Chapter Text
Spike
Spike’s a fucking idiot.
He ought to be able to think about anything but that, right? Anything aside from him being a lackwit shit-for-brains who’s gone and fucked it all up, always, forever? Distraction’s supposed to come natural to him—honed it to a bloody artform for the last hundred some-odd years, hasn’t he? But right now there’s no one around to bother. No TV to go glaze-eyed in front of. No booze to drown in. No pulpy, stolen novels to help him forget the world.
No, there’s just him, and all these fucking thoughts.
Well, that and the motorcycle, which yeah, at least he looks fucking cool right now. But even that he can’t think about for too long without the sting of it.
Because he stole this fucking thing in the first place to protect the Nibblet. And Dawn hates him now.
Will always hate him, probably.
So yeah, there’s just this unending internal monologue, there’s just the crackle of the wheels over the road tar and his head screaming at him, his stomach knotting up: you sodding idiot, you goddamn wanker, you fuck everything up but Jesus, you really did it now, didn’t you? Moron. Fucking useless waste of space you are.
Most likely this demon isn’t even real, most likely Spike is chasing a legend, the shadow of a legend that he heard some vamps gossiping about in the back room of a demon pub some decades back. And fuck, this is so stupid, he’s so fucking stupid.
He gets a brief respite from thinking about how fucking spectacularly sickening he’s become, when he’s working out how to sneak into the cargo hold of this passenger plane.
But then that’s over and was shockingly easy to do—good old Sunnydale incompetence—and now he’s got twenty-six more hours with nothing to do but think and rifle through stranger’s luggage. Only he doesn’t have a lot of room to move, and there’s only so long that snooping through someone’s socks and ointments is interesting, and God.
God, he’s gonna have to think about it, isn’t he?
About how it can’t work.
(Except the fact there was even a direct flight from fucking Sunnydale to Uganda keeps feeling like there’s someone, something, somewhere, on his side, which is—
Well, which is the kind of thinking that makes you end up like Angel.
Which makes him laugh, until, it really, really doesn’t.)
The point is, it’s not gonna work, and it never was. But he has to do this. He’s gotta. ‘Cause if he doesn’t try, then he’s nothing, then he’s got nothing, not ever.
And he wonders if he’ll ever stop hearing it, that snapping sound.
The bone in her arm just going .
He didn’t think he was really gonna hurt her, did he? Maybe he did. God, he always did, but they always hurt each other, don’t they? Didn’t they? And how was he supposed to know this time would be different, but God, she just made him so fucking angry, she—
“We were never anything, ” he can’t stop hearing her saying it, “ It was a blip, it was—”
And she didn’t finish the sentence because he charged at her, that night in the cemetery, fists swinging, and his teeth out, and he never had his teeth out, when he was fighting her. Only ever had his teeth out when he was loving her. But in that moment he just wanted to chomp down, just wanted to rip into flesh, just wanted to—
Three graves over, once, they’d fucked in the shadow of a headstone until neither of them could feel their legs and they both just collapsed into each other, all liquid-limbed and he could feel her heart beating on top of his chest. Felt half like having a heartbeat himself. And she just lay there for a moment, letting him hold her, how she never did, because he felt good against her, maybe, and the night around them so sweet and dark—
We were never anything
And maybe she’s right, that they weren’t. But no, he knows they were, and he—
He shouldn’t have gotten that shot in, he shouldn’t have; he knows that too. And yet.
He never really hurts her, doesn’t try to, doesn’t manage it. God, when they’re fighting, she blocks his punches so easy, a dancer she is, roils up all the dead blood in him. And it hurts so fine when she lands her fist against his jaw, pains throbs singing through his skull.
It was just going to be that! it was just going to be just like that, just like always. Because this is what they always do, always. And he didn’t know! He—
No that’s a lie, he did know. Knew he shouldn’t. But he grabbed her arm and twisted it back anyway.
And the bone. And the sound.
Sound of the bone crackling.
Fuck, he’s ripped so many arms from their sockets. Once snapped a femur in half just to hear the human scream, and, and. And he shouldn’t be able to feel anything about those, he knows he shouldn’t—
But all of it is making him a little nauseous now, all of it. Fuck, maybe he’s really—
And then, after he did it, Buffy punched him as hard as she ever had with the arm he hadn’t mangled.
And the look in her face, the disgust in her eyes. It wasn’t tears, it couldn’t have been, he doesn’t make her cry, he’s not worth tears.
“Get out of my sight,” she’d told him, but then she was the one who ran.
He shouldn’t be able to feel guilty. Should he?
Rest of them never did. Dru and Angelus and Darla, nothing ever hurt them the way it did him. Their insides never were so soft and stinging as his.
So when did it go wrong for him?
When Buffy ended things, was that it? Was that what made him like this? This soft thing? Almost a man, but never quite?
No, it was before that. When she used to kiss him. When she’d sometimes touch him like the fact of his flesh didn’t disgust her? Was that it?
No , before that, when she came to sit quiet in his crypt so many nights after she clawed through the grave, like he was someone to be quiet with?
Or before that? Maybe it was all over for him all those nights in the summer, painting Dawn’s nails and sitting with her while she cried and mourned and trying not to cry too because a weeping vampire shouldn’t be her responsibility?
Or maybe before that, maybe it was all over for him the day he climbed up to that tower to try to save Dawn?
Or was it the day he let the hellgod bury her fingers in his chest and beat him bloody for the kid?
Or maybe the night he sat on the back porch with Buffy while she cried, his hand so light on her back?
Or maybe it was all the sodding chip, this thing they shoved in him and made him nothing, less than nothing, or—
No, no. It was all over for him the day he helped Buffy keep Acathla at bay for the sake of the bleeding world. That’s gotta be it.
Or no. Maybe it never started, maybe it always was. Maybe he’s always just been a goner. And God, maybe this will make him right, make him whole, make him—
Cause it feels like, sometimes, when he got turned, that—
That they didn't get all of his soul out anyway.
Feels sometimes like the dregs of it are still clinging to the bottom of his innards, like Dru’s tea leaves.
Maybe he’ll finally be right, after all this.
Or maybe, probably, definitely, not. Maybe he broke Buffy’s arm and got Tara killed and this demon fella is just a myth and there’s nothing left for him anywhere in the world.
***
It was Dawn that told him.
Dawn, rushing over to his crypt cause she didn’t know where else to go.
Her face was all wet and red and scrabbled like she’d been crying for hours. He knows the look so well, from the summer Buffy was gone.
He barely got the story out of her, her voice was so ragged, she sank to the floor of his crypt and wouldn’t get up and kept wheezing and it was his fault, all of it, his fault, his fault, he’s all broken, Buffy was right. He’s a thing. There’s nothing in him. There’s gotta be nothing in him, nothing clean, to ever make the Nibblet make that face, because she—
“ It’s Tara” , Dawn said. Eventually, barely, through the sobbing.
“ It—that Warren guy, he, he, he shot her, he was, he was trying to kill Buffy, and Buffy was trying to wrestle the, the gun from his hand? But she, she, her arm? Her arm was hurt, from some vamp, and, and he, he, he got Tara, he—Tara’s, she’s—she’s in the hospital, she—she’s not gonna wake up, they, they said she’s not gonna wake up, and Willow tried to wake her up with magic but she couldn’t even and, and, and I can’t —Spike, I can’t lose any more people.”
The old Spike wouldn’t have told her it was him. But there’s something in him now, something crawled up inside him and won’t let him go, something broken and soft and pitiful in him, something sickening like bile came up from his throat and made him tell her,
“It was me, Bit. I did it. I hurt Buffy. I broke her arm.” And he shouldn’t have.
He shouldn’t have any of it, but he didn’t get to get that part out because Dawn’s face just crumpled. He didn’t know it had any more room to crumple in it, but it did.
And she ran from him, and didn’t look back.
And he decided it then. Wasn’t the arm breaking. Wasn’t that he had his fangs gnashing. Wasn’t that he was trying to bite a chunk out of Buffy’s neck, and really meant to, this time.
It was the fact that Dawn ran away from him. And that Buffy ran away from him. And they really weren't coming back this time.
He just knew it. Knew it was all gone. Everything it was all aways for.
***
Spike walks down into the demon’s cave with his chin high, fists blazing, because damn it, damn it, he’s gonna be someone.
He’s gonna be someone that somebody could love.
Buffy
Summers always feel weird. Even weirder, spending them in Sunnydale.
Buffy figures there’s probably a last name pun in there about that, but when she tried to mention it to Dawn she just got all weird about it.
Either because Dawn has always been way pretentious and thinks she’s too cool for Buffy’s puns—which is like, has Dawn met Dawn?
Or, probably, because Dawn’s still all touchy and mad at Buffy for never being around in the summers anyway, on account of trauma and death and and all that fun stuff that just seems to come with the territory of, like, existing, when you’re Buffy.
But either way, as the days start heating up, Buffy can just feel Dawn watching her, waiting to see if she’ll make a break for it, like clockwork.
Buffy’s watching herself too, wondering the same thing. But so far it seems like she’s sticking it out this time.
“It’s not like I chose it,” she reminds Dawn in the kitchen one morning, angling her coffee mug away from her because Dawn keeps trying to steal a sip. “Last time I mean. Or, I did, I guess. But sacrificing yourself to save the world is a little different from skipping town, don’t you think?”
Dawn somehow manages to make taking a bite of her cereal seem testy. “Ugh, the specifics so aren’t the point. It’s the general trend of the thing! Big apocalypse freakout in May plus it’s a billion degrees outside, equals you bail. I’m not like, judging you about it.”
“Could’ve fooled me, Your Honor.”
“Like that summer in LA with Dad!” Dawn continues, ignoring her.
“You were with me that summer. Or don’t you remember the great shopping spree blister of ‘97?”
“In my defense, the jelly shoes seemed like a really good idea. And you’re getting off topic!”
“No, you are ,” Buffy snips back, plopping down into the stool opposite Dawn and grabbing a clementine from the fruit bowl.
“No you —” Dawn starts, then frowns. “Wait, we’re like, three comeback cycles away from totally losing the plot of what we were arguing about in the first place, so I’m cutting this tangent off here, but just so you know, I win.”
“Freak,” Buffy accuses, handing Dawn the first orange segment.
“I just mean, you were there that summer, but you weren’t like, there .”
Buffy sighs, not as forcefully as she’d like to. “Dawnie, I was … I was going through a lot then. The just-having-died of it all. But it wasn’t like, about you. You know that right?”
Dawn twists up her mouth in her thinking face. “No, I know. That’s not—I just mean … if you wanna go away? Or, or if you need some time for yourself? Not that I’m trying to say you should go,” she amends, at Buffy’s expression. “I want you here. I mean, I just got you back, kind of. But um, if you need some time? I get it.”
Buffy get that little wrenching in her chest she’s been having all the time since her emotions started feeling like anything again.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Dawn says, ripping the orange slice in two with a bite.
“I’m not looking at you like anything!” Buffy lies.
“Freak,” Dawn echoes.
“Takes one to—no, okay, I’m cutting the retort-a-thon off this time and declaring myself victor, okay?”
“Dictator.”
“Well, that comment aside, I think it’s just that I’m not used to you being all … insightful and generous. It’s freaky.”
Dawn glares. “I’m gonna very charitably choose to read that as a compliment? But you’re on thin ice, Summers.”
Buffy takes another sip of her coffee, and pitches a slight grin up at Dawn from the rim of her mug. “I’ll take it. But really, Dawnie. I’m fine. I don’t need to go anywhere. I’m just where I need to be. Here. With you, and Xander, and everybody.”
And then Dawn’s frowning again, and then she’s doing her agitated quick-talking thing.
“That’s just the thing, though. There’s not really an everybody? Not anymore. I mean, just with all the chaos and the bloodshed and the, freaky world destroy-y stuff and our friend going evil and all the quasi-mortal wounds and—!”
“Stop with the crescendo,” Buffy commands, and Dawn lands back in her seat, which Buffy notices now she stood up from in all the breathless monologuing. “And let’s not, okay? Just for a day, let’s not talk about all the … that.”
“This is like, the eighth just for a day in a row, you know. ‘Cause if you ever wanna talk about it—!”
“I don’t. There’s nothing to talk about,” Buffy says, and finishes her coffee to the dregs.
Or, okay, there’s plenty to talk about.
She mostly just wants to talk about it with Willow. And ah, there’s the rub.
Fuck—did her inner monologue pick that quote up from Spike? Fucking damn it.
He liked to quote that one all the time, and she was pretty sure it was just an innuendo until she remembered Giles saying it once too, and she should’ve asked one of them what it meant, only that would mean admitting to Spike she listened to his rambling, or admitting to Giles she cared about one of his old books and—
And now her chest is just doing that aching thing again.
“Finish your breakfast quick and come on, okay?” Buffy tells her sister, heading to the living room to grab her purse, taking the remaining half of the clementine with her. “It’s almost time to go visit Tara.”
Spike
Spike stumbles out of the cave and all the lights are dimming.
His soul, his chest, his bleeding.
His fucking soul . Itches like a motherfucker
Itches so much he’s sure his heart is beating again, God, the bastard made him human, he must have, set something crawling in Spike’s skin and it won’t get out it won’t get it out it won’t—
Spike falls into the sand when the sunset is still bleeding a sting over his body, and then it’s night, and there’s a moon overhead winnowed down to nothing, just like him. Spike is covered in bruises and blood and blood and—
God, so much blood, something in him is, is, is, is—
He’s spilled blood, hasn’t he?
So much of it, so much and he laughed to do it, God, it felt so sweet to hurt them, all of ‘em, like nothing, just a body, just a thing that had a pulse and then didn’t, and that’s just—
Well, bloody takes one to know one, doesn’t it?
And then he’s laughing.
It scrapes over his chest like Dru’s nails used to only those felt better. He laughs, his lips low and coarse and the sand’s in his mouth, it’s in his teeth, it’s on his useless limp tongue, and he’s spitting it out and he falls to sleep like that, half asleep anyway, and his dreams are a sick thing unraveled in his windpipe, and he thinks he throws up but maybe he just thought it.
He wakes when the sun scorches him to burning.
Scurries back into the shadows and rubs the burnt welts with his knuckles.
Spike sits in the mouth of the cave for seven days and seven nights, or possibly a whole month, it’s very hard to tell and the moon keeps not being the shape it oughta. He’s eating rodents and growing hungry, watching the light swell and ebb. Sometimes, when the dark comes, he goes out into the sand again—never far. But he lies there, looks at the stars and tries not to think about anything, but that doesn’t work, of course it doesn’t, nothing in him works anymore—
But the stars are so big and so soft and that’s how he thought, he thought, he thought—
He thought he’d be like Buffy .
He thought he’d be good.
His soul would settle back easy in him because he always had too much of it left to begin with.
And instead he’s just—
Always been. A monster, ragged thing, its heart dried up nice and mangled.
There’s that, and there’s his brains. No brains left in him. All he’s got is this ache ripping his chest open and every time he moves his hands his fingers feel like the blood will burst from the pads, his feet are tingling tingling tingling, he’s so, it’s so— God, does she feel like this always?
She does, she must, and he loves her more for it, loves her and, God, she’s got all this inside her all the while and how does she bear it ?
And oh . Oh how he sees it now.
Ha.
He can’t go back.
Not back to her. He thought , wanker, thought the soul’d make him good enough but all it’s done is pick the scabs off stinging from all the ways he could never be hers never, he—
He hears her arm snap again.
Feels the bone go in his hand, sees her, Buffy's face. She’s shock, he made her cry, she’s loathing him, Dawn is, face all loathing him because he killed Tara, didn’t he? Tara’s dead. Dead, another one Spike made dead, and oh. Oh she was only ever good to him, wasn’t she? Tara was? Shouldn’t have done, but she was, good to everyone, that one was, not like—
He can’t go back, then. End of it. Nothing left for him now. Once he’d had a family, once, an almost of it, once maybe Dawn had showed up to his crypt with a box of pizza and made him itchy with garlic powder and asked his dating advice and when he brought her back to the house Buffy didn’t kick him out, and the three of them lingered around the kitchen island, listening to the rain. Once.
Now he’s so much death.
Has been death all the while. Ever since, ever since, ever since— oh. Oh, well, well.
Well Mother had this in her, didn’t she?
Mother had this thing, this, this, shining sticky uncomfortable aching disquiet of a soul, Mother had this world in her, this human glow. This soul, it’s so big and it’s roughshod and wondrous and unsteady she—
Mother had this boundless thing and he took it out .
Made her like him , nothing, just cold and blood and the world a thing to break before you and laugh at it and! And, and, and.
And did it hurt? When he destroyed her? Did it hurt when she had this mass of the world in her and he snuffed it out and made her a monster?
Of course it fucking hurt, you fucking moron, good for nothing fool, just like she, just like all of them, they always said, just like, just like—
Spike leaves the cave at nightfall and walks until he finds a road.
Hitchhikes his way to the airport in the back of a truck and stows himself away in the cargo hold on the first flight north.
Buffy
“You’re here,” Tara says.
She’s sitting up in the hospital bed, smiling faintly, like it hurts to do it.
“And we come bearing gifts!” Buffy says, gesturing at Dawn, who starts giddily unloading the shopping bag full of goodies onto Tara’s bedside table.
Dawn holds up each item with a flourish, doing her best Vana White.
“So, first up we have this lovely line of lotions and potions! Well, just lotions, actually, but I thought you’d like the witchy rhyme. And Buffy said lotion’s like, all generic? Like a gift you’d get for your elementary school teacher if your mom made you get her a gift. But what she doesn’t know is it’s lilac scented, and you love lilacs …. Right?”
Dawn opens the lotion and bring it to Tara’s nose to smell.
Tara says, “I really do. Thank you, Dawnie.”
Dawn gives Buffy a look that says see? and then goes on.
“And next , we brought you lots of reading material because yesterday you said all the daytime TV is melting your brain? So okay, latest issue of Jane and also of Smithsonian which right, isn’t as intuitive of a choice, but there’s a whole beluga whale feature that you’re really gonna wanna see. Plus your copy of Arabian Nights that you left at our house, because that takes a long time to reread and you’re always putting it off but now! You have a bunch of time! And also Stories of Your Life and Others? Xander said it’s like, the hot new sci fi book, and I’m taking his word for it but if it’s bad, you let me know, and I’ll beat him up, okay?”
“Like he could ever take you, Dawnie,” Tara says weakly. “Thank you. I mean it.”
“ And best for last!” Dawn says, reaching into the bottom of the bag to hoist out the plastic container: “Cheesecake! And I know what you’re thinking— supermarket cheesecake? At eleven a.m.? But trust me, it’s gonna be big,”
Tara looks at Dawn, then looks at Buffy, her eyes welling up.
“Thank you guys. Really, I mean it. But you don’t have to do all this? I mean, I know you must have a lot going on, and if it’s too much, you know, coming here every day? You don’t have to—”
“Stop it,” Buffy says, coming to sit on her bedside. “You’re family. Besides, you’re the highlight of our day.”
“I am?” Tara asks, as Dawn struggles with the plastic lid of the cheesecake, then gives up and hands it to Buffy while she scrounges in the bag for plastic plates and cutlery.
“Oh, hands down,” Buffy says, trying to dig her nails unsuccessfully under the lid. “And speaking of hands, this thing was not designed for human ones. Dawn, you got a defective cheesecake.”
Dawn glares at her, unimpressed. “You have superstrength and you can’t open a cheesecake box? It’s like you’re trying to be a loser.”
“I’m just holding back for your sake. Remember the sheet cake on your thirteenth birthday?”
“Sheet cake?” Tara asks.
Dawn explains: “Oh, Buffy was trying to open it and she pulled too hard and the cake went flying against the wall? And it was a Costco cake—gold standard of sheet cakes! Jury’s still out on whether I forgive her.”
“So,” Buffy says. “You see my point. Care to retract the insult?”
“No!” Dawn chirps brightly, grinning with all her teeth.
Tara tries a hand at the cheesecake next, slowly popping the lid up by wedging her finger patiently under the lip of it, and when she opens it Dawn starts a rousing applause that Buffy joins in on, and it’s all so—
It’s happy, almost, and it makes her chest hurt again, because how can it be? It feels wrong and all achey, that they can just sit here and be happy.
What with, you know, her best friend is across the ocean trying not to learn to kill people anymore.
And Tara winces in pain when she moves her arms too quickly. And when Buffy looks at her all awake and Tara-like she can’t help but think about all those weeks she wasn’t awake, was just sleeping and hooked up to all those wires and machines and they didn’t know if she’d ever be okay and Buffy looked at her saw Faith when she was coma girl, looked at her and saw Mom, after they took the tumor out but before the anesthesia wore off.
And Tara’s okay now. She’s herself again. But it still feels like they got too lucky. Like something's gonna give.
And Giles is gone trying to make Willow not a murderer anymore, which makes sense, except that when he came back in the spring Buffy really thought he was gonna stay for good.
And patrols are weird and lonely now and most nights after she’s dusted enough vamps she turns up at Xander’s apartment because he’s gone full insomnia man since everything with Anya and then extra double full insomnia man after everything with Willow. And the two of them just sit in the semi dark, eating snacks and watching infomercials and talking a little, and trying not to think about how when they met they were so young and none of this had gone wrong yet.
And Spike’s just … well, fucking gone without a trace she guesses and she can’t think about that for more than a second without a rage bubbling up.
And how , how can there be all that and still she’s sitting here, the whirr of the air conditioner blaring in the corner, smiling, laughing so good with Dawn and Tara that her cheeks hurt.
This is wrong, isn’t it? She should be hurting. Summer is when she hurts.
But maybe she just doesn’t have the stomach for it anymore. Life’s fucking short, and right now she just wants to laugh, and eat her stupid brunch cheesecake.
Spike
Spike stumbles out of a plane in the south of England at twilight, the almost-sun making his skin all pins-and-needles. He almost gives one of the air traffic blokes a heart attack when he clambers out of the cargo hold, almost gets hit by at least one, possibly three planes as he tries to skitter off the expanse of black tar.
And he’s so hungry, his veins biting at themselves, he’s not even seeing straight as he runs, and probably the only reason everyone leaves him alone is he’s in vamp face and looks fucking feral.
And he is fucking feral, so good for them, correctly interpreting the situation.
He walks a long while, out of the airfield and onto ambly country roads, and eventually he’s at a sleepy little village. He’s walking for a long time, he thinks, except he’s not tired at all, so maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe he’s so tired that it all this moving doesn’t even feel like anything anymore.
Anyway, his knees feel either like knives or like TV static and he can’t make up his mind either way.
He went on holiday with Mum to a village like this once, didn’t he? Or does it just feel familiar from the period dramas on PBS in his crypt?
Everything in his head is all garbled and scratchy and thinking about Mum makes his arms hurt. Thinking about blood makes his arms hurt. He tries to think about Buffy, for a moment, to give it a go, and it makes his arms hurt too.
Huh, maybe it’s thinking thats’s the problem. They’re all right, then—Angelus and Darla and Rupert and Buffy too, all of them, correct. He’s just not too bright. But fuck, fuck, no bother going down that, because he’s hungry, he’s so hungry, gotta focus, gotta—
Spike nicks money from some lady’s purse in the town center, to buy blood from the local butcher before he closes for the night.
And he doesn’t even feel bad about doing it, so maybe this soul is no good. A defective model.
Do they take returns on this sort of thing? Somebody’s gotta fucking call customer service, haven’t they? Harmony was big into calling customer service, maybe she can put a word in for him. She liked to ask for the manager. Does she know who’s in charge of souls? Maybe she has it in her address book. Only he doesn’t know how he’d call her, to get a hold of her address book, him not having an address book of any kind, and hey, his head hurts so much, okay.
Butcher looks at him funny, but hands over the plastic pint anyway.
Once he’s guzzled the pigs blood in the back of this barn, his head clears some.
At which point it becomes obvious that hey, okay, he thinks he’s pretty fucking crazy right now. He’s picking hay out of his hair and there are voices in his head.
Not people talking to him type of voices. Just the type where his thoughts are all screaming and echoey and he thought that was the hunger, that he couldn’t focus.
But the hunger pangs clear away and what he can focus on is that his insides are fucking exploding, Jesus fuck, what is this, oh God, oh God, oh God. Oh God. God, God, okay, sodding hell, fucking Chirst in— okay. Okay.
Thing is, he’s gotta go see Mother.
That’s when it all went wrong, innit?
And Mum’s in London, so he’s gotta—well, Mum’s grave, or no, no grave? Wait. Yes. Yes grave. Yes, a grave, but no body in it, Spike took care of that. And his insides are spoiling, all rotting, he’s a beacon of rot, and he’s gotta go see Mum.
Point is, he starts walking.
Walking the wrong way at first, because he picks out the wrong star as Polaris, but then he sees a road sign saying he’s apparently right on his way to Cornwall, so he turns on his foot and walks through the night and hides in another barn when the sun rises, and were there always so many barns in England?
He wasn’t much for going near cows or anything else grubby, when he was human, so maybe he just didn’t know.
And then he’s hungry again, and eats the cow, and for some reason this one he does feel bad about this time, really bad, because whoever owns this barn doesn’t actually have that many animals and what if they go hungry now, what if they were gonna sell the fucker to pay for school or medicine or whatever else it is humans buy, and now they can’t.
Dawn was saving up money when he left, to buy Buffy a leather jacket with actual money, make up for the one she nicked. She kept it in an actual piggy bank, pink and shiny. Named it Gordo Junior.
Spike smiles, to think about it, and then that turns to a laugh, and then he’s weeping so hard he’s sure the humans who own this barn will hear him, come find him, come burn him to death.
But no one comes.
He just has him. And the weeping.
Spike stumbles back onto the road with blood across his face and walks until the sun almost scorches him but he finds a new hideaway, a little bus depot that smells of piss.
Come evening, he walks again, and he’s gonna find it, he’s gonna, he’s gotta—see, there’s something for him, in London. He’s sure—no, not sure of it.
But that was the last place he had a soul and he wants to see it . That piece of him. Like it’s wandering around there still maybe. And he could catch a glimpse.
‘Cause he can’t go home. Can’t go to Buffy, and he thought she was his home but he had it wrong. He’s got no place, and this pipe dream is all he’s got, this was the last time he ever belonged anywhere, if he ever even did, so he has to see.
He’s somewhere roughly close to Devon, and it’s either that night or maybe three days later, hard to tell.
But either way, the voices catch up to him again, and then he’s writhing on the side of the road trying to make them stop when—
“Spike?”
Spike shakes his head so hard his neck hurts. “... No.”
Willow says: “No, you’re not Spike?”
She’s standing in front of him, the moon is bright behind her, and she’s holding some glowy sort of crystal thing, and she’s got this curious look on her face.
Or she would be, if she weren’t a mirage.
But she’s absolutely a fucking mirage, so.
“ I’m not the one who’s not the one,” he tells Willow, and clambers up to his feet with a stagger and starts to walk.
“Uh, Spike, what the hell?” the witch says, and walks after him, and grabs his arm.
Mirages don’t usually grab your arm.
But Spike? He grabs arms. Spike grabbed Buffy’s arm and killed Tara, and maybe the witch really is here, here to kill him, for Tara, and he’d deserve it, wouldn’t he? And then the voices are back, they’re grinding in him, mortar and pestle and isn’t he just dust now? Just a powder someone pushed down until it gave?
“You’re not ,” he insists to her again. “And I am, I am, I’m a—do you know what I am?”
Willow’s tongue pokes out of her mouth a little, her eyes are all screwy and confused. “Uh, generally? Vampire on a government-mandated diet. Right now though? You’re pretty much just confusing.”
Spike weighs that a second. “Yeah, alright. That’s fair. Hey, am I close to London? Because Mother’s expecting me.”
Willow’s eyes go all wide and soft.
“Spike? What’s—something happened.”
“Well aren’t we a clever girl,” he tells her.
He wrenches back out of her grip and lands on his arse in the dirt.
Willow reaches a hand out to help him get up. He stares at the way the light bounces off her fingernails, and doesn’t take it.
“Okay,” Willow says. “So I’ve been practicing my intuition? ‘Cause, turns out I wasn’t so much intuiting before as pushing down all my emotions into this big ball of compressed rage? So, with the listening now.”
Spike’s doing lots of little nods. “Yeah, go on.”
“And I’m listening to you, and your aura’s all … Kablooey. That’s not the best description maybe but actually? No, it is. You’re kablooey. You’ve been all kabloo-ed.”
“Right. I’m insane, I’m supposed to not make sense. What’s your excuse, Red?” He clambers up to his feet. “And anyway, lovely to chat, but I’ve gotta be going. Mother’s expecting me.”
“Uh, Spike?”
He stops in his tracks, turns back to her. “ Willow? ”
“Don’t like, take this the wrong way. But isn’t your mother pretty dead? For like, a while now?”
“Your point?”
Willow swallows, and her mouth goes all resolute. “I’m gonna take you to Giles.”
Spike blinks up at her. His mouth feels wet. “What, you think he knows where Mum is?”
“Um. Sure. Yeah. You know that Giles. Always knowing things, and ... learning more things, to also you know, know about! In addition to the things he knew to begin with.”
Spike thinks for a moment. “Good point. Yeah alright, lead the way.”
They walk in silence for a few moments through the trees, when Spike grabs Willow by the hand and yanks her to a stop.
“Yaaagh!” she yelps. “Spike what the fuck?”
“You can’t tell Buffy. That I’m here. Mustn’t know.”
Willow’s eyes get all wet, real quick, the way they do.
“Uh, yeah. I’m pretty much a no-go on the whole talking to Buffy thing these days? So no danger of that. Lots of other dangers though, on account of, well. Me. On account of me being a danger.”
“Right. Good. Makes two of us.”
“Which part?”
Spike just gives her a curious little smile.
And they walk on.
Buffy
It’s a Saturday, and Tara’s gripping onto the ballet barre–looking thing they’ve rolled out into the hallway in the rehab wing, and Xander’s doing that dog-bark-sounding cheer thing that Buffy remembers from football games in her cheerleader days.
Tara inches a tentative step forward, holding onto the railing with all her might, and Xander loses his fucking shit.
“YEAH! Now that’s what I’m talking about, Maclay!”
“Sir?” the nurse says, with a glare that reminds Buffy of Giles. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you keep being disruptive.”
“N-no, it’s okay,” Tara says softly. “I think it’s nice.”
The nurse looks at her curiously, but nods her assent.
“I mean it, Tara. Way to show that bullet wound who’s boss,” Xander continues.
“Pretty sure it’s still the bullet wound?” Tara says, coming to a stop after a few steps forward. To the nurse, she says: “Could I take a break?”
The nurse nods, pulls up a folding chair and helps Tara down into it. “I’ll come back to check on you in a few, okay?”
Once Tara’s settled in her seat, Dawn breaks out the mini bags of Doritos from her backpack.
“Oh my god, Dawnie, you do know it’s possible to leave the house without snacks, right?” Buffy says, reaching for a bag, but Dawn snatches it away.
“Hey, you don’t get to mock my snacks and then also enjoy the snacks. That’s like, rule number one.”
“I thought rule number one was don’t get killed, ” Xander says.
Dawn rolls her eyes. “That’s Scooby Rules. I’m talking Summers Rules.”
“There’s no such thing as Summers Rules,” Buffy insists. “Now gimme. Nobody else even likes Doritos 3D anyway.”
“ … Because they’re disgusting?” Xander says. “And you’re disgusting for liking them, I hope you know that.”
Dawn huffs at Buffy, “You should’ve thought about that before you picked a fight with me.”
“Could I try them?” Tara says.
Dawn hands them over to Tara, a sneering smile thrown in Buffy’s direction.
Tara opens the bag, and passes them directly to Buffy, carefully avoiding Dawns patented how dare you betray me like this face.
“See, Tara likes me,” Buffy gloats, and pops a Dorito in her mouth.
“Tara likes everybody,” Xander points out. “No offense,” he adds, to Tara.
“I don’t like everybody ,” Tara says. There’s a really, really long silence before she comes up with: “I mean, I didn’t like that Warren guy, who shot me? Or um, you know, any of the other people who are always trying to kill us.”
“Damn,” Buffy says. “You are stone cold.”
Tara laughs, and it doesn’t even look like it hurts her that much to do it this time.
“I guess I just, I’ve never seen the point? Holding onto being upset with people, and all. World’s harsh enough. Least we can all do is make it softer where we can.”
Buffy wants to argue with that—she likes her resentments, thank you very much.
But one it’s hard to argue with the girl with the bullet wound.
And two — she has this sinking feeling that Tara’s right, because Tara usually is.
“So,” Xander says. “How ya feeling, Tara?”
She takes a thoughtful bite of her Cool Ranch Dorito.
“Um, you know. Better? I guess. Would be hard to be worse.”
Xander gives her a skeptical look. “Take it from the jinx master himself, you do not wanna say that on a Hellmouth.”
“Did um, did they say when you can go home?” Dawn asks.
“Uh, soon, I think? Or not soon soon, but ...soon.”
Buffy says, “Boy does that not sound like a word anymore.”
Tara continues: “I have to get better at walking and everything? ‘Cause turns out when you do nothing but sit in bed for over a month trying not to die from being shot in the chest, all your muscles atrophy?”
Xander claps her softly on the back. “Yeah, I just hate when that happens.”
Dawn chatters: “But you seem like you’re doing better! I mean, you’re sitting up without help, and you walked so many steps just now, and, and you’re gonna be just like before, really, really soon, I bet. Right?”
“Dawn,” Buffy warns.
“What?” Dawn asks. “I’m not saying anything wrong.”
“These things take time. Tara’s healing at the pace she needs to. Don’t get all rush-y,” Buffy tells her.
“I wasn’t rushing!” Dawn huffs, arms folding.
Buffy tells Tara, “I mean, obviously we want you to, you know, get better as soon as you can. But if that’s slow, or, or if it’s never the same as before—we just want you to be happy. That’s all that matters. So, no need to get all big with the stressing and the second-guessing.”
“Nice rhyme. And no stress,” Tara says. “Besides, Dawnie’s keeping me well-stocked in books. It’s making the time go really quick.”
“I didn’t mean to rush you!” Dawn says. “I just, I miss you being around, and getting to go places with us, and, now that I’m saying it, yeah, that does sound like me rushing you, which I wasn’t trying to do, I swear, and, I’m just—Buffy, can I ask her now?”
Buffy gives her best exasperated sister face. “You know damn well that I have to let you, now that you asked me in front of her.”
“Yuh huh! I’m sneaky like that.”
“Uh, guys?” Tara chimes in. “Ask me what?”
Dawn and Buffy grin at each other, and then at Tara.
“Would you wanna um, move back in?” Dawn asks, her face doing that hopeful if you say no I’ll be totally, inconsolably devasted but don’t let that sway you! thing. “Not, um, that you have to, obviously, uh, if you don’t wanna? But we just figured, you know, when they discharge you? We don’t want you being alone all the time. And we can help take care of you. Not that it’s just for that! We also just miss you. A lot. A lot a lot.”
“A lot,” Buffy nods. “But it’s just if you’re up for it. No pressure. Pressureless, really.”
“You guys,” Tara says, her eyes all misty. “That’s so sweet. I—I’d love to, obviously, I just … well, what about W-Willow?”
A knot hardens in Buffy’s stomach.
“Well, she’s still in England. I talked to Giles last week and he says, you know, that she’s doing really well? But um, she’s still gonna be there, for, you know, a while.”
“Right, I — I figured. Just uh, when she comes back? I … it would be worse, I think, to … to move in and have to l-leave.”
“Hey,” Buffy says, grabbing Tara’s hand. “You’re not going anywhere. And, when Will gets back, whenever that is, we’ll, we’ll deal. We’ll figure something else out, for where she can ... But you’re not getting away from us that easy. She’s not gonna displace you.”
Dawn nods emphatically. “What she said.”
“Okay. Yeah, I’d—I’d love to move back in then,” Tara says, and her misty eyes have given way to real tears now. “I love you guys. Just, you know, if it wasn’t clear.”
Dawn scoots her folding chair over to Tara’s, leans her head so lightly in the crook of Tara’s shoulder.
“We love you too,” she says, and then springs her head up, eyes all manic. “Oh! Oh oh oh oh! We so have to have a party for you! When you’re discharged and can come home.”
“I dunno, Dawnster,” Xander says. “Parties in the Summers residence tend to get a little demony. Or zombie-y. Or just, generally bloodsoaked.”
“Yeah, but it’s tradition! Oh, maybe we can invite demons to the party? So then it’s like, they can’t surprise us by showing up?” Dawn suggests.
Buffy says: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Dawnie, but I’m not exactly the most popular gal with Sunnydale’s infernal crowd. I kinda doubt they’d show. Or, okay, they’d show, but y’know … to kill me.”
Tara says.“I don’t want anybody trying to kill Buffy at my welcome home party? If I get a say in it.”
Buffy continues: “Then again, maybe that’s a good strategy? Like, we invite ‘em all staggered, they show up one by one, and then I’m all wham pow kick —knock the demon population down a few pegs. Right, ‘cause summer’s always quiet anyway, so why not pre-avert some fall apocalypses by making sure they’re too dead to do ‘em. Like okay, I killed these two earthworm-y looking demons last night? You betcha those fuckers are up to no good.”
“That’s species-ist, Buff,” Xander says. “Had no idea you were so anti-earthworm.”
Buffy shudders. “Okay, they were like eight feet long and pink and wriggly. Those. fuckers. are. evil.”
Xander fake-retches. “I stand corrected.”
Dawn frowns at Buffy. “We’re not turning Tara’s welcome-home party into your demon violence palooza.”
“Spoil my fun,” Buffy says, all pouty.
Dawn sticks her tongue out because it’s like, the law for little sisters or something. “And I didn’t mean those demons. I meant obviously, like, nice demons.”
“Oh, right, all the cuddly demons we’re just so buddy-buddy with. How could I forget?” Buffy snarks.
“What about Clem?” Tara asks. “He was such a sweetie at your birthday, it’d be nice to have him around.”
“Oh yeah, Clem!” Buffy says. “Huh, how did I forget him?”
“Clem it is then!” says Xander. “Uh, how would we go about inviting him though? I mean, demons don’t exactly have email … or, do they? They’re getting all kinds of advanced these days.”
“We can just bring an invitation over to his place,” Dawn says. “He’s crashing in Spike’s crypt.”
The knot in Buffy’s stomach tightens again.
“God, how I don’t miss having to talk about that guy,” Xander says.
“Xander,” Dawn says, with a little shake of her head.
Tara asks. “So, we still don’t know what happened? With Spike l-leaving and all.”
Buffy knows what happened. She knows he’s a fucking coward who runs for the high hills with no fucking warning. God, at least every other man who fled town after they broke up had the decency to tell it to her face first.
When she thinks about him this hard bubble of rage spills up in her gut and won’t let up, and that feels good, because it’s as close to hate as she can get, and the hate makes it easier not to care about him.
“No,” Buffy says. ‘We don’t.”
Dawn starts: “He uh … I mean, last anyone saw him, it was after … after I told him, what happened to you? It got kinda intense, I mean—”
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Buffy interrupts, kicking her chair back behind her with a squeak, and moving down the hall.
Which, yeah, that’s exactly her least suave exit of all time, but whatever.
She can’t just sit there and talk about him with them. She can’t. ‘Cause her whole Spike plan is pretty contingent on never talking about him or thinking about him or acknowledging that he was ever here, because she’s got way more important things to do than process that whole mess. And besides. There’s nothing to process.
Which, yeah, is a bald-faced lie, but she’s getting better at saying it to herself.
She just wishes she didn’t care so much. She didn’t think she did— that was the whole point of it, their whole stupid tawdry affair, was that Buffy didn’t care about him.
Couldn’t care about him, and so it didn’t count.
That’s why she could go all raw and unraveled with him, like she needed to, and that’s why she had to end it, why she always would’ve had to end it, eventually, because it didn’t count, didn’t matter, wasn’t real.
And she’s pretty much all about real things now. Taking care of Dawn. Taking care of Xander. Taking care of Tara. Taking care of the Hellmouth. Taking care of herself, occasionally, when she thinks about it and remembers someone should be doing that.
She doesn’t have time to think about him.
Well, she shouldn’t have time to think about him, but somehow she keeps fucking making it.
It’s just—it should have stopped aching by now! All of it. Seeing him on top Anya on that table. Their whole stupid fight where he snapped the bone in her arm and she had to hold herself back from breaking his face in two because there wasn’t time for it. Turning up to his crypt to find Clem in his place. The whole half a summer since then, with nothing, no word, just more rage. It should have stopped aching by now.
But that’s all he ever did, anyway. make her ache. Make her hurt. So good fucking riddance.
And, okay, that’s definitely a bold faced lie. The aching thing. ‘Cause there were moment when, when… there was a long while when…
When she’d had a hole in the middle of her, and it throbbed a little less painful when he was around.
He made it quiet, for a while. He made her feel like maybe she wasn’t broken.
Just for a little bit of it. But it was a good bit.
Fuck, she needs to go kill something. But there’s no time to duck out between now and her shift at the Doublemeat, and it would hurt Tara’s feelings if she went, and then give Dawn all this ammo, later.
Buffy can just hear her now— Do you wanna talk about it? and I know, you’re gonna say you don’t, but you ran out of the room after two seconds of talking about Spike, so it kinda seems like you need to talk about it even if you don’t want to and I’m not leaving until your fess, loser.
She turns on her heel, to head back towards where the others are sitting, and—
“Buff,” Xander says, walking up towards her. “You good?”
“I’m good. I’m fine. I’m fan-fucking-tastic, in fact, and if you’re here to continue our very thrilling Spike chat I just have to say that I’m not even upset about it and if everyone could just stop talking to me about it then I’d be—”
“Uh, woah?” Xander says, holding up his hands like you do at rambunctious horses in movies. “I came out here because the nurse kicked me out. She said I was disrupting the rehab process.”
Buffy feels her face surge all red and hot. “Oh.”
“But since you bring up Spike…”
“No.”
“But Buffy, if you wanna—”
“ No .”
“It’s just whenever he comes up, you get all—”
“Jesus Christ, you’re always first on let’s hate Spike train, so what gives? I thought you’d be on my side here, what with the bitter resenting?”
“Hey, don’t insult me, I am all about bitterly resenting Spike. It’s just, from my vantage the best thing that schmuck ever did was leave town. But you’re clearly pissed that he went away. And you’re my best friend, so I’m gonna put aside for a second that I hate his guts and ask you again: do you wanna talk about it?”
“Schmuck ? ”
“I’ve been marathoning The Nanny on VCR. ‘Cause, you notice how the days are all long and empty these days?”
“What, you too?” Buffy says. “Okay, look, I … appreciate you putting your whole Spike thing aside for a second. But, I mean it, I’ve got nothing to talk about. He left, he’s gone, I’m over it.”
“That’s not your over-it face.”
“It so is. Look, I’m focused on other stuff right now, okay? I … I’ve got the … the Doublemeat, right? And, and taking care of Tara, and getting the house ready for her? And, and spending time with Dawn and you. And that’s what I care about right now. Well, okay, maybe care is a strong word for the DMP. But the rest of—I’m focused on my family right now. Not my shifty vampire ex who left town—and God , how wiggy is it that I have two of those?”
“Hey, so you fell for a demon with a body count in the thousands whose face goes all freaky when they’re in game mode. Who among us hasn’t?”
Buffy squeezes his hand. “So, you haven’t heard from Anya lately?”
Xander’s mouth goes all twinge-y.
“Uh, I thought I saw her at the grocery store the other day? By the ice cream. And a few weeks before that, she was going into a movie when I was coming out of one. But I think she’s, well. Vengeance-demon-ing’s a pretty involved gig. I’m sure she’s in like, Paraguay right now or something, turning some lady’s husband into a giant goat, or something. Keeps you busy.”
“God, do you think we’ll ever have anything normal? Or are we just gonna be freaky demonfuckers forever?” Buffy muses.
“Okay, I am begging you to never say ‘demonfucker’ again.”
Before Buffy can answer, Dawn swings around the corner, all giddy. “Guys! Guys you gotta come right now—Tara just made it to like, the end of the barre. She’s on fire!”
Buffy and Xander share a grin, and tumble along after Dawn to cheer Tara on.