clio might’ve made his thing for the slayer go into abeyance, but it’s all still there. He’s not sure that’s such a good thing.

The years with Clio were so simple. Deceptively simple. He squints at the light coming in through the windows at the front of the fusillage. He didn’t make her exactly, but she was a sort of monster’s bride, tailored to live neither in one world nor the other, neither truly demon nor truly human, existing for no other purpose but to ease his loneliness. For the first time it occurs to him to ponder what he’d have done about it if, after rescuing her, he hadn’t gotten on with her. Would he have staked her, if she didn’t please him in bed, if her talk bored him or she gave herself to other men? Or would he have sent her off to take her chances as a vampire like other vampires? And would he have let himself see that as a mercy? It wouldn’t really be one, not for her and certainly not for the victims she’d have taken.

What would Buffy do if he wasn’t the kind of demon lover she saw in her imagination?

 

“Oh my God. I was sure you’d have changed, but I couldn’t picture how, so I kept thinking of you looking the same, and feeling stupid for it, but … you are the same.”

At first glimpse, moving towards him in the hanger where they disembark, Dawn’s the same too—same bright face, same long hair, same nervous babble and big grin. But then she steps in to embrace him, and he can feel that she’s turned into an adult woman, and the babble stops as she holds him. At first her hug is tepid, but then he realizes its because she’s unsure of herself; when he pulls her against him, she sighs and squeezes him tight. “Spike.”

“You’re all grown up.”

“Not really. Not yet. I’m still a student. Spike, I’m sorry I—”

“Hush.” It’s one thing to see Rupert’s apologies on paper, another to hear Dawn start in as if she’s got anything to beg his pardon for. The world feels upside down when that happens. “You’ve nothing to say sorry for.”

Dawn glances away for a moment, then back at him. “I would never have burned you.”

It makes him sad, to think that threat has been weighing on her, even for a day. He never resented her for it—it was no more than he deserved. He’s never felt that anything he did afterwards really takes away from his assault on Buffy. Apart from everything else, it put the lie to his illusion about himself, that even as a demon he was a sort of gentleman when it came to the woman of his affections. He can shrug his shoulders over what he did as a vampire—he’s not the brooding type like Angel, he had his month of madness over it and has had his bad half hours since. But what he did to Buffy, even if he failed to do the worst—that will always stay with him, and he means never to let himself off the hook for it. No matter that she’d assaulted and belittled him over and over … he kept showing up for it, didn’t he, though nothing forced him to but his own obsession with her. Couldn’t compare her behavior to his—she hadn’t loved him, and so owed him no compassion. It was worse, immeasureably and irremediably worse, to hurt the person who owned your heart.

All this floods his mind even as Dawn waits for some reassurance that he’s forgiven her for her girlish vehemence.

“I know, Bit. No worries. Thanks for meetin’ our flight.”

“Will you promise to have dinner with me? Sometime this week? Just us. I have so much I’d like to tell you.”

He tells her he’d like this. She’s leading him towards a car with black windows; Xander’s already climbing inside. It occurs to him that he might as well be a prisoner, one of those important political prisoners who is treated politely even as he’s completely deprived of his liberty. He doesn’t know where they’re going or what the plans for him are, and he doesn’t quite want to ask.

It’s still daytime, but the sky is overcast. As they reach the outskirts of London, it begins to rain. The Council’s new headquarters occupy some contiguous townhouses on Gower Street. He’s already inside before he realizes that neither Dawn nor Xander explicitly invited him; Giles must have issued the invitation already, to spare him even that small embarrassment at the door. He’s the first person to greet Spike once he’s climbed the stairs and entered a cozy former parlor, now a reception room. Willow is there as well, and Andrew, who embraces him with even more brio and exclamation than he did in Los Angeles; it takes a few beats for Spike to realize that at least part of this is a performance for the others, because Andrew is still keeping his promise of not letting on that he’s seen Spike before.

He expects Buffy to show herself, but she’s not there; no one mentions her. He’s given a tour of the facilities, meets some watchers and slayers, and then Giles announces a dinner. They leave the Council headquarters, the whole group of them, and walking for ten minutes, end up at Giles’ house, where Spike sees the woman he remembers visiting him when they all lost their voices. She’s Mrs Giles now, and she’s huge with child. Olivia welcomes him with a handshake and a smile as if she has no idea that he’s a vampire, or that they’ve met before. Seated in the dining room, he finds himself at a proper candlelit London dinner party for twelve, of the sort he hasn’t attended since he had a surname and kept a carriage. Dawn sits beside him, and keeps smiling at him and finding little excuses to touch him; she’s brimming with happiness. On his other side is Giles, who, heartily keeps his wine-glass topped up. The table and the guests surrounding it seem to float; the voices swirl and jangle around him, and he doesn’t really hear anything that’s said. It’s nice enough that they’ve welcomed him at last, the Scoobies and their associates, but this is not a way he can live. He thinks yearningly of getting up, going downstairs and out the door, treading his silent way along the pavement to disappear into the demon parts of the town.

Finally it’s over, and he finds himself in a black cab with Xander, on their way to a hotel. The hotel turns out to be the Savoy. Spike has never stayed here per se, but he’s debauched people in its rooms. That was a long time ago, during the War. He doesn’t mention it to Xander.

“The Council does right by us these days,” Xander says, leading the way through the opulent lobby. Spike thinks he’s a little drunk.

Their rooms are on different floors. Xander says goodnight, and they part.

When he walks into his room—which is vast, and smells of fresh flowers—Buffy rises from the sofa.

“I hope this doesn’t seem like an ambush. I didn’t know what wouldn’t feel like an ambush. I didn’t want to do this in front of the others.”

For a moment they just look at each other. She’s nervous. He thinks perhaps she wants to run into his arms, but he’s not ready for that, and neither, apparently is she.

He comes closer. “Hello Buffy.”

She tips her chin up; seems about to say something else.

Her punch knocks him back.

“What was that for!?”

“You—you—you disappoint me!”

“Do I fuck!”

Her eyes are like two stars—not exactly teary, but so bright. She rubs her hand like hitting him hurt her. She’s pale and anxious and beautiful. He takes in again what he saw six months ago, but didn’t, at the time, care about: the dark hair, the fuller body. She’s not stringy and overwrought, like she was during the time of The First; but her throbbing heartbeat practically ripples the heavy air around her.

“Since I saw you last, I’ve been thinking. Before anything else, we have to have this out.”

“Well, keep your hands to yourself. Didn’t come here so you could rearrange my face again.”

“Will you listen!” She stamps her foot. “Look, I’m sorry I dusted your girlfriend. I really am. But you had no business being involved with her!”

“Contradictory much?” After Xander’s message and the reception he got from Giles, this performance of Buffy’s throws him.

She begins to pace. “Not really! I just don’t get what the hell you thought you were doing!”

“Livin’ my unlife. Mindin’ my own business.”

“Exactly! How could you? You were so passionate about the mission—you died for it, or so I thought—and then I find out that you survived, soul intact, but instead of coming back to help us, you, what? Shacked up with a vamp girl? Took her out dancing every night? Okay, I get that you kept her from hurting anyone, and yeah that’s great as parlor tricks go, but what was the point? That isn’t the Spike I thought I knew! The one who made himself into a real man. The one who was my best ally. My best … friend.”

He’d like to return her punch, but he sees that she’s arguing from what she knows, and she doesn’t know everything.

She doesn’t know about his months with Angel’s operation in L.A.

So he tells her. Just in a few sentences, short and sharp, the highlights, which of course are all low-points.

And when he gets to the part about Angel being dead, Buffy goes pale, and sinks back onto the sofa. Here we go, he thinks. But instead of giving way as he expects, she draws herself up. “I want to know more about this. About why no one told me, and how he died. But you always think I put him ahead of you, and that’s so not true anymore, so let’s keep Angel for later. You. You walked away from another apocalypse—thank God—and even then you didn’t call me?”

He blurts out what he feels, the disconnect between what she’s saying, and what he experienced. “Had nothin’ to do with each other anymore! So why should I have called you?”

“Why? Spike … you got your soul because of me … changed your path, sacrificed yourself because of me … doesn’t that … doesn’t that ….”

“What? Make me your property? That what you mean?”

She pouts for a second, then turns it into something grimmer and more grown-up. “Property? Of course not. But don’t you still feel how all of that connects us? You used to. And so do I, even though I failed to make it clear enough to you before you … Spike, you belong in the fight. Not frittering away years trying to make some poor vamp girl into a tame kitten. I mean, come on! Didn’t your soul rebel against that?”

“You don’t know what I—”

She jumps up again, gets into his face. “No, I don’t know because You. Never. Called.”

“Like you ever wanted to hear anything about my feelin’s.”

“I heard. I heard plenty!” Her eyes get all bright again, and she looks like she might say something else, but he runs over her, he can’t help himself.

“You were datin’ The Immortal, last I heard anything about you. You were gettin’ along all right.”

The mention of Piero makes her go all dark again. “Let’s leave aside this business of us, okay? I’m just talking about how much the Council needs you active, on our side. All these slayers need help, and there aren’t enough experienced people to help them. There’s more demonic hoo-hah in more places now than ever. The Council’s practically flying blind. If I’d known, if any of us had known you were still out there—”

“Guess Rupert never told you ’bout Angel’s call. How, when we were about to go up against the Circle of the Black Thorn, he tried to let you lot know what was going down. Could’ve used a couple dozen slayers to help out. But Rupert refused. Wouldn’t even hear him out.”

“He said no?”

“Was in the room. Heard the whole thing.”

Spike remembers how angry she was with Giles over the Robin Wood set-up. Buffy never explicitly said anything to him about it, but it was obvious from the way she let him off afterwards, that she understood the way things were; that she saw it his way.

She understands now. She sits down again, and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“Know Wolfram an’ Hart’s not a name inspires confidence in a watcher’s gut, but he could’ve done a bit of investigatin’. He sent bloody Andrew in instead of someone with enough of a brain to figure out the real sitch. We should’ve been workin’ together. Angel an’ his people were brave an’ outgunned, but they did everything they could. I saw ’em all die. So pardon me if after that I lost the bloody mission.”

She drops her hands into her lap, gives him a defiant look. “I’m not going to pardon you. I, Buffy, am never letting you, Spike, off the hook. Got that?”

“Oh yeah?” he bristles. “Fuckin’ hell.” He’s on the verge of turning on his heel when she says something else.

“But I understand better now. I know how you get when you’re left on your own.”

“You know how I get?” This isn’t an improvement.

“You need … inspiration. To keep you focused. Okay? C’mon Spike, I’ve known you long enough to see that. When you’re left alone, you … founder.”

“Seems to me I’m not the only one.”

“I’m not saying you are!”

“An’ you don’t know what Clio was! What bein’ with her was like! She—she was ….” His arguments turn to mush before he can get them out. She loved him? Unconditionally? Tenderly? Without judgment or competitiveness? Poor girl was like the Buffybot that way … she was what he made her. And sure, she might’ve been evil—she was one in a million, allowing herself to be controlled by him. Tamed. But taming her, what good did that do in the world? What good to her, or to himself?

Buffy’s right. His soul should’ve rebelled. It’s rebelling now. How unworthy of him, to hide himself in Clio’s arms, when there was work he should’ve been doing. Work that was forever beyond her, good-natured as she was.

There’s no one can shame him, like Buffy can. It’s almost refreshing. Old times.

“I don’t care what she was. What about me?” She’s on her feet again. He thinks she might be fixing to get in another punch, so he half shies to get out of the way, but this time she grabs him by the lapels and drags him to her mouth. Her kiss feels like a good old I-hate-you-you-disgust-me-do-it-harder Buffy special. Except halfway through it, she makes a sound like a baby animal, and her hands slide up and around his neck. And he’s already holding her so tight that her feet have left the carpet; she kicks them a little like she wants to swim up inside him, and then her legs clamp his hips and he’s tumbled backwards onto the sofa, which, despite having those spindly eighteenth-century-type legs, doesn’t collapse beneath them.

Good. Because nothing should stop this kiss, which is really a lot of kisses, over and over, punctuated by the kind of gasps that make a fellow proud, especially when it’s the slayer who’s gasping. The slayer he’d do anything for.

Anything at all.

“You are so stupid,” Buffy whispers, nipping at his lips, burrowing her body against his. “So stupid. I thought—you had—more—on the ball—than to not get—what I felt about you.”

“Gettin’ it now.”

She thumps him, “You have a lot to explain, mister.”

“Can’t talk when you’re wrigglin’ like that.”

“I’m not—!”

But she is. She’s wriggling like an eel with ten thousand volts going through it, and he’s so hard he can’t think, and it would be perfect to just pull her clothes off and make her his.

He drags himself out of her embrace, gets his feet under him and rises like a lurching drunk, while she yells “Hey!”

Before he can change his mind, Spike pulls her up too. Buffy yanks her arm away like he’s insulted her. “What are you doing?”

“‘S’what I’m not doing. Not doing this.”

“Why … why not?”

She still has that pout, the pout that kills.

He’s not sure how to explain. He’s hard and heated up and overwhelmed. Everything is unclear, except that it’s not the right time to fall into her.

Buffy tugs at her clothes, her hair. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, I get it.”

Apparently, he doesn’t have to explain.

She snatches up her bag, all busy and purposeful. “It’s still early. Maybe we should patrol?”

“Yeah, all right.”

She’s quiet in the elevator. He’s never stood in a posh elevator with her before, or any elevator. It’s strange. She holds her bag and faces front, and when another couple gets on two floors down, she gives them one of those insincere elevator smiles. He paces her through the hotel’s opulent lobby, and out to where black cabs are disgorging passengers beneath a glass awning. She seems to know where she’s going.

“Lived in London a while?”

“A couple of years. Not long.”

“Why’d you leave Rome?”

She answers very matter-of-factly. “After the Piero moment was over, it felt less fun. And I couldn’t get the hang of Italian. I’m too old to learn languages, I guess.”

“Too old!”

“That’s Dawn’s thing, anyhow. Besides, the Council is here, so I needed to be here.” After a moment, she concedes, “I like it. It’s not so Gilesy as I thought it would be. The shopping is fantastic.”

She’s walking fast—practically barreling—along the pavement.

“Where’re we goin’?”

“Tube. This is not a part of town for vampires, mostly.”

“What is?” He hasn’t been to London in a long time—since the nights of the Blitz made the pickings so easy for hungry vampires. He’d like to slow down and look around.

“Well, duh. The lousy neighborhoods, of course.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Balham, Stepney, New Cross, Hackney, et cetera.”

He almost grabs and drags her to a stop. What does Buffy the Sunnydale girl know about lousy neighborhoods? Even the wrong side of the Sunnydale tracks was a Mayberry compared to what goes on after dark—among human beings, no demons needed—in places like she’s just named.

She glances back at him. “I don’t need to tell you the vamps go where the murder is, do I? When the natives are slicing and dicing each other anyway, they can do anything they like.” She’s all grim-faced as they turn into the brightly-lit tube entrance.

She doesn’t need to tell him, no. He was a well-fed vampire for over a century.

And he found Clio in just such a place, in L.A.

There’s an obstruction now when he thinks of her, because he’s ashamed of himself, and he hates that there’s this taint on their love affair. He never wanted Clio to be ashamed of herself—she couldn’t help being turned, and she was one in a million. She pulled him out of utter despair, and yeah, being with her meant he wasn’t carrying on the mission. But then, he wasn’t carrying it on anyway, and if it wasn’t for taking care of Clio, he’d still be getting snockered among the pole dancers. There should be a little credit going—even if only a very little—for the fact that he gave Clio some happiness. She was only a soulless vampire, but happiness was something she said she’d never had when she was alive. When he was with her, he thought of more than just himself.

That has to go for something.

Buffy’s at the turnstile, pulling out her pass. She looks back at him. “You need to buy a ticket.”

“I—right. A ticket.” He puts a hand in his pocket; glances at the ticket machines. He’s got no British money.

Slowly, Buffy steps back to him. Slips an arm through his. “Or, we could leave the dodgy neighborhoods to be dodgy for another night, and just take a walk.” She leads him back out to the pavement.

Now she goes slow. They’ve walked together before, of course, but never like this. It takes a little while for Spike to really take possession of hosting her arm through his; to grow accustomed to it. The streets they walk on have plenty of pedestrians; the restaurants and pubs are lit up and lively. Buffy never looks at him, but he begins to feel that they’re together. Their silence feels less fraught, though not exactly companionable.

Then she breaks it. “So tell me about her. You loved her. Why?”

“Why?” Spike’s not sure, but he doesn’t think that’s something you ask a bereaved man.

Buffy stops walking abruptly; her arm slips loose from his. When he turns back to her, her face is clouded. “I want to understand. Is it that … I mean, I know you were in love with me. But did you think I wasn’t really, like, girlfriend material? For you? That you couldn’t … I don’t know … live with me?” She looks down at her shoes. “Is that why you were so determined to stay down there and burn?”

“Buffy—” He’s flabbergasted.

“I know I’m not easy to be with! I’m prickly, I’m uncommunicative, I’ve been told I’m withholding, my timing’s always terrible, and—and—when I said I loved you, you didn’t believe me! Maybe you still don’t believe me! You probably think I’m just doing this so you’ll come to work for the Council.”

“Don’t think that.”

“But you’ll always resent me because I dusted the girl who was good to you.”

“Buffy, you were good to me. You saved me from The First, you believed in me when—”

“But it wasn’t enough, was it! I’m never enough! That’s what it is, over and over, I—”

A couple walking by turn to stare. Buffy puts a hand over her mouth. “Shit. Shut up, Buffy.”

“No,” Spike says, taking her shoulders in his hands, drawing her off to stand in the doorway of a shuttered shop. She blinks up at him, and he sees she’s on the verge of tears. “Don’t shut up. This cards on the table thing, this is right. Tell me … tell me what you really want.”

“What I want? But I want to know what you want, what you really need, so that—”

He speaks gently, because she’s so rattled. “You want me to tell you about Clio so you can twist yourself into being somethin’ you suppose is gonna please me. Forget that, Buffy. That’s not it.”

“Why? Why isn’t it? She made you happy, and I—”

“Answer the question, pet. Tell me straight out. Don’t make me guess.”

She leans into the corner of the shop doorway, breathing deep, stilling herself. Her hand comes up and touches his face, the fingers tracing the orbit of the eye, the cheek and jaw. “I want to be your girl. To just always be your girl.”

The way she touches him, the intense pleading in her gaze, brings him straight back to the same thing he knows she’s remembering. Her warm fingers caressing his face so deliberately, recall other touches. Violent, angry ones. That denied the connection between them, that denied the feelings she couldn’t allow herself to feel.

Nothing from their pasts can be forgotten, or discounted, or set aside. But it seems that there’s nothing either that can’t be turned to good purpose now, used to communicate the distance they’ve traversed, to this moment, when there is no distance left.

He catches her hand in his, presses the palm to his lips. Tears spill over her lids; she watches him kiss her hand, and her own mouth trembles, letting forth a low inarticulate cry. When he gathers her against him, she shudders, and begins to sob.

“Hey!” A woman’s voice, loud, intrusive, at his back. “Miss, are you all right? Do you need help?”

“Fine,” Buffy says, her voice a croak. Then, clearer, she says, “We’re fine. Please go away.”

For a moment Spike thinks the woman must be a slayer. Who else would—? But Buffy shows no sign of recognizing her, and she just shrugs, says women have to look out for each other, and moves on, glancing back a couple of times before she disappears around the corner.

The moment, of almost overwhelming emotion, is passed. But he’s still holding her, and she’s still holding him. Buffy shakes out a laugh, and rests her forehead against his shoulder. “We have to get out of here.”

“Where do you live?”

“I … I have an apartment. In a mews. In … in Mayfair.”

“If you please,” Spike says, smiling.

“Yes! If you please. It’s part of the Council’s vast holdings. One of the smaller bits. The First blew up the clubhouse, but the property—and the money—we still have.”

“Well then, I’ll take you home.”

They set off walking again, this time with their arms around each other. They’re moving swiftly, in sync, it almost feels like skating. When they pass a long sheet of plate-glass window, Buffy glances, then glances down.

“What?”

“I wanted to see how we looked, like this. But I forgot.”

He sees it now, Buffy’s solo reflection. Like she’s miming strolling with a lover. Clio used to hate that too. It was partly why she liked to have so many photos. She needed proof, that they were there, that they were together, solid, real.

Buffy steers them around a corner, and then there’s no more glass to reflect her. They penetrate into a tangle of small old streets, genteelly quiet.

“Mine’s just here.” She tugs him on, but Spike stops, glances around. Slowly, he follows her. They pass a few more dark shuttered houses, then there’s the mews, all white-painted and window-boxed, charming and exclusive, right out of a fancy magazine. There’s a chain across the front to keep out cars, and gas lamps flicker at either end. A strangeness creeps up his neck, recognition of … something. He’s been here before. When it wasn’t charming, or clean.

Buffy’s rummaging for her key. She finds it and goes to the second door down. It’s painted bright green, a brass 2 gleams in the orange gaslight. He’s still standing by the chain, taking it all in. The arrangement of the buildings, the close streets stretching away in three directions, the short vistas ….

“Spike?”

“This … this is a place ….”

Returning to his side, Buffy slips her hand into his. “Do I want to know?”

“This is where I was turned.”

“What?”

“Never told you, did I? Drusilla did for me in a stable. I’d left an evening party nearby in a—in a state that wasn’t conducive to watchin’ where I was going. Fetched up here—could’ve been anywhere. Thought I’d found a quiet spot to pull myself together. An’ Dru followed me in.”

“Here?” Buffy looks around, at the neat domestic fronts, tiny like doll’s houses.

“Wasn’t an exclusive residential lane then, pet. Was a row of stables. You do know that’s what a mews is, don’t you?”

It’s obvious that she wasn’t clear on this point, but he doesn’t belabor it.

“Okay, so you’ve been here before. And now you’re back. But this is different.”

“Yeah, I’d say it’s different.”

Buffy looks at him, and then she presses the key into his hand.

“What’s this?”

She points at the door.

Spike goes to it, and puts the key in the lock. It turns smoothly, and the door swings open. He glances back at Buffy. She just looks at him; no nod, no word.

He steps into her flat.

There’s nothing to keep him out.

In another moment she’s right behind him; he turns and he’s in her arms. She tugs his head down so she can whisper into his ear. “You’re home. Wherever I am, you’re home. Always invited. Always welcome.”

It would be sweet to follow her up the narrow staircase to her bed. But after more breathless kissing—Buffy can’t seem to stop once she starts, something overwhelms her when his mouth engages hers, so that plaintive noises escape her throat and she presses herself against him, pleadingly, needingly—he pulls back.

“Need to settle things with Rupert first.”

“You know you don’t need his permission, I hope.”

“Course not.” He smiles. “Not talkin’ to him about you. Got some points to go over though, yeah?”

She gets a canny gleam in her eye then. “The Council is not in any way strapped for funds,” she says. “Know-how, yeah. Money, not.”

Which he understands to mean that she fully supports him in holding Giles up for a princely salary before he’ll agree to sign on.

“And I hope … I hope you’ll want to team up with me. But if there’s something else you’d rather do … whatever it is ….”

“Was thinkin’ I’d like to go back out to Botswana with Xander—”

Her pout shows that, for a moment, she’s taking this seriously. Then she smiles.

There’s more kissing, and he almost doesn’t leave. But if he’s going to make it back on foot to the shelter of the Savoy before dawn, he’s got to get started. Buffy gives him a copy of the key to her door, and watches him walk off across the cobbles. He pauses again at the corner, the place where the confluence of shapes and shadows became familiar to him. What does it mean, that she’s living in the very place where he died? It’s the kind of thing someone given to brooding, someone like Angel, could make a lot of. Spike decides he’s not going to do that. London, like all big cities, is a place of coincidence and confluence. Everything overlaps everything else.

It’s a place where he was once very unhappy. Where he suffered and made mistakes.

He’s glad to be back here again. It won’t be like it was before.

He hates this over-decorated hotel room, and won’t stay here another night. What little sleep he manages is pervaded by disturbing images of Clio. Clio in tears, looking small and confused. Clio with blood running down her neck. Clio heaped on her side on a dirty floor; when he turns her over, her face is a terrible blank, and there’s a stake in her breast. Spike knows he’s dreaming; finally he wrenches himself awake. What part of his subconscious is sending him these scolding dreams? Staring at the ceiling, he wonders what would’ve happened if Buffy hadn’t dusted her. If the timing was just a little different, they might’ve seen each other in the club, on the dancefloor, at the bar.

If she’d followed them, if she’d said to both their faces what she’d only said to his: doesn’t your soul rebel against this?

He wants to think that it wouldn’t have mattered. That he’d have kept faith with her. That he’d have turned his back on Buffy, gone on as happily with little Clio as ever.

He begins to cry. Lets himself sob it all out, because he knows he’ll never cry over Clio again.

He’s glad Buffy dusted her.

 

He goes back to the Council headquarters in a black car with black windows that Giles sends to the hotel. Today there’s no one waiting to greet or meet him. He’s ushered straight into Giles’s large book-lined room.

The man looks older. Having seen him at home, Spike knows he’s happier than before, but the weight of responsibility he’s taken on shows in his face, his carriage. He seems to be constantly aware of the dead whose places he’s trying to fill, whose work he must carry on.

Spike says, “Don’t want to hear you go through any apologetic speeches. The past is the past, an’ neither of us is goin’ to be better for rehearsin’ it. Got your letter, an’ I’m here, so we can take that as read.”

Giles’ expression lightens. “I’m jolly glad to hear you say that. Let me just say I’m immensely glad—we all are—that you’ve come here. When I learned that you’d survived—”

“Yeah, you danced a little jig,” Spike says. “Wait a bit. There is one thing. This business of Angel. That’s all done an’ dusted too. He’s dead, an’ far as I can tell, he’s not coming back. But I want you to know you made a mother of a bad call there.”

Giles gives a start. “What do you know about it?”

“I was there. Thanks to that amulet. An’ then there were good reasons why I hung around an’ helped Angel’s crew.”

“Good reasons? He’d associated himself with an organization we’ve long known to be the representatives—and facilitators—of most of the biggest evil that—”

“Yeah, certainly looked bad. ‘Course, if you’d really looked, you’d have known it wasn’t so simple. They weren’t pure—who is?—but they were workin’ to take W&H down from inside.”

Giles frowns. “It’s been all we can do here to put our own house in order.”

With a shrug, Spike says, “So I see. Seems to me half the problems you evil-fightin’ lot have, you create on your own through keepin’ secrets an’ omittin’ to mention things others should know.”

“There have been many miscalculations and mistakes,” Giles replies. He takes a deep breath. “I’ve made many mistakes.”

“We all have,” Spike says. He’s not interested in rubbing the watcher’s nose too hard in all of them. He’s said his piece.

But Giles turns to him now with a different expression. “It’s all very well to tell me what I should’ve done. But after I wouldn’t speak to Angel, why didn’t you ring me? In fact, why didn’t you contact us here as soon as you were able?”

“Like you’d have taken a call from me!”

“From you, I certainly would’ve.”

Spike opens his mouth, but Giles’s seriousness precludes any remark. He sees what the letter, and yesterday’s meeting, didn’t yet convince him of: Giles’ attitude towards him really has changed. He regards Spike not as a nuisance, or as some necessary evil of Buffy’s, but as a colleague. A colleague who is just as culpable in the general failure as he is.

The moment elapses. Giles’s eyes release him.

“I’d like to sit down with you soon and hear the whole history of this business as you understand it. I want the Council to learn from this.”

“‘Course.”

“Very good, then.”

There’s a silence; Spike waits for the other man to break it. When he doesn’t, Spike thrusts his hands in his pockets and plunges on. “Right. Here’s how it’ll be. I’m with Buffy, first an’ foremost. Go where she goes, do what she needs me to do. Which isn’t to say I won’t pitch in on anything else called for by the greater good. As for remuneration, I’ll take same as she gets, money an’ perks an’ all.”

Giles’ brows shoot up, then he goes to his desk and shuffles some papers. “That’s acceptable, of course.”

“And if Angel does come back somehow, he reports to me.”

“Quite.”

“An’ one last thing. Don’t need the Andrew Fanclub trailin’ round after me.”

“Andrew’s duties will keep him, for the most part, in other spheres.”

“Right. That’s me sorted, then.”

Giles extends a hand. “Well then, Spike, it only remains for me to welcome you to the Council of Watchers.”

TBC …

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/60490.html