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Entry tags:
- btvs,
- buffy,
- fic,
- melting fire,
- spuffy
fic: Melting Fire - Chapter 12
Title: Melting Fire
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: NC17
Length: >100,000 words
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Only the plot, one demon and the veil are.
Setting: Right after 'Dead Things'
Summary: The night after, all he wants is talk.
The night after, there’s nothing she wants less than talking.
And suddenly they find themselves in another dimension; one that Buffy can’t leave. There’s only one way to get her out. A way with consequences.
Chapter 12
Silent lucidity
(Title from a song by Queensryche)
Buffy is caught in this weird feeling of being completely awake, knowing with absolute certainty that she’s dreaming, and yet thinking it’s reality. She recognizes the fast cuts of surroundings and people she’s communicating with, but still can’t help herself from taking everything at face value.
In the beginning she’s glad about it. It’s been so long that she hasn’t been with her mom, and she practically flies toward Joyce when she spots her at the back yard, flinging herself at her mother like a little child, half expecting to be whirled around like back then, her legs rising up in the air like pigeons.
Joyce doesn’t swing her around, though. Of course not, because even in her dream, Buffy’s not a kid anymore. She’s just of the age she really is, and she’s perfectly aware that her mom’s dead. She relishes the heartfelt hug even more knowing this, burying her head in the crook of Joyce’s neck and breathing her scent in deeply, and she’s surprised about how well she still remembers it.
“Buffy, sweetheart, stop that! Your breath is tickling me!” The laughter in Joyce’s voice betrays the tease in her complaint, and Buffy can’t help but to continue breathing, deliberately hitting the point where she knows her mom is ticklish, dancing out of reach when Joyce seeks revenge with her threatening fingers.
“You won’t get me, mom. No one ever gets me, you know?” Buffy laughs, wondering what she just said when she sees her mom’s face turn serious all of a sudden.
“I noticed,” she says, her hand reaching for her daughter, a soft, warm hand on Buffy’s ice cold cheek. Why is she feeling so cold? “Cold to cold,” Joyce adds, with twinkles in her eyes.
Buffy stares wildly at her. “What? What do you mean?”
Joyce turns her around a little, so that she faces the dark street. Buffy wipes over her face, taking her sleeve to dry the skin on her cheeks from the pouring rain then, shivering from the cold emanating from her drenched clothes. She can’t see quite clearly, so she squeezes her eyes shut for a second, and when she reopens them she stares right in the face of a terrified woman.
She screams. It takes a second to realize that in fact the woman in front of her screams. What is coming from herself is more of a growl, deep, animalistic. Well known. A vampire growl.
There’s no time at all to consider this surprising epiphany that she growls like a vampire, because the next thing she knows is she’s tearing up the woman’s throat, sinking her teeth in it and drinking deeply. She feels the woman going limp in her arms, and she has the sudden urge to howl, howl with glee over the rush in her veins.
She lets the lifeless body fall to the ground and turns to her mom, but all she can see is the mist rising up in the urban canyon, and then she’s in a house, lit only by candles, or is it gaslight? A woman is leading the way through the hallways, obviously a nurse, but clad strangely, like in the twenties? A long skirt, an apron, a cap. They pass open doors, and behind each there are long rows of beds, and when the nurse shows them into one of the rooms, Buffy knows that in each bed a child is sleeping. She sees herself taking one of the children in her arms, careful not to wake the little girl. The nurse is sort of complaining, and she feels herself getting annoyed about the interference. She throws the sleeping form in her arms over her shoulders, not caring about the immediate screams she raises with that act, and with her now free hands she stops the complaining the only way reasonable; wedging the child against her shoulder, she takes the nurse’s head between her hands and twists. Silence. Good.
She lowers the weight on her shoulders down to lay the girl on the bed; a different bed in a different room, not really giving a damn about the child’s fear widened eyes when she hears the joy of the one she wanted to please with her gift. Hands are clapping together in delight, the same hands that immediately after stroke her hips, and then up at her sides toward her head. The hands are as cold as her cheeks were, and then they aren’t.
“My poor girl,” Joyce’s voice murmurs in her ear, “don’t you understand? Is that really what you want?”
She jerks back, out of her mother’s arms, bewilderedly watching her sympathetic face. “What? No, of course not. This isn’t me, mom. I’m not a demon.”
“Are you sure about that? Be honest, Buffy. Doesn’t it make you a perfect demon yourself if you’re falling for one? Spike likes chocolate with those little marshmallows in it, did you know that? I like him. He’s a killer, right? And so handsome.”
***
Has he really been grateful that she saved him with her scream? It lasts not longer than a second. Then he recognizes she’s having a nightmare; she’s flailing around, mumbling words he doesn’t understand, whimpering.
***
Their surroundings change again; they are dancing to music Buffy doesn’t recognize. It’s the kind of music she vaguely would put in the corner of Jazz, and their dance is kind of lazy. Her mom’s face is a little overdone in terms of her make up, and smeared at that. She’s drunk, Buffy suddenly realizes, and not her mom at all. And not on the dance floor either, but in a dank alley, very much like the one behind the Bronze, only the surrounding houses are higher. A bigger city, she assumes. And then the rush of blood pumping under her lips is there again - flowing between her lips, gushing into her mouth, the fear stained eyes, the screaming. It’s overwhelmingly satisfying - the scent of horror, the glance breaking, the body becoming heavy in death.
Then she’s back in a house, only dimly lit, probably candles again. Light enough to see the frightened man, bound to a pillar, bleeding. She kneels down in front of him, licking blood from the wound on his chest where the shirt he’s wearing is ripped apart, savoring the rich taste, the terrified gasps, and the odor of fear. When she lifts her head to watch him, it’s now a woman lying on a bed, straddled by her, stiffened in terror, with eyes wide but unseeing. The heart is still beating, but the brain has shut down already, and Buffy feels a twinge of regret that it went too fast to relish.
Another child, a boy this time, already dead. A woman, a man. Torn apart, terrified eyes still open in death. Movement beside her; she’s not alone. Hands reaching for her, in ways she’s not used to, stroking her, squeezing; her body reacting in ways she doesn’t recognize either. More dead bodies, dying bodies, people she’s killing. Her own body covering another, thrusting her hips down on a woman’s, dead yet clutching her, dark curls tickling her nose; screams of pleasure from both their mouths, then the woman whispering something about stars.
She sees the woman’s hand lifting, reaching over to the corpse lying beside them, dipping her fingers into a ragged neck wound, bringing the bloodied fingers to their mouths joined in a kiss. Feels the blood on her tongue, and a laughter bubbling up.
The now very distant part of her that still knows it’s all a dream cries out in agony over the pictures, doubles over from the churning ache in her stomach. From the delight she feels. Tries to cut off the pictures, tries desperately to escape, to wake up.
“Oh, but you can’t ever escape them now, can you?” The soft voice of her mom again, sounding so reassuring, when all she tells her is the bitter truth. “Never again. It’s all in you. It’s your life. It’s what you are.”
She whirls around, but she only catches sight of Joyce’s retreating form, vanishing quickly in the mist. Her voice is barely audible anymore. “You belong to the darkness…” are the last words she can hear her mother say before she’s gone.
Fear leaps at her like a wild animal. “No, I don’t!” she yells her denial.
And then there’s a new voice. “Yes, you do, luv. I told you, you belong with me. You are me now, didn’t you know?”
She turns around to face him, to punch him for having the audacity to say such things to her. But all she sees is a mirror. It has to be a mirror, because she sees herself, aiming a blow - at herself. And what she feels is a love so strong, it nearly overwhelms her.
She screams.
***
She screams again, an agonized scream fading to desperate sobs then, no less heart shattering. He grabs her shoulder with his free hand, gives it a gentle shake, strokes her hair then. “Buffy.” He strokes and shakes, squeezing her hand in his, strokes again. “Buffy. Wake up.”
She sits with a start, gasping, eyes wide open; her arm thrashes wildly, hitting her elbow into his chest wound.
“Ow.”
She turns to look at him, shock about whatever she saw in her mind still etched in her face. It takes a few seconds until understanding sets in, but the relief he expected fails to show.
***
A scream pierces her ears and the earth is shaking under her.
Her first thought is that there’s another earthquake announcing the next apocalypse. The next thing she becomes aware of is the voice saying her name and a strong hand holding her shoulder, stroking her head.
Then she realizes that the voice she heard screaming and then sobbing is hers, and it’s not the earth shaking, but her body.
The next thing she’s aware of is that she sits now; when did she sit up?
“Ow.”
She turns to look at him; she must have punched her elbow into his wound when she jolted upright. She’s dimly aware that she should be sorry, manages even to mumble something like that, but it’s just a reflex; she finds she can’t focus enough to really care. Her mind is still reeling from her nightmare, her heart thunders in her chest, and it seems she can’t stop shaking.
She sees him frowning, sees concern rising up in his eyes, and she knows she should say something, but she can’t find the right words. Or any words. She just stares at him.
***
“Buffy?”
He shifts to a sitting position and leans against the headboard; slowly, carefully, because she has that look on her face as though any rash movement would chase her away, or maybe make her explode into thousands of tiny pieces. She continues to stare at him, and he’s not quite sure anymore if she even sees him, or anything at all, if she’s frightened or if she’s angry at him.
Or if she’s even awake.
He lifts his hand reluctantly, reaches out to her arm, but pulls back before he touches her. He feels like an intruder, and at the same time he wants to hold her, reassure her, because suddenly he knows she’s terrified.
He then remembers that he has a second hand, one that is still linked to hers. This is better; no intrusion because they are already touching, and his eyes fall shut in relief for a second. He gingerly tightens his hold on her, gently strokes her fingers with his thumb, yet expecting her to withdraw anytime. He’s glad when she doesn’t, even though her being dangerously close to being catatonic again begins to scare him.
What the bloody hell did she dream about that left her a trembling heap of fright?
****
What is wrong with her? It was only a dream, right? One of those nightmares she frequently had ever since she got out of the portal, ever since those damn pictures had somehow invaded her mind. Gruesome, yes, and she’s sure they are real memories, but for her it still was only a nightmare.
Right?
But she knows something was different this time, she just can’t quite put her finger on it.
They had been so real.
All those people, dead and dying, had been so real. And her mom…
And suddenly she knows what left her so shocked.
This nightmare didn’t just show her those memories from other people like in a horror show; kill after kill, torture and death.
This time she was on the inside.
This one felt like one of her slayer dreams. Those that always somehow conveyed the truth to her.
It’s all in you. It’s your life. It’s what you are.
She breathes in sharply. Is that the truth in her dream? Is this what she really is? You belong to the darkness…She’s not aware that she clutches Spike’s hand like her life depended on not losing it. Her mom’s voice telling her about her greatest fears as if they were a matter of fact rings in her ears as if she stood right in front of her, and again the denial rises up in her throat.
“No, I don’t…” she whispers harshly. And then it’s another voice she remembers replying.
Yes, you do, luv. I told you, you belong with me…Her eyes grow even wider than before, and for the first time since she awoke, she focuses on him, really sees him.
He watches her warily, sympathy written all over his face. She can tell that he desperately wants to help her, soothe her. Wants to be there for her. It’s not a new feature in him, she knows that, and yet, something is different, even now when he seems lucid like he hasn’t been ever since she found him.
She slowly calms down a bit, loses focus on her nightmare while she begins to contemplate the change in him again; but the nagging feeling the nightmare left in her remains.
***
He finally feels her relaxing a fraction, the deer-in-the-headlights expression slowly fading from her face, and he feels her vise like grip on his hand somewhat loosen.
He doesn’t stop stroking her hand, though. Only to be sure to show her he’s there.
“Better, luv?” he asks softly.
She takes a deep breath and bravely tries to laugh it away; only what’s tumbling from her lips is still too close to a sob, and her hand flies to her mouth to shut the traitorous sound in.
Maybe it would help her to tell him about what she dreamt?
Yeah, as if. Buffy talking feelings - to him, no less.
Against better judgment his mouth takes initiative. When had he ever listened to better judgment? “Wanna…talk about what had you so rattled?” he suggests, somewhat tentatively, at least.
When she looks up at him for a moment, he half expects one of her killing glances; the longing he detects in her eyes instead surprises him. Until she begins to speak.
“My mom was there,” she says, her eyes cast on their still linked hands again as if for further support, and it’s just then that he understands how much she still misses her mother.
He certainly can relate.
“Yeah?” he asks warily; a nightmare starring a lost loved one doesn’t sound promising, and he already cringes inwardly at the thought of what she might’ve seen.
“Yeah.” She nods, and a brief smile crosses her features. And vanishes as fast as it appeared. “And then she wasn’t.” Her voice is hard now, like splintering glass. “Then I killed a woman.”
His brows shoot up. “What?”
“I drank her dry…” It’s merely a whisper that leaves her mouth.
Spike feels his insides turn to ice.
She dreamt she was a vampire.
It takes everything from him not to flinch, not to jerk his hand away from hers. To stay with her.
He searches for words to comfort her, but doesn’t find any.
Too close is her horror to his, to what he experiences these days.
“I relished in it,” she whispers, and now all he wants is to make her stop talking, but he doesn’t. “Then I stole a kid, from an orphanage, I think, and snapped an orderly’s neck when she tried to hold me back.” Teardrops are silently dripping on their hands in his lap now. “It was a girl, four or five years old, maybe. I brought her to someone as a gift.” She spits it out, venom in her voice at the depravity of a gift like that, and Spike can only imagine what she thinks of.
“And then Mom was there again. She told me…” She stops suddenly as if remembering something she’s not ready to share. Her eyes flicker up to his face nervously and back down, avoiding his eyes, and he’s relieved. He couldn’t look into her eyes right now.
She’s silent for a long time. Just when he thinks there will be no more telling, she goes on.
“I killed more…a lot more. A woman I had danced with before. A man bound to a pillar I…we maybe had tortured before. There was someone else with me, another…” She swallows convulsively, and suddenly he feels himself doing the same. She can’t say it, but he knows of course; another vampire.
“It was a woman, but we still had…we killed and then we…we…right next to the corpse. And that other woman, she dipped her fingers into…and we…” Her voice breaks; she draws in a shuddery breath to regain a shred of composure. “We licked it off and laughed,” she almost yells, before the horror finally strangles her enough to prevent her from speaking.
Only her eyes still do.
Drip. Drip.
Spike sits paralyzed. He feels the ice in his stomach turn to thousands of sharp, pointy knifes, slicing through his insides.
He knows exactly what she’s talking about.
Because he remembers.
Over the last days he completely forgot about it, never once contemplated what had happened then. He was too consumed with his very own agony. But now he remembers.
He remembers the storm of emotions and pictures he couldn’t place befalling him when he saved her from the portal. When he linked their souls.
He also remembers a man bound to a pillar, licking his blood, savoring the taste of fear. He remembers more than one occasion when he kidnapped children from orphanages; Dru loved children, and he would’ve done anything to make her happy. Snapping the neck of a nurse had been a bonus more often than not; nurses tended to give alarm when they understood what he did, and he couldn’t have that, now could he?
He doesn’t know the particular corpse Buffy has seen, because he remembers many times that he had a nice shag with his black goddess beside one. And Dru used to love to feed him the blood of their victims meanwhile. It had always been a turn on for both of them.
Oh God.
He doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink. He watches the girl in front of him, traces the tear that is gliding down her cheek with his gaze.
Drip.
Oh God. What has he done to her?
***
Deep down, in a part of her that is completely shut down for the moment, she’s aware that he doesn’t move anymore. The stroking on her hand stopped shortly after she began to tell him what she dreamt of, and the face she saw when she last looked up at him was much more appalled than she would’ve expected. To be honest, appalled was the very last expression she expected to see on his face. Instead she thought him to be more…mocking, maybe. Appalled? Not so much.
After all, everything she told him about has to be kind of usual for him. Then why does he act as if in shock?
A much bigger part of her doesn’t care. That part is preoccupied with recalling the end of her nightmare, remembering a voice telling her that she belonged with him. His voice, she suddenly knows. And then, like a flash, the memory of what woke her rushes back to her mind. You are me now, didn’t you know? And again she sees herself aiming a blow at her.
You are me now, didn’t you know? It’s his voice saying those words.
She’s aiming at him.
Her head comes up, slowly, hesitantly. She doesn’t know if she wants to see what is on his face.
But she has to know.
She flinches at the extent of guilt in his eyes. There’s plenty more written in his face; shock, horror, fear, sorrow. But the most dominant expression is the one of guilt. She can see that he barely holds it together, and suddenly she remembers that he’s still recovering from whatever happened to him, and she feels bad for adding to his misery, even if she doesn’t know why he would feel guilty for her nightmare.
Their eyes meet, and she can tell he fights to keep them locked, to not break away.
With a visible effort he takes a deep breath, the breath he needs for speaking.
“Buffy, I’m so sorry…”
That’s when she knows.
She knows without a doubt, and the world suddenly seems to topple over in its axis.
“You…?” she whispers, still not quite believing what she concluded herself.
He only swallows, and then she sees his eyes burning in despair. He knows she understood.
Everything falls in place now. The woman she’d been with in her nightmare; she had dark, curly hair. She should’ve recognized the hand clapping thing, it’s so very much the nutcase she is, and it makes total sense after having gotten a child to drain as a gift. Drusilla.
She’d assumed that somehow he activated a slayer thing that day, made her recall vampire’s kills and tortures to strengthen her sense of duty or some such crap. The truth is so much worse though.
The truth is it’s only his life tormenting her.
Everything she saw since the portal, everything she dreamt of as soon as she drifted to sleep is from his past.
You are me now, didn’t you know? That’s why she heard him saying that, and that’s why she saw herself aiming a blow at him. She’s reliving his deeds.
However he did it, he implanted his memories into her brain.
She stares at him, and suddenly she doesn’t see the sorrow anymore, nor the shock or the fear. All she sees is the guilt in his eyes, the knowledge of everything he’d done. To her and to all those people. Hundreds, thousands of people, men, women, children. She hears the screams again, the crying, but also breaking bones, tearing flesh and delighted, gleeful laughter. And she feels the place where her heart should be turn into stone.
“It’s all yours?”
She sees his eyes pleading with her, but it doesn’t crack the stone in her chest.
She pulls her hand out of his grasp and watches his face fall. A very distant part of her tries hesitantly to intervene, tries to remind her of what she went through with him during the past days, tries to direct her attention to the sorrow she saw in his face.
She can’t.
All she can think of is how utterly repulsed she is. She knew of his past, of course, but to actually see it, to live through his kills and feel him enjoying it is a different story altogether. She feels something red and hot surge through her like she hasn’t felt in a long time, rendering every ounce of liquid into boiling lava, and she barely restrains from hitting him.
How could he do this to her?
And…how could he really? How did he do it?
And…
“Why?”
***
Her accusing stare is almost too much to bear.
He wants her so desperately to understand that he never meant to burden her with his past, that he didn’t really have a say in this. But he knows her; she won’t listen.
And he can’t find the words anyway.
He wants to reach out for her, but only the tiniest twitch of his hand makes her shrink back, only a little, but noticeable, her whole body trembling.
“Why, Spike?” she spits out, “Why would you do that to me?”
He presses his back against the headboard at the rejection, his gaze drops. “I didn’t know,” he whispers; he’s surprised that he even got these words out, but he can hear how lame they sound. Like from a petulant child that broke a vase and is afraid to be scolded. “I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know what?” She’s a hairsbreadth away from exploding, and he knows he won’t survive the detonation. He’s been on the receiving end of her anger often enough to recognize that this is worse than ever. Sheer panic forces the words out, the all-consuming fear of losing her; losing what little bond has been forming between them over the past days.
“Must have been with the linking…”
That stops her for a second. “Linking? What…what linking?” She’s irritated, but he can tell that it’s the same anger as before, just differently disguised.
“Well, I had to link them, to save…” His head snaps up, his eyes catching hers to underline the sincerity in his words. “I promised, didn’t I? Kept the promise, this time.” He knows that he’s not making a lick of sense, but he feels like in a maelstrom; he can’t think clearly anymore.
There’s a long pause then. He sees her mind working, trying to process what she heard. He sees the anger slowly subsiding; instead slowly a sneaking suspicion takes over. And he can see that she doesn’t like where her thoughts are headed, that everything in her wants to run, run far, far away from here, from him. Yet, she’s strong; she doesn’t give in. She draws in a deep breath to chase her fear out of her mind, replaces it with determination; leans even a little closer again to add emphasis to her words. “What are you talking about, Spike? What promise? You had to link…what?”
God, he never wanted her to know about the soul. Never wanted her to feel obligated, to act differently, just because he had a soul now. Wanted her to not be influenced by that. But what choice does he have now?
He averts his eyes, locks them on his fidgeting fingers. “Yours and…and the new one. Mine. Fought for it, didn’t I? Mine. My squeaky clean new one.” He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment when he realizes the irony of it all. “Only not so clean now, is it?” A bitter laugh escapes his mouth, and he can hear how insane it sounds. He catches himself; he doesn’t want to appear insane, not now. Not when he wants her to understand.
He hesitantly looks up.
***
Buffy recoils as she sees his eyes. His gaze is raw, completely unguarded, like she never has seen it before. Exposing his emotions, he lays his whole self out in the open; every shred that is Spike for her to see.
She’s dimly aware that she’s standing then, hears the chair she’s been sitting – no, sleeping on with her head on his belly, clatter behind her at her hasty retreat.
She’s not been prepared for this.
His always expressive features are nothing in comparison to what she sees now, and it scares her to the bone.
It’s not possible. It can’t be.
And then it’s like blinds are drawn closed in his eyes; his face loses all expression for a second, before a smirk appears. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands, a little unsure on his legs at first, but gaining strength with each of her frantic heartbeats.
It’s as if he rises before her eyes, fortified by stepping closer to her, looming over her suddenly. He leans in then, brings his mouth to the side of her face as if to kiss her on her cheek, but she knows it’s not what he intends to do. She tenses.
“Of course, this is not what you want to hear, right? Throws a spanner in your view of the world as black’n white, doesn’t it?” His breath tickles at her neck, his voice is low and dark, and the threat in it sends a chill down her spine. She knows he must be deeply hurt to act like that toward her, but right now she can’t bring herself to care. There’s too much turmoil raging within her to care. So, just like him, she resorts to the familiar pattern in their relationship. She puts her hands on his chest and pushes him back, hard.
“What are you talking about?” she hisses, anger the only reliable emotion she can fall back on.
He staggers briefly, but catches himself surprisingly well considering the weakness he exposed just a few hours ago. He laughs darkly.
“Still on the deluding-yourself wagon on its journey through denial land.” He’s back in her personal space with only a few quick steps, leans in again, nose to nose this time, his blue eyes boring into her green ones. “Oh, but you know. You saw it; everything. You felt how I feel about it.” He straightens, his eyes never leaving hers, tilting his head as if listening, and then his gaze softens a fraction.
He steps back, holding her eyes for another moment, then his glance slips, no longer strong enough, away from her. He walks over to the window and shifts the heavy curtains a little aside, looking down on her front yard, silently. Neither of them speaks or moves for a long time. She sees part of his face, a stony mask that he rarely succeeds to put on. She sees the tension in his shoulders that speaks loud and clear of what his face isn’t telling her. She sees tiny flittering dust grains dancing on the beams of moonlight sliding in through the small gap between his face and the curtain. She sees his hand holding the curtain in place trembling slightly.
A part of her yearns to join him, to lay a hand on the tense shoulders, to stop the tremble with her other. But she’s rooted to the spot, incapable of moving any muscle. She suddenly can’t remember how to breathe anymore; she knows that somehow air is supposed to find its way into her lungs, but she can’t even imagine how she should achieve that through her constricted throat. Instead of oxygen, fear races through her veins, leaving ice in its wake.
Because he’s right. She knows.
They stand like that for what feels like hours before she finally can speak again, in a hoarse whisper that betrays how much effort it takes.
“Your soul…?”
He laughs again, the same dark laughter as before. So much despair radiates off him, and the eerie laughter floating on it lets it appear abyss deep. “Such a heavy word for such a useless thing…”
“But…why?” Her heart thumps in her chest, so loud that she can hear it thundering in her ears.
“Needed it,” he says, and she can’t get rid of the impression that he tries to convince himself, as if he once knew the truth of this statement, but can’t quite remember.
He turns then to meet her gaze, and the mask is gone.
She can see it then, his soul, shining through every pore, flaring in his eyes.
“For you,” he says.
And she runs.
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: NC17
Length: >100,000 words
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Only the plot, one demon and the veil are.
Setting: Right after 'Dead Things'
Summary: The night after, all he wants is talk.
The night after, there’s nothing she wants less than talking.
And suddenly they find themselves in another dimension; one that Buffy can’t leave. There’s only one way to get her out. A way with consequences.
Chapter 12
Silent lucidity
(Title from a song by Queensryche)
Buffy is caught in this weird feeling of being completely awake, knowing with absolute certainty that she’s dreaming, and yet thinking it’s reality. She recognizes the fast cuts of surroundings and people she’s communicating with, but still can’t help herself from taking everything at face value.
In the beginning she’s glad about it. It’s been so long that she hasn’t been with her mom, and she practically flies toward Joyce when she spots her at the back yard, flinging herself at her mother like a little child, half expecting to be whirled around like back then, her legs rising up in the air like pigeons.
Joyce doesn’t swing her around, though. Of course not, because even in her dream, Buffy’s not a kid anymore. She’s just of the age she really is, and she’s perfectly aware that her mom’s dead. She relishes the heartfelt hug even more knowing this, burying her head in the crook of Joyce’s neck and breathing her scent in deeply, and she’s surprised about how well she still remembers it.
“Buffy, sweetheart, stop that! Your breath is tickling me!” The laughter in Joyce’s voice betrays the tease in her complaint, and Buffy can’t help but to continue breathing, deliberately hitting the point where she knows her mom is ticklish, dancing out of reach when Joyce seeks revenge with her threatening fingers.
“You won’t get me, mom. No one ever gets me, you know?” Buffy laughs, wondering what she just said when she sees her mom’s face turn serious all of a sudden.
“I noticed,” she says, her hand reaching for her daughter, a soft, warm hand on Buffy’s ice cold cheek. Why is she feeling so cold? “Cold to cold,” Joyce adds, with twinkles in her eyes.
Buffy stares wildly at her. “What? What do you mean?”
Joyce turns her around a little, so that she faces the dark street. Buffy wipes over her face, taking her sleeve to dry the skin on her cheeks from the pouring rain then, shivering from the cold emanating from her drenched clothes. She can’t see quite clearly, so she squeezes her eyes shut for a second, and when she reopens them she stares right in the face of a terrified woman.
She screams. It takes a second to realize that in fact the woman in front of her screams. What is coming from herself is more of a growl, deep, animalistic. Well known. A vampire growl.
There’s no time at all to consider this surprising epiphany that she growls like a vampire, because the next thing she knows is she’s tearing up the woman’s throat, sinking her teeth in it and drinking deeply. She feels the woman going limp in her arms, and she has the sudden urge to howl, howl with glee over the rush in her veins.
She lets the lifeless body fall to the ground and turns to her mom, but all she can see is the mist rising up in the urban canyon, and then she’s in a house, lit only by candles, or is it gaslight? A woman is leading the way through the hallways, obviously a nurse, but clad strangely, like in the twenties? A long skirt, an apron, a cap. They pass open doors, and behind each there are long rows of beds, and when the nurse shows them into one of the rooms, Buffy knows that in each bed a child is sleeping. She sees herself taking one of the children in her arms, careful not to wake the little girl. The nurse is sort of complaining, and she feels herself getting annoyed about the interference. She throws the sleeping form in her arms over her shoulders, not caring about the immediate screams she raises with that act, and with her now free hands she stops the complaining the only way reasonable; wedging the child against her shoulder, she takes the nurse’s head between her hands and twists. Silence. Good.
She lowers the weight on her shoulders down to lay the girl on the bed; a different bed in a different room, not really giving a damn about the child’s fear widened eyes when she hears the joy of the one she wanted to please with her gift. Hands are clapping together in delight, the same hands that immediately after stroke her hips, and then up at her sides toward her head. The hands are as cold as her cheeks were, and then they aren’t.
“My poor girl,” Joyce’s voice murmurs in her ear, “don’t you understand? Is that really what you want?”
She jerks back, out of her mother’s arms, bewilderedly watching her sympathetic face. “What? No, of course not. This isn’t me, mom. I’m not a demon.”
“Are you sure about that? Be honest, Buffy. Doesn’t it make you a perfect demon yourself if you’re falling for one? Spike likes chocolate with those little marshmallows in it, did you know that? I like him. He’s a killer, right? And so handsome.”
***
Has he really been grateful that she saved him with her scream? It lasts not longer than a second. Then he recognizes she’s having a nightmare; she’s flailing around, mumbling words he doesn’t understand, whimpering.
***
Their surroundings change again; they are dancing to music Buffy doesn’t recognize. It’s the kind of music she vaguely would put in the corner of Jazz, and their dance is kind of lazy. Her mom’s face is a little overdone in terms of her make up, and smeared at that. She’s drunk, Buffy suddenly realizes, and not her mom at all. And not on the dance floor either, but in a dank alley, very much like the one behind the Bronze, only the surrounding houses are higher. A bigger city, she assumes. And then the rush of blood pumping under her lips is there again - flowing between her lips, gushing into her mouth, the fear stained eyes, the screaming. It’s overwhelmingly satisfying - the scent of horror, the glance breaking, the body becoming heavy in death.
Then she’s back in a house, only dimly lit, probably candles again. Light enough to see the frightened man, bound to a pillar, bleeding. She kneels down in front of him, licking blood from the wound on his chest where the shirt he’s wearing is ripped apart, savoring the rich taste, the terrified gasps, and the odor of fear. When she lifts her head to watch him, it’s now a woman lying on a bed, straddled by her, stiffened in terror, with eyes wide but unseeing. The heart is still beating, but the brain has shut down already, and Buffy feels a twinge of regret that it went too fast to relish.
Another child, a boy this time, already dead. A woman, a man. Torn apart, terrified eyes still open in death. Movement beside her; she’s not alone. Hands reaching for her, in ways she’s not used to, stroking her, squeezing; her body reacting in ways she doesn’t recognize either. More dead bodies, dying bodies, people she’s killing. Her own body covering another, thrusting her hips down on a woman’s, dead yet clutching her, dark curls tickling her nose; screams of pleasure from both their mouths, then the woman whispering something about stars.
She sees the woman’s hand lifting, reaching over to the corpse lying beside them, dipping her fingers into a ragged neck wound, bringing the bloodied fingers to their mouths joined in a kiss. Feels the blood on her tongue, and a laughter bubbling up.
The now very distant part of her that still knows it’s all a dream cries out in agony over the pictures, doubles over from the churning ache in her stomach. From the delight she feels. Tries to cut off the pictures, tries desperately to escape, to wake up.
“Oh, but you can’t ever escape them now, can you?” The soft voice of her mom again, sounding so reassuring, when all she tells her is the bitter truth. “Never again. It’s all in you. It’s your life. It’s what you are.”
She whirls around, but she only catches sight of Joyce’s retreating form, vanishing quickly in the mist. Her voice is barely audible anymore. “You belong to the darkness…” are the last words she can hear her mother say before she’s gone.
Fear leaps at her like a wild animal. “No, I don’t!” she yells her denial.
And then there’s a new voice. “Yes, you do, luv. I told you, you belong with me. You are me now, didn’t you know?”
She turns around to face him, to punch him for having the audacity to say such things to her. But all she sees is a mirror. It has to be a mirror, because she sees herself, aiming a blow - at herself. And what she feels is a love so strong, it nearly overwhelms her.
She screams.
***
She screams again, an agonized scream fading to desperate sobs then, no less heart shattering. He grabs her shoulder with his free hand, gives it a gentle shake, strokes her hair then. “Buffy.” He strokes and shakes, squeezing her hand in his, strokes again. “Buffy. Wake up.”
She sits with a start, gasping, eyes wide open; her arm thrashes wildly, hitting her elbow into his chest wound.
“Ow.”
She turns to look at him, shock about whatever she saw in her mind still etched in her face. It takes a few seconds until understanding sets in, but the relief he expected fails to show.
***
A scream pierces her ears and the earth is shaking under her.
Her first thought is that there’s another earthquake announcing the next apocalypse. The next thing she becomes aware of is the voice saying her name and a strong hand holding her shoulder, stroking her head.
Then she realizes that the voice she heard screaming and then sobbing is hers, and it’s not the earth shaking, but her body.
The next thing she’s aware of is that she sits now; when did she sit up?
“Ow.”
She turns to look at him; she must have punched her elbow into his wound when she jolted upright. She’s dimly aware that she should be sorry, manages even to mumble something like that, but it’s just a reflex; she finds she can’t focus enough to really care. Her mind is still reeling from her nightmare, her heart thunders in her chest, and it seems she can’t stop shaking.
She sees him frowning, sees concern rising up in his eyes, and she knows she should say something, but she can’t find the right words. Or any words. She just stares at him.
***
“Buffy?”
He shifts to a sitting position and leans against the headboard; slowly, carefully, because she has that look on her face as though any rash movement would chase her away, or maybe make her explode into thousands of tiny pieces. She continues to stare at him, and he’s not quite sure anymore if she even sees him, or anything at all, if she’s frightened or if she’s angry at him.
Or if she’s even awake.
He lifts his hand reluctantly, reaches out to her arm, but pulls back before he touches her. He feels like an intruder, and at the same time he wants to hold her, reassure her, because suddenly he knows she’s terrified.
He then remembers that he has a second hand, one that is still linked to hers. This is better; no intrusion because they are already touching, and his eyes fall shut in relief for a second. He gingerly tightens his hold on her, gently strokes her fingers with his thumb, yet expecting her to withdraw anytime. He’s glad when she doesn’t, even though her being dangerously close to being catatonic again begins to scare him.
What the bloody hell did she dream about that left her a trembling heap of fright?
****
What is wrong with her? It was only a dream, right? One of those nightmares she frequently had ever since she got out of the portal, ever since those damn pictures had somehow invaded her mind. Gruesome, yes, and she’s sure they are real memories, but for her it still was only a nightmare.
Right?
But she knows something was different this time, she just can’t quite put her finger on it.
They had been so real.
All those people, dead and dying, had been so real. And her mom…
And suddenly she knows what left her so shocked.
This nightmare didn’t just show her those memories from other people like in a horror show; kill after kill, torture and death.
This time she was on the inside.
This one felt like one of her slayer dreams. Those that always somehow conveyed the truth to her.
It’s all in you. It’s your life. It’s what you are.
She breathes in sharply. Is that the truth in her dream? Is this what she really is? You belong to the darkness…She’s not aware that she clutches Spike’s hand like her life depended on not losing it. Her mom’s voice telling her about her greatest fears as if they were a matter of fact rings in her ears as if she stood right in front of her, and again the denial rises up in her throat.
“No, I don’t…” she whispers harshly. And then it’s another voice she remembers replying.
Yes, you do, luv. I told you, you belong with me…Her eyes grow even wider than before, and for the first time since she awoke, she focuses on him, really sees him.
He watches her warily, sympathy written all over his face. She can tell that he desperately wants to help her, soothe her. Wants to be there for her. It’s not a new feature in him, she knows that, and yet, something is different, even now when he seems lucid like he hasn’t been ever since she found him.
She slowly calms down a bit, loses focus on her nightmare while she begins to contemplate the change in him again; but the nagging feeling the nightmare left in her remains.
***
He finally feels her relaxing a fraction, the deer-in-the-headlights expression slowly fading from her face, and he feels her vise like grip on his hand somewhat loosen.
He doesn’t stop stroking her hand, though. Only to be sure to show her he’s there.
“Better, luv?” he asks softly.
She takes a deep breath and bravely tries to laugh it away; only what’s tumbling from her lips is still too close to a sob, and her hand flies to her mouth to shut the traitorous sound in.
Maybe it would help her to tell him about what she dreamt?
Yeah, as if. Buffy talking feelings - to him, no less.
Against better judgment his mouth takes initiative. When had he ever listened to better judgment? “Wanna…talk about what had you so rattled?” he suggests, somewhat tentatively, at least.
When she looks up at him for a moment, he half expects one of her killing glances; the longing he detects in her eyes instead surprises him. Until she begins to speak.
“My mom was there,” she says, her eyes cast on their still linked hands again as if for further support, and it’s just then that he understands how much she still misses her mother.
He certainly can relate.
“Yeah?” he asks warily; a nightmare starring a lost loved one doesn’t sound promising, and he already cringes inwardly at the thought of what she might’ve seen.
“Yeah.” She nods, and a brief smile crosses her features. And vanishes as fast as it appeared. “And then she wasn’t.” Her voice is hard now, like splintering glass. “Then I killed a woman.”
His brows shoot up. “What?”
“I drank her dry…” It’s merely a whisper that leaves her mouth.
Spike feels his insides turn to ice.
She dreamt she was a vampire.
It takes everything from him not to flinch, not to jerk his hand away from hers. To stay with her.
He searches for words to comfort her, but doesn’t find any.
Too close is her horror to his, to what he experiences these days.
“I relished in it,” she whispers, and now all he wants is to make her stop talking, but he doesn’t. “Then I stole a kid, from an orphanage, I think, and snapped an orderly’s neck when she tried to hold me back.” Teardrops are silently dripping on their hands in his lap now. “It was a girl, four or five years old, maybe. I brought her to someone as a gift.” She spits it out, venom in her voice at the depravity of a gift like that, and Spike can only imagine what she thinks of.
“And then Mom was there again. She told me…” She stops suddenly as if remembering something she’s not ready to share. Her eyes flicker up to his face nervously and back down, avoiding his eyes, and he’s relieved. He couldn’t look into her eyes right now.
She’s silent for a long time. Just when he thinks there will be no more telling, she goes on.
“I killed more…a lot more. A woman I had danced with before. A man bound to a pillar I…we maybe had tortured before. There was someone else with me, another…” She swallows convulsively, and suddenly he feels himself doing the same. She can’t say it, but he knows of course; another vampire.
“It was a woman, but we still had…we killed and then we…we…right next to the corpse. And that other woman, she dipped her fingers into…and we…” Her voice breaks; she draws in a shuddery breath to regain a shred of composure. “We licked it off and laughed,” she almost yells, before the horror finally strangles her enough to prevent her from speaking.
Only her eyes still do.
Drip. Drip.
Spike sits paralyzed. He feels the ice in his stomach turn to thousands of sharp, pointy knifes, slicing through his insides.
He knows exactly what she’s talking about.
Because he remembers.
Over the last days he completely forgot about it, never once contemplated what had happened then. He was too consumed with his very own agony. But now he remembers.
He remembers the storm of emotions and pictures he couldn’t place befalling him when he saved her from the portal. When he linked their souls.
He also remembers a man bound to a pillar, licking his blood, savoring the taste of fear. He remembers more than one occasion when he kidnapped children from orphanages; Dru loved children, and he would’ve done anything to make her happy. Snapping the neck of a nurse had been a bonus more often than not; nurses tended to give alarm when they understood what he did, and he couldn’t have that, now could he?
He doesn’t know the particular corpse Buffy has seen, because he remembers many times that he had a nice shag with his black goddess beside one. And Dru used to love to feed him the blood of their victims meanwhile. It had always been a turn on for both of them.
Oh God.
He doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink. He watches the girl in front of him, traces the tear that is gliding down her cheek with his gaze.
Drip.
Oh God. What has he done to her?
***
Deep down, in a part of her that is completely shut down for the moment, she’s aware that he doesn’t move anymore. The stroking on her hand stopped shortly after she began to tell him what she dreamt of, and the face she saw when she last looked up at him was much more appalled than she would’ve expected. To be honest, appalled was the very last expression she expected to see on his face. Instead she thought him to be more…mocking, maybe. Appalled? Not so much.
After all, everything she told him about has to be kind of usual for him. Then why does he act as if in shock?
A much bigger part of her doesn’t care. That part is preoccupied with recalling the end of her nightmare, remembering a voice telling her that she belonged with him. His voice, she suddenly knows. And then, like a flash, the memory of what woke her rushes back to her mind. You are me now, didn’t you know? And again she sees herself aiming a blow at her.
You are me now, didn’t you know? It’s his voice saying those words.
She’s aiming at him.
Her head comes up, slowly, hesitantly. She doesn’t know if she wants to see what is on his face.
But she has to know.
She flinches at the extent of guilt in his eyes. There’s plenty more written in his face; shock, horror, fear, sorrow. But the most dominant expression is the one of guilt. She can see that he barely holds it together, and suddenly she remembers that he’s still recovering from whatever happened to him, and she feels bad for adding to his misery, even if she doesn’t know why he would feel guilty for her nightmare.
Their eyes meet, and she can tell he fights to keep them locked, to not break away.
With a visible effort he takes a deep breath, the breath he needs for speaking.
“Buffy, I’m so sorry…”
That’s when she knows.
She knows without a doubt, and the world suddenly seems to topple over in its axis.
“You…?” she whispers, still not quite believing what she concluded herself.
He only swallows, and then she sees his eyes burning in despair. He knows she understood.
Everything falls in place now. The woman she’d been with in her nightmare; she had dark, curly hair. She should’ve recognized the hand clapping thing, it’s so very much the nutcase she is, and it makes total sense after having gotten a child to drain as a gift. Drusilla.
She’d assumed that somehow he activated a slayer thing that day, made her recall vampire’s kills and tortures to strengthen her sense of duty or some such crap. The truth is so much worse though.
The truth is it’s only his life tormenting her.
Everything she saw since the portal, everything she dreamt of as soon as she drifted to sleep is from his past.
You are me now, didn’t you know? That’s why she heard him saying that, and that’s why she saw herself aiming a blow at him. She’s reliving his deeds.
However he did it, he implanted his memories into her brain.
She stares at him, and suddenly she doesn’t see the sorrow anymore, nor the shock or the fear. All she sees is the guilt in his eyes, the knowledge of everything he’d done. To her and to all those people. Hundreds, thousands of people, men, women, children. She hears the screams again, the crying, but also breaking bones, tearing flesh and delighted, gleeful laughter. And she feels the place where her heart should be turn into stone.
“It’s all yours?”
She sees his eyes pleading with her, but it doesn’t crack the stone in her chest.
She pulls her hand out of his grasp and watches his face fall. A very distant part of her tries hesitantly to intervene, tries to remind her of what she went through with him during the past days, tries to direct her attention to the sorrow she saw in his face.
She can’t.
All she can think of is how utterly repulsed she is. She knew of his past, of course, but to actually see it, to live through his kills and feel him enjoying it is a different story altogether. She feels something red and hot surge through her like she hasn’t felt in a long time, rendering every ounce of liquid into boiling lava, and she barely restrains from hitting him.
How could he do this to her?
And…how could he really? How did he do it?
And…
“Why?”
***
Her accusing stare is almost too much to bear.
He wants her so desperately to understand that he never meant to burden her with his past, that he didn’t really have a say in this. But he knows her; she won’t listen.
And he can’t find the words anyway.
He wants to reach out for her, but only the tiniest twitch of his hand makes her shrink back, only a little, but noticeable, her whole body trembling.
“Why, Spike?” she spits out, “Why would you do that to me?”
He presses his back against the headboard at the rejection, his gaze drops. “I didn’t know,” he whispers; he’s surprised that he even got these words out, but he can hear how lame they sound. Like from a petulant child that broke a vase and is afraid to be scolded. “I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know what?” She’s a hairsbreadth away from exploding, and he knows he won’t survive the detonation. He’s been on the receiving end of her anger often enough to recognize that this is worse than ever. Sheer panic forces the words out, the all-consuming fear of losing her; losing what little bond has been forming between them over the past days.
“Must have been with the linking…”
That stops her for a second. “Linking? What…what linking?” She’s irritated, but he can tell that it’s the same anger as before, just differently disguised.
“Well, I had to link them, to save…” His head snaps up, his eyes catching hers to underline the sincerity in his words. “I promised, didn’t I? Kept the promise, this time.” He knows that he’s not making a lick of sense, but he feels like in a maelstrom; he can’t think clearly anymore.
There’s a long pause then. He sees her mind working, trying to process what she heard. He sees the anger slowly subsiding; instead slowly a sneaking suspicion takes over. And he can see that she doesn’t like where her thoughts are headed, that everything in her wants to run, run far, far away from here, from him. Yet, she’s strong; she doesn’t give in. She draws in a deep breath to chase her fear out of her mind, replaces it with determination; leans even a little closer again to add emphasis to her words. “What are you talking about, Spike? What promise? You had to link…what?”
God, he never wanted her to know about the soul. Never wanted her to feel obligated, to act differently, just because he had a soul now. Wanted her to not be influenced by that. But what choice does he have now?
He averts his eyes, locks them on his fidgeting fingers. “Yours and…and the new one. Mine. Fought for it, didn’t I? Mine. My squeaky clean new one.” He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment when he realizes the irony of it all. “Only not so clean now, is it?” A bitter laugh escapes his mouth, and he can hear how insane it sounds. He catches himself; he doesn’t want to appear insane, not now. Not when he wants her to understand.
He hesitantly looks up.
***
Buffy recoils as she sees his eyes. His gaze is raw, completely unguarded, like she never has seen it before. Exposing his emotions, he lays his whole self out in the open; every shred that is Spike for her to see.
She’s dimly aware that she’s standing then, hears the chair she’s been sitting – no, sleeping on with her head on his belly, clatter behind her at her hasty retreat.
She’s not been prepared for this.
His always expressive features are nothing in comparison to what she sees now, and it scares her to the bone.
It’s not possible. It can’t be.
And then it’s like blinds are drawn closed in his eyes; his face loses all expression for a second, before a smirk appears. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands, a little unsure on his legs at first, but gaining strength with each of her frantic heartbeats.
It’s as if he rises before her eyes, fortified by stepping closer to her, looming over her suddenly. He leans in then, brings his mouth to the side of her face as if to kiss her on her cheek, but she knows it’s not what he intends to do. She tenses.
“Of course, this is not what you want to hear, right? Throws a spanner in your view of the world as black’n white, doesn’t it?” His breath tickles at her neck, his voice is low and dark, and the threat in it sends a chill down her spine. She knows he must be deeply hurt to act like that toward her, but right now she can’t bring herself to care. There’s too much turmoil raging within her to care. So, just like him, she resorts to the familiar pattern in their relationship. She puts her hands on his chest and pushes him back, hard.
“What are you talking about?” she hisses, anger the only reliable emotion she can fall back on.
He staggers briefly, but catches himself surprisingly well considering the weakness he exposed just a few hours ago. He laughs darkly.
“Still on the deluding-yourself wagon on its journey through denial land.” He’s back in her personal space with only a few quick steps, leans in again, nose to nose this time, his blue eyes boring into her green ones. “Oh, but you know. You saw it; everything. You felt how I feel about it.” He straightens, his eyes never leaving hers, tilting his head as if listening, and then his gaze softens a fraction.
He steps back, holding her eyes for another moment, then his glance slips, no longer strong enough, away from her. He walks over to the window and shifts the heavy curtains a little aside, looking down on her front yard, silently. Neither of them speaks or moves for a long time. She sees part of his face, a stony mask that he rarely succeeds to put on. She sees the tension in his shoulders that speaks loud and clear of what his face isn’t telling her. She sees tiny flittering dust grains dancing on the beams of moonlight sliding in through the small gap between his face and the curtain. She sees his hand holding the curtain in place trembling slightly.
A part of her yearns to join him, to lay a hand on the tense shoulders, to stop the tremble with her other. But she’s rooted to the spot, incapable of moving any muscle. She suddenly can’t remember how to breathe anymore; she knows that somehow air is supposed to find its way into her lungs, but she can’t even imagine how she should achieve that through her constricted throat. Instead of oxygen, fear races through her veins, leaving ice in its wake.
Because he’s right. She knows.
They stand like that for what feels like hours before she finally can speak again, in a hoarse whisper that betrays how much effort it takes.
“Your soul…?”
He laughs again, the same dark laughter as before. So much despair radiates off him, and the eerie laughter floating on it lets it appear abyss deep. “Such a heavy word for such a useless thing…”
“But…why?” Her heart thumps in her chest, so loud that she can hear it thundering in her ears.
“Needed it,” he says, and she can’t get rid of the impression that he tries to convince himself, as if he once knew the truth of this statement, but can’t quite remember.
He turns then to meet her gaze, and the mask is gone.
She can see it then, his soul, shining through every pore, flaring in his eyes.
“For you,” he says.
And she runs.
The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Friday, April 1, 2016
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I can't understand the whit-washing of Spike's past. It's a huge part of why his redemption arc is so fantastic, that he's been really, really evil! I think the 'noble part of him is burried somewhere within him, he wouldn't be able to change that drastically otherwise. (And Randy wouldn't have been Randy.) But it's burried, deep, deep down. As in abyss deep.
I'm so glad you liked it! Thank you for your wonderful review, again!!