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thedeadlyhookI can't believe it's finally done. I mean it this time - it's finally done! And it's a BIG chapter. Long. Hopefully, worth all the wait, but even if not... it's done!
Story recap:
Previously on "Does It Have to Mean Something?":
Post-"Chosen," with so many new Slayers all over the world, Buffy decides to more or less retire from being a Slayer herself and settles down in Rome to live "like a person," which in her case means just enjoying not having to fight all the time, and some quality shopping. Meanwhile, as we saw in Angel Season 5, Spike is brought back to life from the amulet in L.A., pitches in to help Angel in his fight against evil, and various events lead to "Not Fade Away," in which Angel and his crew take on the Circle of Black Thorn, the arm of the Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart here on earth.
But Angel's plan was actually a bit more extensive than challenging the Senior Partners to a street fight - having been tipped off by the Black Thorn's request to have him sign away the Shanshu prophecy, Angel realizes the importance of the Shanshu to the Senior Partners, and while still CEO of Wolfram & Hart, uses the company's resources to have a spell cast on himself and Spike, essentially bonding the two mystically. Now, Angel can't be killed without also killing Spike, leaving no one to fulfill the Shanshu and Wolfram & Hart's plans for the Apocalypse. The entire demon world is forced to choose sides between the two souled vampires, as Angel and Spike play up their rivalry for all that it's worth, and try to maneuver the underworld into civil war.
Buffy and Spike meet by accident at the Pantheon (as seen in the final chapter of "Dirty Back Road"). Overjoyed that Spike is alive, Buffy spends the following week taking him out on dates, only to discover, at the end of the week, that he never planned to stay, thanks to the already in-progress world-saving plan with Angel. Plus the whole prophecy thing. And the fact that he seems to think Buffy only really thinks of him as a friend. Buffy and Spike shout at each other a lot, take a trip to another dimension in which Spike is trapped starving for several months, Angel rides to the rescue... and then everyone goes back to Buffy's apartment where Angel explains everything, Buffy and Spike shout at each other some more, sort of make up and also make out until Dawn comes home, Spike and Angel leave, and Buffy is left behind with her sister to consider what to do next.
And after talking it all out, all the previous events of the night, Buffy is seized by an impulse to fess up and tell her sister everything--her whole sordid history with Spike. Dawn's reaction--you're telling me this now?--doesn't do much to help Buffy understand what she's feeling, but a dream she has later possibly does... if she can only figure out what it means.
And now, we enter the final phase, after another little visit to the past...
Previous chapters here.
Chapter 17
Last Night of the Hellmouth, 2003
Sunnydale, California, U.S.A
A rustle of bedclothes, a sudden snap of bright light. Like a camera-flash flare, and Buffy was blinking, hands up as if she'd been caught committing a crime.
"It's just me," she said quickly, taking in the scene in front of her--a dark silhouette, crouched in the middle of seemingly vast bed, the edges of the mattress hidden by shadow. A big ol' flashlight in the figure's right hand, the kind State Troopers carry, held up like a club. And incidentally beaming light right into Buffy's eyes.
"I didn't want to bother you," Buffy said, lowering her arms slowly. "I thought you'd be asleep. I just wanted to pick up a few things."
The flashlight came down, the light deflected to one side. Buffy heaved a sigh, blinked, bright spots spots dancing in front of her eyes. Now she could make out Faith, in dim outline, breathing hard in her minimalist sleepwear. The hand Buffy hadn't been able to see had been wrapped around a heavy sword.
"Damn, B!" Faith's voice was shaking. She hefted the sword for a second, as if to show it off--see?--then let it slide out of her grip and over the side to the bed. It landed with a soft thump on the carpet, in a clutter of dirty socks and discarded hair clips. "I was asleep. You were damn lucky I didn't take your head off just now."
"Sorry."
"You scared the crap out of me."
"Again with the sorry. I'll only be a minute." She crossed the room to a dresser and opened a drawer.
"Thought the Apocalypse had started."
"No, that's tomorrow." The first drawer was empty. Buffy opened another. "I'll just be a minute," she said again.
"Hey, it's your room." Faith leaned over and lit the camping lamp at her bedside, rubbed her hands over her face.
All the drawers were empty. Buffy felt through one after another, her hands searching in the darkness. "Where are my clothes?" she demanded. "There's not even--all my underwear's gone!"
"Yeah, uh, the power's been out, B."
"Meaning?"
"Well, those girls've gotta wear somethin'. And I'd have lent them my stuff, but--" Faith shrugged, indicated the tank top and panties she wore. "--this is kinda it."
Buffy sighed, shut a drawer, turned. It shouldn't have mattered. She should've thought of it herself, but she was tired, dammit. Tired and dirty. "Okay, sure, I understand. It's fine. I'm happy to share." Share my house, share my clothes, and tomorrow, share my power. It's a good thing. She forced a smile and crossed to the closet.
"Yeah. Well, sharing is good, right?" Faith fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable.
"Right," Buffy agreed, distracted. Nothing but Bronze gear left in the closet--floaty dresses, microscopic halters, mini-skirts. And patrolling in a mini-skirt was one thing, but attending the Apocalypse in one...?
She examined a long-sleeved blouse. It might be okay, although the bell sleeves would probably get in the way. Not that she had all that much choice.
"I mean, like... me being here. Pretty cool of you to let me have your room."
"Huh? Oh, don't worry about it. You're recovering. I need everyone in top shape for tomorrow." Great, and the only shoes left in her closet that even approached practical were suede. Cream-colored and pointy-toed.
Light colors showed blood. And they had pedestal heels.
She chewed her lip. The boots she was wearing had cracked heels--an inevitable casuality of all those backflips--and she definitely did not need a shoe malfunction in the middle of a major battle.
Well, not like she hadn't fought in heels before. Or mussed up nice clothes. Buffy rolled up her chosen outfit, tucked the soft bundle under her arm.
"You want it back?"
"What?" Buffy stood. Her mind still on the clothes, she wasn't following Faith's train of thought. "There's more?"
"Your room." Cross-legged in the middle of the floral-patterend bedspread, Faith looked oddly serene. A Buddha on a lotus leaf. "You want it back?"
"Oh." Okay, now she got it. And she really hadn't been expecting this. "No, don't be stupid. You're still healing."
"Get real B, I moved heavy furniture today. I'm good."
"This is no time to be changing things." Breaking into a long stride, Buffy made a beeline for the door. "Get some rest." She put a hand on the doorknob.
"But don't you think you and Spike would be more comfortable up here?"
She hadn't yet opened the door. She froze, grateful at least that Faith couldn't see her face.
Behind her back, Faith laughed. "Damn, B," she said. "You thought nobody knew?"
Buffy let her hand drop and turned. Bundle of clothes still clutched to her chest.
"Because if that's what you're worried about, believe me, nobody cares," Faith continued.
"It's not like--"
Faith's eyebrows went up.
"--like any of your business." Buffy changed tracks in midsentence. "You know what? I don't have to explain anything to you."
"Didn't say you did." Faith shrugged with one shoulder. "Just thought though, you know, big battle tomorrow--"
"Well, don't think."
"Hey!" Faith looked a little irritated now. "Trying to be nice here."
Buffy's own eyebrows went up. Well... okay, actually, that was true. Faith was trying to be nice. "Thanks," she managed.
"No prob." Faith started to get out of bed.
"Wait--hold on," Buffy regrouped. "--I didn't mean--"
"You didn't mean what? You want your room back or not?"
"Not. Look--" She fought the urge to squirm. "Not now."
"Not now? You got a lotta confidence there, B."
"Yeah, I do. We're going to win."
"Sure, I know. I just..." Faith sighed, threw up her hands in mock exasperation. "Hey, I tried."
"Yes, you did." Relieved now, Buffy managed a grudging smile. Crisis passed.
She couldn't even think about it. Bringing Spike upstairs to her room. It felt like a jinx, regardless of... even if she didn't....
It would be like asking for disaster. Faith had it right, in a way.
She couldn't think like that. About last nights and last chances.
"Pretty cool of me to suggest it, though, don'tcha think?" Faith said. "Especially after your honey tried to rearrange my face the other day."
He's not my honey. The thought bubbled up in her mind out of reflex, but she'd bite off her own tongue before saying it in front of Faith. "Yeah, I, um, heard about that." She tried not to smile. "How is your face?"
"Your boy's got a wicked left hook." She touched her chin. "After that bomb, though, I think I stopped noticing whatever was still hurting."
"Right." Buffy's internal smile faded. "Well... get some rest. We'll talk tomorrow." She turned back to the door.
"If we're all still here, huh?" Faith's voice rang out from behind her.
Buffy slipped out the door without answering, pulled it closed.
__________
The downstairs was quiet. Buffy's sense started tingling as she descended the stairs--something was wrong. Something had changed.
"See anything creepy?"
Buffy jumped. Xander had stepped out of the shadows at the landing as suddenly as an ejecting jack-in-the-box. "Geez, Xan, you scared me!"
"I scared the Chosen One? Me? Either my stealthiness is getting better, or yours is getting worse, Buff." He grinned up at her, axe slung over his shoulder like a flannel-shirted Viking, the black eyepatch a dark hole in his face.
One foot placed on the final stair, Buffy glanced around. The ground floor was dark, with only a few flickering candles to light a path. But it was more than enough to show her what was missing--the usual obstacle course of sleeping forms. "Where is everybody?"
"Next door." Xander gestured to either side of them with the axe. "The troops have spread out, mon capitain--to the right and left flanks."
"What? When did--whose idea was that?"
"Calm down, calm down, take it easy, Buff. Nobody's deserting." He waved the axe in a circle. "Remember that shield spell Willow did, back when we were running from Glory? All around the area. Like the whole city block."
"What?" Willow can do that? "Since when?"
"Tonight. The girls were restless, and Willow thought she could handle the spell, so... we did a little commandeering." He saluted her then, a brief reappearance of Military Guy.
"I don't know if that's really a good idea." It was getting easier to relax into the role of General. She frowned at Xander, tried to figure out how to handle this latest annoying wrinkle. Wake Willow up? Go out to the houses and bring everybody back?
"It's okay, don't worry. We've got it covered. There are scouts on duty in each house--" He saluted again, a gesture that was beginning to irritate. "--like yours truly, on watch, and checking the houses gave our Soon-to-be-More-Than-Potential-Slayers a last chance to get in a little more practice in the sneaking-around-in-the-dark-arts." He paused. "They needed it. They're scared, Buffy."
"I know."
"I know you do, but..." He sighed. "Things have been kinda tense around here."
"Yes they have." She looked down at the floor. I guess it's just for tonight. "Okay, you've convinced me. I'm just..." She lifted her head, managed a steady I believe in you expression. "You win. I leave it in your capable hands."
"Well, I don't know about the capable, but--" Xander broke out in a wide grin, and then suddenly, there was that teenage boy she'd first met on arrival in Sunnydale. All shaggy hair and smiles and earnest good will. Right there behind the extra pounds and the eyepatch and the soft jowls he'd grown over the years. Right there.
"--we all do what we can," he finished.
"Right." For a moment, Buffy couldn't take her eyes off him.
"Oh, and Willow wanted me to tell you," he said. "Spike's gonna have to put his nicotine habit on hold for one night."
"Huh?" Like Faith, upstairs, Xander had caught her off guard. He actually hasn't smoked in awhile, her brain suddenly chipped in, Oh, except, let's not forget, around Faith, and why is Xander even bringing this up?
Like she really had to ask. "Xander--" she began.
"I mean, unless we all want to hear what an anti-demon burglar alarm sounds like. Willow thinks he could probably go out without setting it off, but coming back in--"
"Xander," she tried again, and then frowned, distracted. Something wasn't right. "I thought you said it was a barrier."
"Yeah, well, a barrier in the sense that we'll all get some kind of screaming red-alert signal if anyone walks through it."
"That's not what you said before."
"Well... Willow didn't think she could hold the other kind while she was asleep. It's the same principle."
"Right." Right. Buffy held her temper carefully. "Um... okay." Nothing I can do about it now.
"So, uh, if you could pass that on."
Oh, right. To Spike. Buffy sucked in a deep breath.
She so did not want a repeat of the upstairs conversation.
Thankfully, before she could say anything, Xander started in again. "So that's status report, cap'n, nothing else happening down here. Why don't you go get some rest?"
"That was the idea." Xander's profile, limmed faintly by the dim moonlight reaching through the protective boards on the windows, was unreadable.
All that remained now was to make her way down the hall, into the kitchen, and down the basement stairs.
She hesitated. There wasn't anything she really wanted to say, but the silence was just... awkward. "Um, Xander--?" she started.
"Hey." His single eye turned back toward her, held her in a steady gaze. "You don't need to explain." She could see a smile now, just a movement of his face in the darkness. "It's none of my business."
Oh god, not again. "I wasn't going to."
"I know. And... that was kind of my point." He smiled, and then leaned forward and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. Buffy blinked at him, almost too surprised to speak.
"We're all here for you, okay?" he said. "No matter what. That's kinda all I really wanted to say."
Then he just settled back against the stairway rail. Hefted the axe onto his shoulder and trained his eye on the door.
__________
October 2004
"Buffy!" A hand was shaking her shoulder. Hard.
She snapped awake. Her sister was standing over her. Holding her cell phone.
"Mwa-ha?" Buffy mumbled thickly. Her whole body was sweat-soaked, blankets tangled around her as if she'd lost to them in a fight. And oh, okay, right, the previous night was coming back to her. Drinking. Drinking a lot--ugh. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed with a tennis ball. One that a dog had licked. She could actually taste the fur.
I thought that Dawn's breakfast thing was supposed to help with the hangover? She had to blink several times before she could make out the words Dawn was silently mouthing.
It's him. Dawn offered the phone, stiff-armed. "You left it in my room," she said shortly. She looked exhausted, pajamas twisted, hair sticking up.
Buffy reached out to take it. Sure enough, Spike's voice on the other end. "Buffy?"
"Yeah, that's me." And oh, headache now. Like a hammer. She squeezed her eyes shut, slapped a hand to her forehead. Her mouth formed a reflexive 'o' even as she spoke into the phone.
"You... okay?"
"Late night."
"Sound a little peaked."
"That would be the too much to drink." She rubbed her forehead. Ow. Ow. Ow.
"Felt like celebrating, did you?"
"Don't be stupid," she snapped. And okay, she'd completely forgotten the previous week, when practically all they'd done was visit her favorite clubs and toss back cocktails, because yeah, she'd felt like celebrating. "Why are you calling me? You never call me in the morning. In fact, you never call me." Unless she'd called him first. This little fact had only just now occurred to her.
"Um, you asked me to." A brief silence. "And it's not morning."
"Huh? Oh." Oh. She swiveled around to look at the window. No, it wasn't morning. It was almost dark. She craned her head, peeped through the slats of her shades. The streetlights weren't on yet, but they would be soon.
"So... here I am calling." She could hear the irritation now. "Like you asked."
"Like I--" She threw off her bedcovers, sat up. Her headache made a loud play for attention; she ignored it. Like I asked him to before-- "You're leaving?"
"Told you it would be soon."
"This soon? Today?"
"A few hours."
"Oh, god." Why did this always happen to her?
"It's fine, Buffy, don't worry. I'm not going to just disappear."
Yes you are! She wanted to scream it, but instead her head just throbbed, and she pressed her fingers even harder into her temples. "Where are you?" she asked wearily.
"Not sure. Just some tunnel I ducked into when the sun came up." There was a distant sound on the line, like traffic noise. "Think it might be the Cloaca Maxima."
Buffy closed her eyes. A sewer. Ancient, probably non-smelly-by-now sewer, but still...
Dripping water in the darkness. Angel's voice. You deserve more. You deserve something outside of demons and darkness. You should be with someone who can take you into the light.
History was big with the repeating of itself.
She wanted to throw up.
__________
Sunnydale, 2003
"Still no room at the inn, I take it."
Another stairwell, another descent. He'd risen to greet her, a shadow inside other moonlit shadows, and now they were separated by a stretch of basement floor.
She couldn't push herself to approach any further. To step into the room.
"Full house," she bluffed. Of course, he'd know it was a lie. His vampire ears were as sharp as his nose, and the house was nearly as quiet now as his crypt used to be.
Silent as a grave.
"So no choice but my luxury accomadations, then." The glimmering jewel she'd given him was still in his hand. Swinging, suspended from its tacky chain, a pendulum.
She shrugged. "I thought you wouldn't mind."
He shrugged back, a copy of her motion. "It's your basement."
"Yeah." A crease dug in deep between her brows. Just what Faith had said. "It is."
"Well, c'mon down, then." He swept his arm in welcome, an exaggerated gesture. A game show presenter.
"You know, while we're on the subject," she blurted then, instead of moving. "You can't leave."
His eyebrows lifted. "Oh, is that right?"
"There's anti-demon spell around the house."
"Ah."
"To keep the bad things out."
"Hm. And the good things in?" he asked softly. Fingering the pendant. Looking at him, she sighed.
"Yes," she said simply. God, he could be dumb. "Can I come in now?" she said, pushing out a small smile.
"Hmmmm, let me think." He was smiling now too, strangely thoughtful. "Guess that means Angel's out and I'm in."
"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes, but her smile got wider. "Do not start that again."
"Oh, perish the thought," he said, but he was grinning now, and seemed more relaxed. Some mysterious tension, something she hadn't even quite identified yet, was out of the room finally, gone. He was just Spike again.
The vampire she felt comfortable with. Who she could talk to even though it didn't, never really had made any sense that she could. Especially after everything they'd been through.
And yet, here she was.
Her world had never really made that much sense.
Still smiling, she shook her head, stepped into the room.
Men.
__________
October 2004
"I'm not meeting you there," she said. Blurted it, really. Not another sewer breakup. Not after--
God, not even a breakup! I don't even know what this is.
Long silence on the other end. "Well... alright then. Guess this is goodbye, then."
"No it's not! I'm not saying goodbye. I already told you that. You're the one who's--"
"Right," he said, but she could already hear it in his voice, hear him pulling back, like he was retreating down a long tunnel. "You're right. We've already had our goodbye scenes, yeah?"
"That's not what I meant."
"It's not a problem, Buffy, it's fine. I understand. I'll look you up next time I'm in town."
"No you don't! Dammit, you're the one who's acting like I'm the one walking away, and you're the one who's leaving."
"Because I have to."
"I know that! But you--" She bit her lip suddenly, hard. Why hadn't she realized this days ago, back on that residential Roman street when he'd first brought it up? "You're the one who's saying goodbye," she whispered. "I've never said goodbye to you. You got it wrong, Spike. Totally wrong. I was never saying goodbye."
__________
Sunnydale, 2003
"Have you just been laying there awake?"
She saw his mouth twitch, just a bit, at that. His eyes were shadowed. The moonlight was a soft flare at his back.
Full moon.
It had been some hours ago that she'd settled into the cot with her back to his chest. Hours or maybe only minutes, but she'd awakened from a strangely deep doze to find herself turned around to face him, her nose pushed into his chest. He had one arm loosely curled around her waist. She felt him shift, as she came around, start to draw away.
She laid her own arm over his. He stopped moving. "Well?" she said.
He made a soft sound in his throat. "Been watching you sleep."
"Is that gonna be your new thing?" She lifted her head. It wasn't easy to do, leave the warm coccoon of his T-shirt and sheltering arm, but she wanted to see his eyes. She propped her head up on one hand. "Watching?"
"Maybe." She could see him now, blue eyes gone black, hints of highlights and shapes, when the moonlight caught him just so. He moved a finger to brush a lock of hair away from her face. "When you're sleeping, you look... happy."
Happy. There were things she could've said to that. Glib things. About how sleeping was the one time she didn't have to be worrying, but that wasn't exactly true, was it? Not with Slayer dreams. The truth was more like, well, it has something to do with the company I'm keeping. You.
You make me feel... safe.
Not yet. She couldn't say that yet.
Not when she didn't know what she was feeling. What it meant. It wouldn't be fair to him, and more than anything else, now, she wanted to be fair.
He deserved that.
So it was far easier to just lean forward and press a soft kiss against his lips. Because it seemed to say everything. Like giving him the amulet. Everything she couldn't say in words.
And then having said that... she wanted to say more. To turn it into a conversation, of touches and kisses, because it was different from the way it once had been.
She felt safe. She couldn't say that to him, but she could show him. Show him that yes, she did trust.
More than anything.
By the bedside, on the cardboard box that was his makeshift table, lay the amulet. Catching the moonbeams and splitting them, scattering small rays around the room..
__________
October 2004
"You got it wrong," Buffy said again. "It was always you that was saying goodbye, not me."
"Love, I don't have the damndest idea what you're on about."
"What you said! That I'm some kind of, of Goodbye Girl."
He'd gotten it exactly backwards. She was one who stayed. Why had she not seen that? Even when she'd died--god. She'd always been the one asking them to stay with her.
And Spike did. It used to be that he was the one who did. "You're leaving now because you're afraid to see how this is gonna turn out, aren't you? This job thing is just your excuse."
He sputtered. "What the... what the hell? I asked you if you wanted me to stay, and you said--"
"You didn't give me a chance."
"Well, you sure got used to the idea fast enough. Wanted to hear about all the other birds I was seeing. All but shoved me out the door without a soldier's kiss."
"You are so stupid!" she shouted. "You're just sulking because I don't want to have a big, hairy goodbye scene in a sewer!"
"No, you're right about that. What would be the point? Been there, done that, yeah? At least then I went out in a blaze of glory."
"I can't believe we're having this conversation over the phone!" She wanted to crack the phone in her fist. Throw it across the room and shatter it against the wall. A million plastic pieces of everything that was making her, suddenly, furiously mad.
And oh god, her throbbing head.
But the phone had the only photo she'd ever had of him stored inside. The only number that she could still use to reach him.
"Can't be helped, I suppose." His tinny voice echoed in her ear as she squeezed her eyes shut, tried to block out the pain. "You don't want to come where I am, and I can't come where you are. Story of us in a nutshell, inn't it?"
"Don't--" Don't be mad at me, she wanted to say. I'm not even mad at you! Or, okay, I am mad at you, because... because I just wanted more time. That's all. Was that so much to ask?
Now the dream was coming back to her, the hazy dream she'd just had before Dawn had handed her the phone. Spike, in a graveyard, pointing a finger at her headstone. It's a misery when you don't know where you belong anymore.
But by the time she'd come back to herself, slowly counting to ten and gathering her words, he'd hung up. He'd hung up. If he'd said goodbye to her, somewhere in there, she hadn't heard it.
She breathed more. Deep yoga breaths, and then slammed her cell phone into her pillow. It bounced, slipping from her fingers, and then bounced again, disappearing into a pile of bedclothes.
__________
Last Moments of the Hellmouth
Sunnydale, 2003
"Spike!"
She's running, running across the bumpy cave floor, weaving in and out of the fighting figures and fallen bodies. And he's right there, right there in front of her, and at first she just thinks, it's not too late. Because she can feel the energy pouring out of him, and it's everything that they hoped for, a superweapon that would save the day. And Spike is doing it.
He's being a hero.
And then it hits her. Hits like a thunderbolt, that this is the moment. The last moment. Because whatever he's channeling is nothing anyone was meant to contain, even if they were more than human, and it clutches at her suddenly, that knowledge. Tightens in her chest.
She knows what's going to happen. Knows it in her bones.
This is all the time they have left.
So she sputters something stupid then. Stupid because she knows he can't stop, but she has to hear him say it. Needs him to confirm it for her, that he's going to stay. That he's made his choice.
And then she memorizes his face. Memorizes everything, because there won't be another chance. Takes ahold of his hand, because she doesn't think she's ever done that before. Can't examine them now, his hands, can't look at anything but his face. Can't feel anything but the strange, weird warmth, rising up between them like a summer updraft, and the distant-hot crackle between her fingers and in her heart. Like electric sparks reaching into every part of her soul.
She loves him.
It's like a hammer, slamming into her fingertips. Punching into her chest, like a blow, and it makes her hurt, oh god, makes her want to cry out, but all she can manage right then is a gasp.
So then she says it. Just says it. Because he really should know.
Although she's sure, if he feels at all like she does, that he must know already.
And then he thanks her. And then he tells her to go. And she goes. Without another look.
Because that was their moment.
And she has to live in the now.
__________
Epilogue
October 2004
"So that's it, then?" Dawn asked, digging into a carton of gelato with a heavy spoon. Mocha-chip this time for her, and raspberry for Buffy. "He goes his way and you go yours?"
"Yep." Buffy swirled a spoon in her own carton. "He's being..." She blew out a sigh. "Spike. Sometimes I still want to kick his ass." She stabbed the spoon, a mini-staking. "Make that a lot of the time."
"Huh." Dawn dug deeper into the cartoon, prospecting for chips. "And I'd almost gotten used to having him around again, too."
"Huh? I thought were you still all with the not-ready-yet."
"I was. Am." Dawn sighed. "Lemme put it this way: after mom and dad got divorced? It would've taken me awhile to get used to dad again if he'd ever come back. Because of, you know, how much he'd hurt us before."
"Oh. I, uh, see what you mean." She put a spoonful in her mouth, then talked around it. "Although I think I could've done without the part where you compared Spike to dad."
"You know, women are supposed to be attracted to men who remind them of their fathers."
Buffy choked trying to swallow.
"Oh, god, I did not hear you say that," she groaned, as soon as she could draw enough air to talk again.
"What? I read it somewhere."
"Way to scar me for life," she grumbled. Because oh yeah, now she really was thinking about Hank Summers, and everything she remembered about him before he became the guy with the cheatin' heart: the dirty blond hair and the fun-loving nature, the ingratiating grin. Oh, and hello, her mom's thing for bad-boy Giles, he of the rolled-up T-shirt sleeves and cigarettes and British accent. Ew.
She restlessly stirred gelato in her carton until her embarrassment peaked. "I think mom and I had a type," she finally confessed.
"Duh."
"No, wait a minute." Epiphany. Buffy waved her spoon. "Angel. That so doesn't explain Angel."
"He's a vampire."
"Yeah, but... he wasn't like dad. At all!"
"Hey, I dunno. I don't have a theory about everything."
Smug, Buffy sat back, let the couch cushions swallow her. She felt marginally better, although comparing Angel to her father... well, that wasn't any less disturbing than doing the same for Spike. She changed the subject. "Well... you just wait your turn, missy."
Dawn snorted. "Who says I'm waiting?"
It took a second for Buffy to react. "What?"
As if to avoid having to answer, Dawn produced a heaping spoonful from the bottom of her carton, put it in her mouth.
"Hello? Answer me. What did that mean?"
Dawn shrugged. "I've had dates," she said around the mouthful.
"Here? You'd better not be talking about Alessandro."
"Okay. I'm not talking about him."
Buffy's eyes bugged out. "He is way too old for you!"
"Look who's talking."
"That was different." She and Dawn started at each other for a long, serious minute, and then erupted into giggles.
"Okay," Buffy said, flapping a hand. "It's not different. Forget I said anything."
"Already forgotten. You know, I typically forget your big-sister advice."
"Hah-hah."
"Yuh-huh." Dawn gulped down another spoonful, then looked thoughtful. "Seriously, though... don't you ever wonder about that?"
"About what? And seriously, he's still too old for you."
"Would you lay off the too-old? I mean where I get my feelings from. If everything I am is made up by those monks..." she trailed off.
"Oh." It wasn't something she liked to think about. Dawn was her sister. She'd accepted that a long time ago. Wherever she came from, Dawn was her sister now. Part of her.
"I mean, you gotta wonder what a bunch of monks would know about teenage girls," Dawn said.
Buffy gathered herself, delivered a casual shrug. "Maybe they had little sisters."
"In like, Albania or something."
"Okay, I dunno, maybe they saw stuff on TV."
"Like Baywatch?" Dawn shot a quick look at her chest.
"I dunno! Maybe they used to travel before they got... religious." Well, it was a theory.
"Riiight."
Buffy sighed. "What's your point, Dawn?"
"It's just... we have no way of knowing what it used to be like. Before me. What you used to be like." Her head went down suddenly, a curtain of hair sliding across her face. "I liked him," she whispered.
"What? Liked who?"
She lifted her head, stared at Buffy, who felt her heart promptly sink. She knew what was coming. "Spike."
"Oh."
"Right from the beginning. I-I thought he was cool. And... why would they do that? Those monks. I mean, evil vampire, right? If they sent me to you to protect me--"
"I-I don't know, Dawn. Maybe... maybe it's just because he was around at the time."
"Riley was around at the time. So was Xander."
"You had a crush on Xander, too. And Riley wasn't--" she halted, bit her tongue. Wasn't superhuman.
Was that it? She could already see where Dawn might be going with this thought.
"Maybe they fixed him," Dawn said. "Spike, I mean. They fixed all of us, after all, right? All of our memories?"
Buffy locked her gaze on the far wall. A blank space between the window curtain and a framed picture. "You mean maybe they made him... different." Made him fall in love with me. Made him want to change. Made him be like no other vampire I've ever seen, ever.
If those monks could make a human being out of whole cloth, why couldn't they do that? If they could alter reality to change everyone's memories...?
"If they did that, then... then all of this is my fault. You and Spike."
That brought Buffy back down to Earth. "No."
"If it all started because of me--"
"It all started after I got resurrected. So technically, that would make it Willow's fault." She smiled, but Dawn wasn't buying.
"You wouldn't have had to have died if--"
"It doesn't matter, Dawn." That much, she was sure of. It really didn't. "It doesn't matter how we got to where we are now, or whose fault it is. The only people who are responsible for me and Spike are... me and Spike. That goes for now and then. Okay?"
Dawn smiled faintly. "Okay."
"I don't ever want to hear that again. This has nothing to do with you."
"Sure. I mean--" Dawn started shrugging then, the very picture of an uncomfortable teen having a tough conversation with mom. "I had another theory too, but you probably don't want to hear that one."
"What other theory? What?"
"Oh, it's just that... maybe those monks got my feelings from you."
Buffy coughed.
"I'm serious. I mean, it's not like we know. Maybe you already liked him."
"Spike?" Something in her recoiled at this idea, although she realized even as she sputtered out a response that Dawn's theories were... well, pretty airtight. There really weren't that many variables.
"Please," she scoffed anyway. "If they got your feelings from me, then you wouldn't love anchovies. Or wear clogs."
"Those are tastes, not feelings."
"Same difference."
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Did I ever tell you about how we first met?"
"You and Spike? You met on Halloween," Buffy said immediately. "You saw him on the street like everybody else."
"Met, not saw. Not like I could've talked to him then."
"I still say that was the cutest little pumpkin costume."
"If you liked being a doorstop all night, it was cute."
Buffy laughed, transported momentarily into a simpler time. Transforming Halloween costumes. If only things had stayed that easy. Although...
She scrunched her forehead. "How did I explain that one again?"
"Drugs in the Halloween candy."
"Oh, right!" Yep, those were the days. Buffy laughed.
"But that's how I found out you were the Slayer."
Momentarily disoriented, Buffy stopped laughing. "Drugs?"
"No!" Dawn let out her own laugh, a single bark like a burst of gunfire. "Spike. When we first met. He told me."
"He... what?"
"You know. During that hostage thing--"
"That hostage--oh!" That hostage thing. Angel's hostage thing. It had been a damned good plan. To keep Buffy distracted, to divert after the attack on the high school, keep her away from Acathla's rising. One thing after another that night. First the flame-o-gram summons, and then Kendra, and then--
"God, that was some night." The whole thing was a blur in her memory. Kendra, the police, the hospital. Worrying about Dawn. Frantic. Finally encountering Spike on the street, her little sister in his tow.
"Yeah, he was all like, 'you mean you don't know?'"
"I can't believe I forgot that. That was when you first met?"
Dawn nodded. "He walked me home. Bought me ice cream too."
"WHAT?" If Buffy lived to be a hundred, she'd never be able to the explain how she could separate her feelings for Evil!Bastard!Spike and the guy she'd just spent the morning--afternoon--whatever--arguing on the phone with. "Did you not listen to ANY of those lectures at school about strangers?"
"Uh, duh, Buffy? And also, that never actually happened?"
Buffy blinked. "Oh. Yeah." Hello, embarrassment.
"I just can't figure out why I'd have a memory like that. Spike being nice to me. Sorta nice. I mean, he saved my life with the kung-fu fighting of other vampires, but then he also said I could shut my yap and stop crying anytime."
A light went on over Buffy's head. "That's why he bought you ice cream."
"Bingo."
"Right. Okay, that sounds like Spike." Elbows on her knees, Buffy dropped her chin into her propped-up hands, and leaned forward. "Something like it must've happened before," she mumbled.
"You mean before I got dropped into the picture?"
"Yeah. I dunno what, because if you hadn't been there, I would've staked his scrawny ass in a minute." At least I think I would have. What else would've I have done? What else DID I do?
"'Scrawny'. Wow, you are way pissed off at him."
"Believe it." And if I ever get my hands on his phone-hanging-up self again, I'll... Another light. A nagging memory, her mother having arguments with her father over the phone.
Oh, god.
She swallowed, forced herself to ask. "Dawn, did you ever...?" She couldn't finish.
"What?"
A family. You, me, Spike. Somebody strong, to help protect the Key. Somebody who'd die for those he loved.
Dawn might've had a point about the monks. What would they know, really, about women? Or about girls? They were monks.
And Dawn was, in a lot of ways, like her. But in other ways... Dawn trusted people the way Buffy had long since learned not to. She believed in romance. In fairy tales. In happily ever after.
So did I. Once. "Did you ever want us to be... together? Me and Spike, I mean. All of us, like--" Like mom and dad. Like a family. A dysfunctional, but what-would-monks-know-about-their-broken-home kind of family.
What Dawn had said earlier, about their dad... wow, it really made sense now. "Like a family," she finally finished.
Dawn wouldn't look at her. "You probably think I'm really dumb," she eventually whispered.
"I don't think you're dumb." You just haven't been through what I've been through. Thank god. "I'm so sorry, Dawnie. I didn't--"
"No, don't," Dawn said, quickly turning to face her. "It was stupid. I was stupid, okay?"
"You're not stupid. You can't help what you feel."
"Well, neither can you. And you were totally right to dump him. Obviously. I mean, after how he's treated you this week? Just like Mom was right to divorce dad for being a total shit."
"Don't say dad was a total shit."
"Well, he was. Is. Like, when's the last time you saw a child support check?"
Buffy sighed. "Can we get back to the part where you don't keep making connections between Spike and dad?" Even though I just did it myself. I'll never get rid of that picture now, never.
"I'm just saying. I don't expect you to... to make a perfect family for us. That's not... that's not..." Her face crumpled. "I don't know what I'm trying to say."
Buffy smiled. Reached out a hand and ran it through her sister's hair. Wondered at everything that had happened in the last few days, what she'd felt. Where all those emotions had come from. Where they might eventually go.
Nothing wasn't over yet. Of that much she was sure. "Me neither," she confessed.
__________
Sunnydale, 2003
"Yeah, Buffy. What are we gonna do now?"
They were still standing on the edge of the crater, wind whipping at their hair. The others were joking behind her, and they were relieved, she got that... but she wasn't ready for that yet herself. She was still caught up in memories of the past few minutes.
Had it only been a few minutes?
She had to roll back her mind to reach them, rewinding through the last-minute adrenaline and the frantic dash, the leap onto the bus, all the way back the sight of his face. Golden and glowing.
She'd loved him. In that moment, she'd really known. She'd really been sure.
And he'd said no. No you don't.
It almost made her want to laugh. She managed, instead, a faint smile.
Love on the Hellmouth.
No question, it really was cursed.
[end]
Read the sequel, The Center.
Story recap:
Previously on "Does It Have to Mean Something?":
Post-"Chosen," with so many new Slayers all over the world, Buffy decides to more or less retire from being a Slayer herself and settles down in Rome to live "like a person," which in her case means just enjoying not having to fight all the time, and some quality shopping. Meanwhile, as we saw in Angel Season 5, Spike is brought back to life from the amulet in L.A., pitches in to help Angel in his fight against evil, and various events lead to "Not Fade Away," in which Angel and his crew take on the Circle of Black Thorn, the arm of the Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart here on earth.
But Angel's plan was actually a bit more extensive than challenging the Senior Partners to a street fight - having been tipped off by the Black Thorn's request to have him sign away the Shanshu prophecy, Angel realizes the importance of the Shanshu to the Senior Partners, and while still CEO of Wolfram & Hart, uses the company's resources to have a spell cast on himself and Spike, essentially bonding the two mystically. Now, Angel can't be killed without also killing Spike, leaving no one to fulfill the Shanshu and Wolfram & Hart's plans for the Apocalypse. The entire demon world is forced to choose sides between the two souled vampires, as Angel and Spike play up their rivalry for all that it's worth, and try to maneuver the underworld into civil war.
Buffy and Spike meet by accident at the Pantheon (as seen in the final chapter of "Dirty Back Road"). Overjoyed that Spike is alive, Buffy spends the following week taking him out on dates, only to discover, at the end of the week, that he never planned to stay, thanks to the already in-progress world-saving plan with Angel. Plus the whole prophecy thing. And the fact that he seems to think Buffy only really thinks of him as a friend. Buffy and Spike shout at each other a lot, take a trip to another dimension in which Spike is trapped starving for several months, Angel rides to the rescue... and then everyone goes back to Buffy's apartment where Angel explains everything, Buffy and Spike shout at each other some more, sort of make up and also make out until Dawn comes home, Spike and Angel leave, and Buffy is left behind with her sister to consider what to do next.
And after talking it all out, all the previous events of the night, Buffy is seized by an impulse to fess up and tell her sister everything--her whole sordid history with Spike. Dawn's reaction--you're telling me this now?--doesn't do much to help Buffy understand what she's feeling, but a dream she has later possibly does... if she can only figure out what it means.
And now, we enter the final phase, after another little visit to the past...
Previous chapters here.
Chapter 17
Last Night of the Hellmouth, 2003
Sunnydale, California, U.S.A
A rustle of bedclothes, a sudden snap of bright light. Like a camera-flash flare, and Buffy was blinking, hands up as if she'd been caught committing a crime.
"It's just me," she said quickly, taking in the scene in front of her--a dark silhouette, crouched in the middle of seemingly vast bed, the edges of the mattress hidden by shadow. A big ol' flashlight in the figure's right hand, the kind State Troopers carry, held up like a club. And incidentally beaming light right into Buffy's eyes.
"I didn't want to bother you," Buffy said, lowering her arms slowly. "I thought you'd be asleep. I just wanted to pick up a few things."
The flashlight came down, the light deflected to one side. Buffy heaved a sigh, blinked, bright spots spots dancing in front of her eyes. Now she could make out Faith, in dim outline, breathing hard in her minimalist sleepwear. The hand Buffy hadn't been able to see had been wrapped around a heavy sword.
"Damn, B!" Faith's voice was shaking. She hefted the sword for a second, as if to show it off--see?--then let it slide out of her grip and over the side to the bed. It landed with a soft thump on the carpet, in a clutter of dirty socks and discarded hair clips. "I was asleep. You were damn lucky I didn't take your head off just now."
"Sorry."
"You scared the crap out of me."
"Again with the sorry. I'll only be a minute." She crossed the room to a dresser and opened a drawer.
"Thought the Apocalypse had started."
"No, that's tomorrow." The first drawer was empty. Buffy opened another. "I'll just be a minute," she said again.
"Hey, it's your room." Faith leaned over and lit the camping lamp at her bedside, rubbed her hands over her face.
All the drawers were empty. Buffy felt through one after another, her hands searching in the darkness. "Where are my clothes?" she demanded. "There's not even--all my underwear's gone!"
"Yeah, uh, the power's been out, B."
"Meaning?"
"Well, those girls've gotta wear somethin'. And I'd have lent them my stuff, but--" Faith shrugged, indicated the tank top and panties she wore. "--this is kinda it."
Buffy sighed, shut a drawer, turned. It shouldn't have mattered. She should've thought of it herself, but she was tired, dammit. Tired and dirty. "Okay, sure, I understand. It's fine. I'm happy to share." Share my house, share my clothes, and tomorrow, share my power. It's a good thing. She forced a smile and crossed to the closet.
"Yeah. Well, sharing is good, right?" Faith fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable.
"Right," Buffy agreed, distracted. Nothing but Bronze gear left in the closet--floaty dresses, microscopic halters, mini-skirts. And patrolling in a mini-skirt was one thing, but attending the Apocalypse in one...?
She examined a long-sleeved blouse. It might be okay, although the bell sleeves would probably get in the way. Not that she had all that much choice.
"I mean, like... me being here. Pretty cool of you to let me have your room."
"Huh? Oh, don't worry about it. You're recovering. I need everyone in top shape for tomorrow." Great, and the only shoes left in her closet that even approached practical were suede. Cream-colored and pointy-toed.
Light colors showed blood. And they had pedestal heels.
She chewed her lip. The boots she was wearing had cracked heels--an inevitable casuality of all those backflips--and she definitely did not need a shoe malfunction in the middle of a major battle.
Well, not like she hadn't fought in heels before. Or mussed up nice clothes. Buffy rolled up her chosen outfit, tucked the soft bundle under her arm.
"You want it back?"
"What?" Buffy stood. Her mind still on the clothes, she wasn't following Faith's train of thought. "There's more?"
"Your room." Cross-legged in the middle of the floral-patterend bedspread, Faith looked oddly serene. A Buddha on a lotus leaf. "You want it back?"
"Oh." Okay, now she got it. And she really hadn't been expecting this. "No, don't be stupid. You're still healing."
"Get real B, I moved heavy furniture today. I'm good."
"This is no time to be changing things." Breaking into a long stride, Buffy made a beeline for the door. "Get some rest." She put a hand on the doorknob.
"But don't you think you and Spike would be more comfortable up here?"
She hadn't yet opened the door. She froze, grateful at least that Faith couldn't see her face.
Behind her back, Faith laughed. "Damn, B," she said. "You thought nobody knew?"
Buffy let her hand drop and turned. Bundle of clothes still clutched to her chest.
"Because if that's what you're worried about, believe me, nobody cares," Faith continued.
"It's not like--"
Faith's eyebrows went up.
"--like any of your business." Buffy changed tracks in midsentence. "You know what? I don't have to explain anything to you."
"Didn't say you did." Faith shrugged with one shoulder. "Just thought though, you know, big battle tomorrow--"
"Well, don't think."
"Hey!" Faith looked a little irritated now. "Trying to be nice here."
Buffy's own eyebrows went up. Well... okay, actually, that was true. Faith was trying to be nice. "Thanks," she managed.
"No prob." Faith started to get out of bed.
"Wait--hold on," Buffy regrouped. "--I didn't mean--"
"You didn't mean what? You want your room back or not?"
"Not. Look--" She fought the urge to squirm. "Not now."
"Not now? You got a lotta confidence there, B."
"Yeah, I do. We're going to win."
"Sure, I know. I just..." Faith sighed, threw up her hands in mock exasperation. "Hey, I tried."
"Yes, you did." Relieved now, Buffy managed a grudging smile. Crisis passed.
She couldn't even think about it. Bringing Spike upstairs to her room. It felt like a jinx, regardless of... even if she didn't....
It would be like asking for disaster. Faith had it right, in a way.
She couldn't think like that. About last nights and last chances.
"Pretty cool of me to suggest it, though, don'tcha think?" Faith said. "Especially after your honey tried to rearrange my face the other day."
He's not my honey. The thought bubbled up in her mind out of reflex, but she'd bite off her own tongue before saying it in front of Faith. "Yeah, I, um, heard about that." She tried not to smile. "How is your face?"
"Your boy's got a wicked left hook." She touched her chin. "After that bomb, though, I think I stopped noticing whatever was still hurting."
"Right." Buffy's internal smile faded. "Well... get some rest. We'll talk tomorrow." She turned back to the door.
"If we're all still here, huh?" Faith's voice rang out from behind her.
Buffy slipped out the door without answering, pulled it closed.
__________
The downstairs was quiet. Buffy's sense started tingling as she descended the stairs--something was wrong. Something had changed.
"See anything creepy?"
Buffy jumped. Xander had stepped out of the shadows at the landing as suddenly as an ejecting jack-in-the-box. "Geez, Xan, you scared me!"
"I scared the Chosen One? Me? Either my stealthiness is getting better, or yours is getting worse, Buff." He grinned up at her, axe slung over his shoulder like a flannel-shirted Viking, the black eyepatch a dark hole in his face.
One foot placed on the final stair, Buffy glanced around. The ground floor was dark, with only a few flickering candles to light a path. But it was more than enough to show her what was missing--the usual obstacle course of sleeping forms. "Where is everybody?"
"Next door." Xander gestured to either side of them with the axe. "The troops have spread out, mon capitain--to the right and left flanks."
"What? When did--whose idea was that?"
"Calm down, calm down, take it easy, Buff. Nobody's deserting." He waved the axe in a circle. "Remember that shield spell Willow did, back when we were running from Glory? All around the area. Like the whole city block."
"What?" Willow can do that? "Since when?"
"Tonight. The girls were restless, and Willow thought she could handle the spell, so... we did a little commandeering." He saluted her then, a brief reappearance of Military Guy.
"I don't know if that's really a good idea." It was getting easier to relax into the role of General. She frowned at Xander, tried to figure out how to handle this latest annoying wrinkle. Wake Willow up? Go out to the houses and bring everybody back?
"It's okay, don't worry. We've got it covered. There are scouts on duty in each house--" He saluted again, a gesture that was beginning to irritate. "--like yours truly, on watch, and checking the houses gave our Soon-to-be-More-Than-Potential-Slayers a last chance to get in a little more practice in the sneaking-around-in-the-dark-arts." He paused. "They needed it. They're scared, Buffy."
"I know."
"I know you do, but..." He sighed. "Things have been kinda tense around here."
"Yes they have." She looked down at the floor. I guess it's just for tonight. "Okay, you've convinced me. I'm just..." She lifted her head, managed a steady I believe in you expression. "You win. I leave it in your capable hands."
"Well, I don't know about the capable, but--" Xander broke out in a wide grin, and then suddenly, there was that teenage boy she'd first met on arrival in Sunnydale. All shaggy hair and smiles and earnest good will. Right there behind the extra pounds and the eyepatch and the soft jowls he'd grown over the years. Right there.
"--we all do what we can," he finished.
"Right." For a moment, Buffy couldn't take her eyes off him.
"Oh, and Willow wanted me to tell you," he said. "Spike's gonna have to put his nicotine habit on hold for one night."
"Huh?" Like Faith, upstairs, Xander had caught her off guard. He actually hasn't smoked in awhile, her brain suddenly chipped in, Oh, except, let's not forget, around Faith, and why is Xander even bringing this up?
Like she really had to ask. "Xander--" she began.
"I mean, unless we all want to hear what an anti-demon burglar alarm sounds like. Willow thinks he could probably go out without setting it off, but coming back in--"
"Xander," she tried again, and then frowned, distracted. Something wasn't right. "I thought you said it was a barrier."
"Yeah, well, a barrier in the sense that we'll all get some kind of screaming red-alert signal if anyone walks through it."
"That's not what you said before."
"Well... Willow didn't think she could hold the other kind while she was asleep. It's the same principle."
"Right." Right. Buffy held her temper carefully. "Um... okay." Nothing I can do about it now.
"So, uh, if you could pass that on."
Oh, right. To Spike. Buffy sucked in a deep breath.
She so did not want a repeat of the upstairs conversation.
Thankfully, before she could say anything, Xander started in again. "So that's status report, cap'n, nothing else happening down here. Why don't you go get some rest?"
"That was the idea." Xander's profile, limmed faintly by the dim moonlight reaching through the protective boards on the windows, was unreadable.
All that remained now was to make her way down the hall, into the kitchen, and down the basement stairs.
She hesitated. There wasn't anything she really wanted to say, but the silence was just... awkward. "Um, Xander--?" she started.
"Hey." His single eye turned back toward her, held her in a steady gaze. "You don't need to explain." She could see a smile now, just a movement of his face in the darkness. "It's none of my business."
Oh god, not again. "I wasn't going to."
"I know. And... that was kind of my point." He smiled, and then leaned forward and pressed a light kiss to her cheek. Buffy blinked at him, almost too surprised to speak.
"We're all here for you, okay?" he said. "No matter what. That's kinda all I really wanted to say."
Then he just settled back against the stairway rail. Hefted the axe onto his shoulder and trained his eye on the door.
__________
October 2004
"Buffy!" A hand was shaking her shoulder. Hard.
She snapped awake. Her sister was standing over her. Holding her cell phone.
"Mwa-ha?" Buffy mumbled thickly. Her whole body was sweat-soaked, blankets tangled around her as if she'd lost to them in a fight. And oh, okay, right, the previous night was coming back to her. Drinking. Drinking a lot--ugh. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed with a tennis ball. One that a dog had licked. She could actually taste the fur.
I thought that Dawn's breakfast thing was supposed to help with the hangover? She had to blink several times before she could make out the words Dawn was silently mouthing.
It's him. Dawn offered the phone, stiff-armed. "You left it in my room," she said shortly. She looked exhausted, pajamas twisted, hair sticking up.
Buffy reached out to take it. Sure enough, Spike's voice on the other end. "Buffy?"
"Yeah, that's me." And oh, headache now. Like a hammer. She squeezed her eyes shut, slapped a hand to her forehead. Her mouth formed a reflexive 'o' even as she spoke into the phone.
"You... okay?"
"Late night."
"Sound a little peaked."
"That would be the too much to drink." She rubbed her forehead. Ow. Ow. Ow.
"Felt like celebrating, did you?"
"Don't be stupid," she snapped. And okay, she'd completely forgotten the previous week, when practically all they'd done was visit her favorite clubs and toss back cocktails, because yeah, she'd felt like celebrating. "Why are you calling me? You never call me in the morning. In fact, you never call me." Unless she'd called him first. This little fact had only just now occurred to her.
"Um, you asked me to." A brief silence. "And it's not morning."
"Huh? Oh." Oh. She swiveled around to look at the window. No, it wasn't morning. It was almost dark. She craned her head, peeped through the slats of her shades. The streetlights weren't on yet, but they would be soon.
"So... here I am calling." She could hear the irritation now. "Like you asked."
"Like I--" She threw off her bedcovers, sat up. Her headache made a loud play for attention; she ignored it. Like I asked him to before-- "You're leaving?"
"Told you it would be soon."
"This soon? Today?"
"A few hours."
"Oh, god." Why did this always happen to her?
"It's fine, Buffy, don't worry. I'm not going to just disappear."
Yes you are! She wanted to scream it, but instead her head just throbbed, and she pressed her fingers even harder into her temples. "Where are you?" she asked wearily.
"Not sure. Just some tunnel I ducked into when the sun came up." There was a distant sound on the line, like traffic noise. "Think it might be the Cloaca Maxima."
Buffy closed her eyes. A sewer. Ancient, probably non-smelly-by-now sewer, but still...
Dripping water in the darkness. Angel's voice. You deserve more. You deserve something outside of demons and darkness. You should be with someone who can take you into the light.
History was big with the repeating of itself.
She wanted to throw up.
__________
Sunnydale, 2003
"Still no room at the inn, I take it."
Another stairwell, another descent. He'd risen to greet her, a shadow inside other moonlit shadows, and now they were separated by a stretch of basement floor.
She couldn't push herself to approach any further. To step into the room.
"Full house," she bluffed. Of course, he'd know it was a lie. His vampire ears were as sharp as his nose, and the house was nearly as quiet now as his crypt used to be.
Silent as a grave.
"So no choice but my luxury accomadations, then." The glimmering jewel she'd given him was still in his hand. Swinging, suspended from its tacky chain, a pendulum.
She shrugged. "I thought you wouldn't mind."
He shrugged back, a copy of her motion. "It's your basement."
"Yeah." A crease dug in deep between her brows. Just what Faith had said. "It is."
"Well, c'mon down, then." He swept his arm in welcome, an exaggerated gesture. A game show presenter.
"You know, while we're on the subject," she blurted then, instead of moving. "You can't leave."
His eyebrows lifted. "Oh, is that right?"
"There's anti-demon spell around the house."
"Ah."
"To keep the bad things out."
"Hm. And the good things in?" he asked softly. Fingering the pendant. Looking at him, she sighed.
"Yes," she said simply. God, he could be dumb. "Can I come in now?" she said, pushing out a small smile.
"Hmmmm, let me think." He was smiling now too, strangely thoughtful. "Guess that means Angel's out and I'm in."
"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes, but her smile got wider. "Do not start that again."
"Oh, perish the thought," he said, but he was grinning now, and seemed more relaxed. Some mysterious tension, something she hadn't even quite identified yet, was out of the room finally, gone. He was just Spike again.
The vampire she felt comfortable with. Who she could talk to even though it didn't, never really had made any sense that she could. Especially after everything they'd been through.
And yet, here she was.
Her world had never really made that much sense.
Still smiling, she shook her head, stepped into the room.
Men.
__________
October 2004
"I'm not meeting you there," she said. Blurted it, really. Not another sewer breakup. Not after--
God, not even a breakup! I don't even know what this is.
Long silence on the other end. "Well... alright then. Guess this is goodbye, then."
"No it's not! I'm not saying goodbye. I already told you that. You're the one who's--"
"Right," he said, but she could already hear it in his voice, hear him pulling back, like he was retreating down a long tunnel. "You're right. We've already had our goodbye scenes, yeah?"
"That's not what I meant."
"It's not a problem, Buffy, it's fine. I understand. I'll look you up next time I'm in town."
"No you don't! Dammit, you're the one who's acting like I'm the one walking away, and you're the one who's leaving."
"Because I have to."
"I know that! But you--" She bit her lip suddenly, hard. Why hadn't she realized this days ago, back on that residential Roman street when he'd first brought it up? "You're the one who's saying goodbye," she whispered. "I've never said goodbye to you. You got it wrong, Spike. Totally wrong. I was never saying goodbye."
__________
Sunnydale, 2003
"Have you just been laying there awake?"
She saw his mouth twitch, just a bit, at that. His eyes were shadowed. The moonlight was a soft flare at his back.
Full moon.
It had been some hours ago that she'd settled into the cot with her back to his chest. Hours or maybe only minutes, but she'd awakened from a strangely deep doze to find herself turned around to face him, her nose pushed into his chest. He had one arm loosely curled around her waist. She felt him shift, as she came around, start to draw away.
She laid her own arm over his. He stopped moving. "Well?" she said.
He made a soft sound in his throat. "Been watching you sleep."
"Is that gonna be your new thing?" She lifted her head. It wasn't easy to do, leave the warm coccoon of his T-shirt and sheltering arm, but she wanted to see his eyes. She propped her head up on one hand. "Watching?"
"Maybe." She could see him now, blue eyes gone black, hints of highlights and shapes, when the moonlight caught him just so. He moved a finger to brush a lock of hair away from her face. "When you're sleeping, you look... happy."
Happy. There were things she could've said to that. Glib things. About how sleeping was the one time she didn't have to be worrying, but that wasn't exactly true, was it? Not with Slayer dreams. The truth was more like, well, it has something to do with the company I'm keeping. You.
You make me feel... safe.
Not yet. She couldn't say that yet.
Not when she didn't know what she was feeling. What it meant. It wouldn't be fair to him, and more than anything else, now, she wanted to be fair.
He deserved that.
So it was far easier to just lean forward and press a soft kiss against his lips. Because it seemed to say everything. Like giving him the amulet. Everything she couldn't say in words.
And then having said that... she wanted to say more. To turn it into a conversation, of touches and kisses, because it was different from the way it once had been.
She felt safe. She couldn't say that to him, but she could show him. Show him that yes, she did trust.
More than anything.
By the bedside, on the cardboard box that was his makeshift table, lay the amulet. Catching the moonbeams and splitting them, scattering small rays around the room..
__________
October 2004
"You got it wrong," Buffy said again. "It was always you that was saying goodbye, not me."
"Love, I don't have the damndest idea what you're on about."
"What you said! That I'm some kind of, of Goodbye Girl."
He'd gotten it exactly backwards. She was one who stayed. Why had she not seen that? Even when she'd died--god. She'd always been the one asking them to stay with her.
And Spike did. It used to be that he was the one who did. "You're leaving now because you're afraid to see how this is gonna turn out, aren't you? This job thing is just your excuse."
He sputtered. "What the... what the hell? I asked you if you wanted me to stay, and you said--"
"You didn't give me a chance."
"Well, you sure got used to the idea fast enough. Wanted to hear about all the other birds I was seeing. All but shoved me out the door without a soldier's kiss."
"You are so stupid!" she shouted. "You're just sulking because I don't want to have a big, hairy goodbye scene in a sewer!"
"No, you're right about that. What would be the point? Been there, done that, yeah? At least then I went out in a blaze of glory."
"I can't believe we're having this conversation over the phone!" She wanted to crack the phone in her fist. Throw it across the room and shatter it against the wall. A million plastic pieces of everything that was making her, suddenly, furiously mad.
And oh god, her throbbing head.
But the phone had the only photo she'd ever had of him stored inside. The only number that she could still use to reach him.
"Can't be helped, I suppose." His tinny voice echoed in her ear as she squeezed her eyes shut, tried to block out the pain. "You don't want to come where I am, and I can't come where you are. Story of us in a nutshell, inn't it?"
"Don't--" Don't be mad at me, she wanted to say. I'm not even mad at you! Or, okay, I am mad at you, because... because I just wanted more time. That's all. Was that so much to ask?
Now the dream was coming back to her, the hazy dream she'd just had before Dawn had handed her the phone. Spike, in a graveyard, pointing a finger at her headstone. It's a misery when you don't know where you belong anymore.
But by the time she'd come back to herself, slowly counting to ten and gathering her words, he'd hung up. He'd hung up. If he'd said goodbye to her, somewhere in there, she hadn't heard it.
She breathed more. Deep yoga breaths, and then slammed her cell phone into her pillow. It bounced, slipping from her fingers, and then bounced again, disappearing into a pile of bedclothes.
__________
Last Moments of the Hellmouth
Sunnydale, 2003
"Spike!"
She's running, running across the bumpy cave floor, weaving in and out of the fighting figures and fallen bodies. And he's right there, right there in front of her, and at first she just thinks, it's not too late. Because she can feel the energy pouring out of him, and it's everything that they hoped for, a superweapon that would save the day. And Spike is doing it.
He's being a hero.
And then it hits her. Hits like a thunderbolt, that this is the moment. The last moment. Because whatever he's channeling is nothing anyone was meant to contain, even if they were more than human, and it clutches at her suddenly, that knowledge. Tightens in her chest.
She knows what's going to happen. Knows it in her bones.
This is all the time they have left.
So she sputters something stupid then. Stupid because she knows he can't stop, but she has to hear him say it. Needs him to confirm it for her, that he's going to stay. That he's made his choice.
And then she memorizes his face. Memorizes everything, because there won't be another chance. Takes ahold of his hand, because she doesn't think she's ever done that before. Can't examine them now, his hands, can't look at anything but his face. Can't feel anything but the strange, weird warmth, rising up between them like a summer updraft, and the distant-hot crackle between her fingers and in her heart. Like electric sparks reaching into every part of her soul.
She loves him.
It's like a hammer, slamming into her fingertips. Punching into her chest, like a blow, and it makes her hurt, oh god, makes her want to cry out, but all she can manage right then is a gasp.
So then she says it. Just says it. Because he really should know.
Although she's sure, if he feels at all like she does, that he must know already.
And then he thanks her. And then he tells her to go. And she goes. Without another look.
Because that was their moment.
And she has to live in the now.
__________
Epilogue
October 2004
"So that's it, then?" Dawn asked, digging into a carton of gelato with a heavy spoon. Mocha-chip this time for her, and raspberry for Buffy. "He goes his way and you go yours?"
"Yep." Buffy swirled a spoon in her own carton. "He's being..." She blew out a sigh. "Spike. Sometimes I still want to kick his ass." She stabbed the spoon, a mini-staking. "Make that a lot of the time."
"Huh." Dawn dug deeper into the cartoon, prospecting for chips. "And I'd almost gotten used to having him around again, too."
"Huh? I thought were you still all with the not-ready-yet."
"I was. Am." Dawn sighed. "Lemme put it this way: after mom and dad got divorced? It would've taken me awhile to get used to dad again if he'd ever come back. Because of, you know, how much he'd hurt us before."
"Oh. I, uh, see what you mean." She put a spoonful in her mouth, then talked around it. "Although I think I could've done without the part where you compared Spike to dad."
"You know, women are supposed to be attracted to men who remind them of their fathers."
Buffy choked trying to swallow.
"Oh, god, I did not hear you say that," she groaned, as soon as she could draw enough air to talk again.
"What? I read it somewhere."
"Way to scar me for life," she grumbled. Because oh yeah, now she really was thinking about Hank Summers, and everything she remembered about him before he became the guy with the cheatin' heart: the dirty blond hair and the fun-loving nature, the ingratiating grin. Oh, and hello, her mom's thing for bad-boy Giles, he of the rolled-up T-shirt sleeves and cigarettes and British accent. Ew.
She restlessly stirred gelato in her carton until her embarrassment peaked. "I think mom and I had a type," she finally confessed.
"Duh."
"No, wait a minute." Epiphany. Buffy waved her spoon. "Angel. That so doesn't explain Angel."
"He's a vampire."
"Yeah, but... he wasn't like dad. At all!"
"Hey, I dunno. I don't have a theory about everything."
Smug, Buffy sat back, let the couch cushions swallow her. She felt marginally better, although comparing Angel to her father... well, that wasn't any less disturbing than doing the same for Spike. She changed the subject. "Well... you just wait your turn, missy."
Dawn snorted. "Who says I'm waiting?"
It took a second for Buffy to react. "What?"
As if to avoid having to answer, Dawn produced a heaping spoonful from the bottom of her carton, put it in her mouth.
"Hello? Answer me. What did that mean?"
Dawn shrugged. "I've had dates," she said around the mouthful.
"Here? You'd better not be talking about Alessandro."
"Okay. I'm not talking about him."
Buffy's eyes bugged out. "He is way too old for you!"
"Look who's talking."
"That was different." She and Dawn started at each other for a long, serious minute, and then erupted into giggles.
"Okay," Buffy said, flapping a hand. "It's not different. Forget I said anything."
"Already forgotten. You know, I typically forget your big-sister advice."
"Hah-hah."
"Yuh-huh." Dawn gulped down another spoonful, then looked thoughtful. "Seriously, though... don't you ever wonder about that?"
"About what? And seriously, he's still too old for you."
"Would you lay off the too-old? I mean where I get my feelings from. If everything I am is made up by those monks..." she trailed off.
"Oh." It wasn't something she liked to think about. Dawn was her sister. She'd accepted that a long time ago. Wherever she came from, Dawn was her sister now. Part of her.
"I mean, you gotta wonder what a bunch of monks would know about teenage girls," Dawn said.
Buffy gathered herself, delivered a casual shrug. "Maybe they had little sisters."
"In like, Albania or something."
"Okay, I dunno, maybe they saw stuff on TV."
"Like Baywatch?" Dawn shot a quick look at her chest.
"I dunno! Maybe they used to travel before they got... religious." Well, it was a theory.
"Riiight."
Buffy sighed. "What's your point, Dawn?"
"It's just... we have no way of knowing what it used to be like. Before me. What you used to be like." Her head went down suddenly, a curtain of hair sliding across her face. "I liked him," she whispered.
"What? Liked who?"
She lifted her head, stared at Buffy, who felt her heart promptly sink. She knew what was coming. "Spike."
"Oh."
"Right from the beginning. I-I thought he was cool. And... why would they do that? Those monks. I mean, evil vampire, right? If they sent me to you to protect me--"
"I-I don't know, Dawn. Maybe... maybe it's just because he was around at the time."
"Riley was around at the time. So was Xander."
"You had a crush on Xander, too. And Riley wasn't--" she halted, bit her tongue. Wasn't superhuman.
Was that it? She could already see where Dawn might be going with this thought.
"Maybe they fixed him," Dawn said. "Spike, I mean. They fixed all of us, after all, right? All of our memories?"
Buffy locked her gaze on the far wall. A blank space between the window curtain and a framed picture. "You mean maybe they made him... different." Made him fall in love with me. Made him want to change. Made him be like no other vampire I've ever seen, ever.
If those monks could make a human being out of whole cloth, why couldn't they do that? If they could alter reality to change everyone's memories...?
"If they did that, then... then all of this is my fault. You and Spike."
That brought Buffy back down to Earth. "No."
"If it all started because of me--"
"It all started after I got resurrected. So technically, that would make it Willow's fault." She smiled, but Dawn wasn't buying.
"You wouldn't have had to have died if--"
"It doesn't matter, Dawn." That much, she was sure of. It really didn't. "It doesn't matter how we got to where we are now, or whose fault it is. The only people who are responsible for me and Spike are... me and Spike. That goes for now and then. Okay?"
Dawn smiled faintly. "Okay."
"I don't ever want to hear that again. This has nothing to do with you."
"Sure. I mean--" Dawn started shrugging then, the very picture of an uncomfortable teen having a tough conversation with mom. "I had another theory too, but you probably don't want to hear that one."
"What other theory? What?"
"Oh, it's just that... maybe those monks got my feelings from you."
Buffy coughed.
"I'm serious. I mean, it's not like we know. Maybe you already liked him."
"Spike?" Something in her recoiled at this idea, although she realized even as she sputtered out a response that Dawn's theories were... well, pretty airtight. There really weren't that many variables.
"Please," she scoffed anyway. "If they got your feelings from me, then you wouldn't love anchovies. Or wear clogs."
"Those are tastes, not feelings."
"Same difference."
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Did I ever tell you about how we first met?"
"You and Spike? You met on Halloween," Buffy said immediately. "You saw him on the street like everybody else."
"Met, not saw. Not like I could've talked to him then."
"I still say that was the cutest little pumpkin costume."
"If you liked being a doorstop all night, it was cute."
Buffy laughed, transported momentarily into a simpler time. Transforming Halloween costumes. If only things had stayed that easy. Although...
She scrunched her forehead. "How did I explain that one again?"
"Drugs in the Halloween candy."
"Oh, right!" Yep, those were the days. Buffy laughed.
"But that's how I found out you were the Slayer."
Momentarily disoriented, Buffy stopped laughing. "Drugs?"
"No!" Dawn let out her own laugh, a single bark like a burst of gunfire. "Spike. When we first met. He told me."
"He... what?"
"You know. During that hostage thing--"
"That hostage--oh!" That hostage thing. Angel's hostage thing. It had been a damned good plan. To keep Buffy distracted, to divert after the attack on the high school, keep her away from Acathla's rising. One thing after another that night. First the flame-o-gram summons, and then Kendra, and then--
"God, that was some night." The whole thing was a blur in her memory. Kendra, the police, the hospital. Worrying about Dawn. Frantic. Finally encountering Spike on the street, her little sister in his tow.
"Yeah, he was all like, 'you mean you don't know?'"
"I can't believe I forgot that. That was when you first met?"
Dawn nodded. "He walked me home. Bought me ice cream too."
"WHAT?" If Buffy lived to be a hundred, she'd never be able to the explain how she could separate her feelings for Evil!Bastard!Spike and the guy she'd just spent the morning--afternoon--whatever--arguing on the phone with. "Did you not listen to ANY of those lectures at school about strangers?"
"Uh, duh, Buffy? And also, that never actually happened?"
Buffy blinked. "Oh. Yeah." Hello, embarrassment.
"I just can't figure out why I'd have a memory like that. Spike being nice to me. Sorta nice. I mean, he saved my life with the kung-fu fighting of other vampires, but then he also said I could shut my yap and stop crying anytime."
A light went on over Buffy's head. "That's why he bought you ice cream."
"Bingo."
"Right. Okay, that sounds like Spike." Elbows on her knees, Buffy dropped her chin into her propped-up hands, and leaned forward. "Something like it must've happened before," she mumbled.
"You mean before I got dropped into the picture?"
"Yeah. I dunno what, because if you hadn't been there, I would've staked his scrawny ass in a minute." At least I think I would have. What else would've I have done? What else DID I do?
"'Scrawny'. Wow, you are way pissed off at him."
"Believe it." And if I ever get my hands on his phone-hanging-up self again, I'll... Another light. A nagging memory, her mother having arguments with her father over the phone.
Oh, god.
She swallowed, forced herself to ask. "Dawn, did you ever...?" She couldn't finish.
"What?"
A family. You, me, Spike. Somebody strong, to help protect the Key. Somebody who'd die for those he loved.
Dawn might've had a point about the monks. What would they know, really, about women? Or about girls? They were monks.
And Dawn was, in a lot of ways, like her. But in other ways... Dawn trusted people the way Buffy had long since learned not to. She believed in romance. In fairy tales. In happily ever after.
So did I. Once. "Did you ever want us to be... together? Me and Spike, I mean. All of us, like--" Like mom and dad. Like a family. A dysfunctional, but what-would-monks-know-about-their-broken-home kind of family.
What Dawn had said earlier, about their dad... wow, it really made sense now. "Like a family," she finally finished.
Dawn wouldn't look at her. "You probably think I'm really dumb," she eventually whispered.
"I don't think you're dumb." You just haven't been through what I've been through. Thank god. "I'm so sorry, Dawnie. I didn't--"
"No, don't," Dawn said, quickly turning to face her. "It was stupid. I was stupid, okay?"
"You're not stupid. You can't help what you feel."
"Well, neither can you. And you were totally right to dump him. Obviously. I mean, after how he's treated you this week? Just like Mom was right to divorce dad for being a total shit."
"Don't say dad was a total shit."
"Well, he was. Is. Like, when's the last time you saw a child support check?"
Buffy sighed. "Can we get back to the part where you don't keep making connections between Spike and dad?" Even though I just did it myself. I'll never get rid of that picture now, never.
"I'm just saying. I don't expect you to... to make a perfect family for us. That's not... that's not..." Her face crumpled. "I don't know what I'm trying to say."
Buffy smiled. Reached out a hand and ran it through her sister's hair. Wondered at everything that had happened in the last few days, what she'd felt. Where all those emotions had come from. Where they might eventually go.
Nothing wasn't over yet. Of that much she was sure. "Me neither," she confessed.
__________
Sunnydale, 2003
"Yeah, Buffy. What are we gonna do now?"
They were still standing on the edge of the crater, wind whipping at their hair. The others were joking behind her, and they were relieved, she got that... but she wasn't ready for that yet herself. She was still caught up in memories of the past few minutes.
Had it only been a few minutes?
She had to roll back her mind to reach them, rewinding through the last-minute adrenaline and the frantic dash, the leap onto the bus, all the way back the sight of his face. Golden and glowing.
She'd loved him. In that moment, she'd really known. She'd really been sure.
And he'd said no. No you don't.
It almost made her want to laugh. She managed, instead, a faint smile.
Love on the Hellmouth.
No question, it really was cursed.
[end]
Read the sequel, The Center.