Chapter 28
Author's Notes: A/N: I think, after the last chapter, a little clarification is needed…
Kendra has NOT been called—I realized upon taking this venue that there were already loopholes, so I decided to rather cruelly yank the obvious loopholes away. Paimon explained this as follows:
“Oh, the Powers have certainly given me a run. Even arranged to have the poor girl die last year so that her Calling would be passed on before I could collect. It didn’t take, I’m afraid. As long as little Buffy lives…as long as she pumps her human blood and beats her human heart and lives her little human life, our agreement holds higher value than the line of potentials waiting after her. The girl they tried to Call…well, she’ll die. As will every other girl with an inner daimon. The line will cease to exist. I’m sorry to say… To think…had her little friend not revived her, he might have saved the world.” - Echoes, Chapter 27.
Meaning his deal with Buffy has the Powers scrambling around to find a loophole themselves—ergo, she died in Season 1, in my ‘verse, for this very reason: to preserve the Slayer line. Paimon’s plans were not averted because Xander was there to save her, and since Paimon’s agreement with Buffy has essentially placed the Slayer line in his hands, even if he hasn’t collected yet, their agreement holds higher value than the natural order because Buffy has broken the natural order.
I hope that makes sense. I was rather discouraged when so many people believed Kendra was the answer…of course, it is my fault if I didn’t explain it well enough. My betas, however, didn’t seem to think the language was all that ambiguous…or if they did, they were too kind to say anything.
Secondly, and this is a little less surprising, many people seem to believe Buffy will turn into a vampire to escape her fate. I only ask you to keep the following in mind: in this ‘verse, I’ve already established that Buffy, and indeed all slayers have daimons inside them—daimons from which they draw upon their power. And as Whedonverse has established, to become a vampire, the soul is removed and a demon invades the intended’s body. Picture what happened to Angel in S.2’s The Dark Age when he had two demons in his body. And I believe I’ll leave it at that.
That being said…I am incredibly glad that so many people are interested in speculating on what might occur and what I might throw at the characters. I know I’ve displayed a penchant for vamp!Buffy fics in the past, so I can definitely see where people would come to the above conclusion…however, in the rules I’ve established and in the Slayer lore I’ve created, a simple vamping isn’t going to do the trick.
Thank you so much to everyone who’s stuck with me through this—and please, don’t let the above make you think I don’t like the speculation. I do. I truly do. I just needed to respond to a few things and, in doing so, keep the mystery in. Believe me…all will be addressed.
Thank you to Tami, Megan, ElizaBuffy, yutamiyu, and Mari for being the bestest betas a girl could ask for.
And a special thanks to Shauna, who made my day with her review.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Don’ bogart the whisky.”
Giles arched a brow. “It’s my whisky, I believe I’ll…” He frowned in confusion. “…I’ll drink as much as I please.”
“I want to get so bloody sloshed I can’t feel feelings anymore.” Spike pressed his palm hard against his brow, a long shudder tearing down his back. “Till all of this becomes nothin’ more than a fuzzy memory.” He sighed, trying, to little avail, to hide how hard he was trembling. “Think they make anythin’ that strong?”
The watcher smiled indulgently, poured a moderate amount of auburn-colored liquid into a tumbler and slid the serving down the length of his kitchen counter. “If they have, I haven’t found it yet,” he replied, taking a liberal swig directly from the bottle. A quiet minute passed between them. “Are you going to tell her?”
“Tell her?”
There was no question to what Giles referred, but neither wanted to say it.
Neither wanted to say anything.
Spike tossed back his shot. Giles refilled it. They drank.
“It seems too bloody impossible that I was relieved when she told me,” the watcher mused. “I was afraid it would be her soul.”
“Her soul?”
“The price. I thought her soul was the price. Apparently, though, slayer souls hold little to no value in hell dimensions.” Giles sighed and ran a hand through his graying hair. “I was so relieved when she told me that. When she told me the price was her strength. I thought…”
“You thought the demon would smile an’ blink an’ be okay with somethin’…simple?” Spike drew in a breath. “This isn’ reincarnation, Rupes. This isn’ jus’…stickin’ my essence in a new body. Puttin’ her soul…in a new…it isn’t that. He took us right from where we were an’ plopped us here. He jus’ shot us into the future.”
“I understand. And…and I knew there would be repercussions beyond the obvious. Of course there would be. But…” Giles sighed again and shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought. Perhaps her…her powers would be passed on. Perhaps…I don’t know. God, I don’t know. But I should have. I should have known the second she said it. The instant she told me, I should’ve known.”
There was nothing to say to that—nothing which would provide comfort, anyway, thus Spike remained silent. Truly, he didn’t understand how the watcher had missed it, either. He didn’t know how anyone so close to the Slayer could be so oblivious as to her origins to keep from connecting the dots. To keep from realizing the obvious conclusion. The only possible outcome.
Buffy’s death…and the domino effect it would have on the world.
Spike scoffed. Bugger the world. He didn’t care. If Buffy died, he died. It was as simple as that.
Simple to him, anyway. If there was no cure—if Paimon wouldn’t release Buffy from her debt or accept a different payment in her stead—then their options stood at a dismal two. Either the world turned into hell and Buffy died, or Buffy died so the world could live.
Either way, Buffy died. Either way, he lost her forever.
Because she’d gambled herself. She’d gambled herself for him.
“Will the Council try to off her?” Spike asked solemnly.
Giles blinked and glanced up. “What?”
“The Council. They won’ see her as a bloody person, will they? They’ll find out an’ send a li’l army of slayer-assassins to kill her. Kill her so they can save the world.” His demon roared at the very thought. “I tell you now…they try to touch her, an’—”
“The Council doesn’t know, nor will they.” Giles swallowed hard. “Whatever is decided will be decided by us. Not Quentin Travers.”
Spike choked on his third shot glass, his eyes going wide and the previously-sedate screaming in his head roaring toward another explosion of fury. “Travers?” he rasped. “There’s a Travers in—”
“Kenneth Travers’ great-great-great-great-nephew, if my sources are correct.” Giles’s brow furrowed. “Give or take a great. I don’t particularly care to do the math right now. Yes…Quentin is…a very senior member of the Watcher’s Council. And while the stories Buffy told me of his ancestor aren’t entirely reassuring, I don’t think Quentin has the same…ruthlessness as—”
“His name is Travers. That’s all I need—”
“He will not be informed.”
Spike’s brows shot upward incredulously. “You mean he won’ already know?”
“Your and Buffy’s history was erased from history books, Spike. The history didn’t reappear until her memories were restored. And even so, the passages allude to nothing of an unnatural trade.” Giles snorted ineloquently, his glasses at last whipped from his nose and into the waiting hem of his dress-shirt. “Paimon undoubtedly wanted the Watcher’s Council left completely unaware of what had taken place.”
The vampire swallowed. Hard. “Our history…it’s there now?”
“It lists you as Buffy’s killer.” Giles held up a hand before he could scream his objection. “Kenneth Travers had nothing to do with that, though from what Buffy has told me, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had. As it was, he was—”
“—dead,” Spike agreed softly, his breath catching. “She…”
“It was self-defense.”
“She told you?”
A sad, gentle smile stretched Giles’s mouth, his eyes distancing with a sort of fatherly love which had the vampire’s admiration for the watcher increasing by leaps and bounds. This was the sort of bloke she should have had all along. The kind of man who viewed Buffy as a human first; a human with human thoughts, human feelings, and above all, human value. To him, she wasn’t a disposable weapon with arms and legs. She was his child. She was his daughter.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been a cakewalk in the eighteenth century, but Spike had the hunch that, had Rupert Giles been alive, things would have turned out differently.
“She’s told me many things,” he said gently. “When she couldn’t talk to you, she talked to me.”
A dark shiver commanded him. “I wasted so much time,” he murmured, his eyes falling shut, a powerful wave of self-hatred washing over his tired body. “I should’ve known her immediately.”
“Paimon decreed it otherwise. You broke through. That much is a victory.”
“I jus’ found her again. This can’t…” He swallowed hard. “This can’t be it. I can’t lose her. I can’t.”
“I was determined to find a loophole,” Giles murmured, taking another swig of the whisky. “I was so bloody certain there was one. Otherwise…God, why go to the trouble?”
Spike glanced up. “Huss’at?”
“There’s something we’re missing. There has to be.”
“How you figure?”
“Paimon had nothing to personally gain from keeping you and Buffy apart,” Giles explained. “And yet, he went to such lengths. He put you in the arms of another woman.” Spike winced; Giles ignored him, too engrossed in his revelation. His revelation which only revealed things that were already known. “He ensured Buffy had a healthy, happy upbringing…best to his ability without bending the sacred decree of freewill. He couldn’t keep her father from leaving her mother, of course, but he could keep them alive. And he ensured I was the one who was here…to be her watcher.”
Spike nodded slowly, his brain hurting to piece together fact with knowledge, which proved difficult as his thoughts were muddied with grief-stricken outrage. It probably didn’t help that he was planning on drinking Rupert under the table, either. “Doesn’ rightly make sense,” he agreed, though he had the hunch he was just speaking to avoid the finality of silence.
Not that it worked.
A heavy sigh rolled off Spike’s tongue. Every cell in his body commanded him to go upstairs and bury himself in Buffy’s arms. God, Buffy. His precious Slayer. She’d traveled centuries, defied logic and reason, and she’d done so with the same sweet innocence with which she’d regarded anything and everything she approached. If only he could run back to her—blink himself three centuries in the past and stop her before she made the fool’s bargain. Beg her not to bring him back only to kill him all over again.
“We are all fools in love,” Giles said bitterly.
Spike glanced up. “What?”
“The bastard…”
The vampire frowned in confusion but didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I said,” Giles continued, meeting Spike’s inquisitive eyes. “Earlier tonight…before I tried summoning Paimon. Before you came downstairs. The wanker threw it back at me.”
The implication left Spike’s insides frozen. “He’s been lurkin’?”
“No. No, he’s not…he’s not of this world, Paimon. There’s a reason he has to be summoned. He needs human blood to ground him.”
“Then how’d he manage to drop in without the fancy words an’ all?”
Giles frowned thoughtfully. “To make us believe he doesn’t need it. I think he wants us to think he’s lurking…to keep us from trying to find an answer. If we think he’s listening, we’ll be discouraged from trying to find an alternative solution for the knowledge that he’ll know what we’re doing and will stop it. He said he likes to keep close before collecting what he is owed…but he can’t keep close. He’s a thing of Hell. If he had the sort of power to keep constant vigilance on human dealings, the world would be lost in never-ending chaos.”
“More so than it already is, you mean.”
“Yes, more than anything we could ever imagine.”
The clouds behind Spike’s eyes rolled and thunder echoed in the corners of his mind. “Feature this, Watcher,” he said slowly. “The price is in the bag, yeah?”
Giles nodded, though his expression was dark with confusion.
“Why even pretend to lurk? What’s this bloke figure he has to gain from makin’ ominous visits? He’s learned I can’t lose her…that I…” Spike’s voice crackled and his eyes misted again. He couldn’t let his thoughts take that path. He couldn’t. If he started thinking about the weight of everything in the balance—the girl he loved whose body would be ripped in half in less than a week’s time—he would be too shattered with grief to proceed onward. And he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t concede the battle just yet.
He couldn’t give up when the next few days meant everything. Meant the line between ecstasy and devastation. Between warmth and cold. Between life and death.
For them both.
“He wants us to choose,” Giles said slowly. “He put out an impossible solution. Kill Buffy…or the world dies.”
“I don’ get that.”
“If Paimon collects Buffy’s power—”
“She an’ all the li’l potentials kick it. I get that. I jus’ don’t understand why.” Spike shook his head hard, blinking his eyes closed to fight off an incursion of tears. “If she learns that, you know what she’s gonna ask me to do, don’ you?”
Giles’s face drained of color. “It’s…it’s something we should…consider.”
“Don’t.”
“Spike, I—”
“Don’t!” he roared, the tumbler plummeting to the floor with a heartbreaking shatter. “You don’ get to do that. You don’ get to talk about killing her as though it’s an option.”
The watcher drew in a sharp breath. “If Paimon collects her power—”
A shrill laugh tore through his lips. “Yeah. I got the memo, Rupes. Like a string of Christmas lights, yeah? Take Buffy out an’ the whole line bites the dust. Can you imagine how much I care?”
“Without the Slayer as the Earth’s protector,” Giles said softly, his voice tempered though torn in that gray area between hysterics and reason, “everything will fall to chaos.”
“If Buffy dies, I die, an’ I don’ give a flying fuck about the rest of you.”
“You would give up so easily?”
Spike scoffed again. “Easily?” he demanded. “’ve already died once for her. I died so she wouldn’t. Now we’re here, an’ you’re tellin’ me that once she’s gone, Earth becomes a demonic romp room an’ the ones who don’ die will suffer. Sounds a lot like Hell. But I gotta tell you…if I’m gonna be in Hell, I want the real thing. Not some pansy-arse knock-off.” He shrugged. “Nothin’ to keep me here, near as I can figure it.”
There was a long pause. “Spike,” Giles said softly. “She wouldn’t want to be the reason the world ends.”
“An’ she’s not gonna be.”
“Spike—”
“You’re really doin’ it, aren’t you? You’re tellin’ me I should kill the woman I love—”
“For the betterment of—”
The fuzzy feelings Spike had entertained for the watcher just minutes before evaporated, and the demon tore forward with fury. He felt his fangs descend, a monster’s growl ripping through the air. “You gormless, yellow-bellied git,” he roared. “’F you come near her, I’ll—”
And then something amazing happened.
Giles burst into tears.
Spike didn’t know why it took him by such surprise. It wasn’t as though he knew the plonker well enough to peg his every emotion, but hard, bone-crushing sobs were possibly the last thing he would have expected. And yet here he was; standing awkwardly with his fangs itching for something to chew on, and his target had melted without forewarning.
“I—I—I can’t…” the librarian sputtered, shaking his head, the handkerchief in his pocket shooting to his eyes to catch his tears as they fell. “I can’t…”
Spike exhaled slowly, his anger subsiding. “Rupert…”
“I can’t…but she…”
“I can’t, either.”
“If we don’t, the world ends.”
“My world’s ending anyway. I don’ rightly give a toss about what’s left over.” A meaningful beat passed. “Do you?”
A heartbreaking laugh wracked the watcher’s shoulders. “Honestly?” he repeated, speaking into his handkerchief. “No.”
Spike offered a half-smile. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“There has to be a way. The world is not based on absolutes. There are always loopholes. Always.” Giles blew his nose miserably, his red-rimmed eyes slowly trailing upward. “There’s something we’re missing.”
“You said that already.”
“Well, it’s as true now as it was five minutes ago. Paimon…he…he went to so much trouble to keep…to keep you apart.” The worry lines in his face deepened with thought. “There’s something about…your proximity to each other that has him concerned.”
Spike swallowed hard but forced himself not to jump. “How d’you figure?” he asked cautiously.
“He came to her only after she remembered. He told her the timing wasn’t what he wanted, but he was left without option.” A beat. “Because of you.”
The watcher met his eyes again and logic faded away. The room fell silent again, the air growing so thick Spike nearly choked. Giles was talking without words and the message was deafening. And in that fraction of a second, they understood each other.
“It’s never worked,” Spike said. “Never.”
“I know.”
“A slayer has never survived—”
“I know.”
“It’ll kill her.”
“I know.” Giles sighed heavily and wiped his eyes. “I just…I wanted to…to put it out there.”
Spike offered a numb nod but didn’t say anything. His mind was with his own words.
It’ll kill her.
It was true. It would kill her. And even though Buffy’s death lurked around every corner as it was, it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take: that just because Paimon had gone to such lengths to keep them apart, this was the answer to saving her. The gamble wasn’t worth it—not worth her life. Not unless there were no other options.
And while he knew he should banish the thought entirely, a lingering voice remained.
It’ll kill her.
Death remained behind every door. And even if they didn’t choose which venue to take, it was still coming for them.
For her.
For Buffy.
It was coming and nothing was going to alter its course.
*~*~*
She’d been awake a long while when he finally returned. And while she hadn’t heard everything, she knew he and Giles had been fighting.
And crying.
Over her. Because of what she’d done. The choices she made.
It amazed her that Spike could tell her he loved her when all she did was cause him misery. The first time with Kenneth and now this. This granting him his memories when she should have let him live without the pain of knowing what they had. Giving him a glimpse of the happiness they had once shared and making him think it was for keeps.
It was a lie she’d believed as well. A lie grief had led her to believe.
It was a long time ago, she told herself.
Knowledge provided little solace. Yes, it was a long time ago. Nearly three centuries ago.
It might as well have been yesterday.
Buffy didn’t move when she felt him approach the threshold. She didn’t move when he lingered in the doorway. She didn’t move even as she felt his eyes soaking her in. She didn’t move.
She feared if she moved, all she would do was sob. And Spike didn’t need that.
Not when she was the one who had wounded him.
It seemed forever passed before he exhaled and moved forward. Before she felt the dip in the bed and the sweet comfort of his arms wrapping around her body. He pressed his lips against her shoulder, his chest at her back. She felt his breath tickle her hair as he entertained oxygen he didn’t need.
For long seconds, she thought he would speak. He did not.
He just held her in his arms.
Though for the way he trembled, she knew it was she who was holding him.
TBC
<< ChaptersStory Index1. Chapter One2. Chapter Two3. Chapter Three4. Chapter Four5. Chapter Five6. Chapter Six7. Chapter Seven8. Chapter Eight9. Chapter Nine10. Chapter Ten11. Chapter Eleven12. Chapter Twelve13. Chapter Thirteen14. Chapter Fourteen15. Chapter Fifteen16. Chapter Sixteen17. Chapter Seventeen18. Chapter Eighteen19. Chapter Nineteen20. Chapter Twenty21. Chapter Twenty-One22. Chapter Twenty-Two23. Chapter Twenty-Three24. Chapter Twenty-Four25. Chapter Twenty-Five26. Chapter Twenty-Six27. Chapter Twenty-Seven28. Chapter Twenty-Eight29. Chapter Twenty-Nine >>
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