Summary: Spike stops a warlock's spell, inadvertantly getting himself into deep trouble. Will Buffy be able to accept the changes in him? And what are they going to do about Glory?
Rating: PG-13
The next morning, Buffy sat with Giles at the dining room table, discussing what had happened. "When you called last night, I began to look for any significant events," Giles said. "It seems Spike may have saved us from another apocalypse."
Buffy's eyebrows shot up. "You mean he might have actually done something good for a change?"
"Yes, well, it's possible," the Watcher acknowledged. "The ritual he most likely stopped was something similar to the Mayor's Ascension. Only worse, since it most likely would have opened the Hellmouth."
Buffy stared at him. "Why did I not know about this?"
Giles had the good grace to look a bit sheepish. "Well, no one in their right mind would perform the ritual at all. The last person who tried did so nearly a millennia ago, and he died horribly."
"So we're dealing with some insane-o warlock," she muttered, "on top of a crazy Hellgod. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Sunnydale?"
Giles cleaned his glasses and gave a slight sigh. "Actually, the real damage has already been done, or I should say, averted. The ritual can only be performed at a certain conjunction of time and place. It won't be possible to attempt it again for another fifty years or so."
"And by that time, we won't have to worry about it anymore," she finished, and then looked up as her Slayer-senses tingled. Spike stood in the doorway, looking-well, she wasn't sure better was the right word, but his right eye was actually open and the wounds on his chest had scabbed over.
Her Watcher turned around to see what she was staring at, and his eyes widened as he saw the vampire. "Spike. Good Lord. Buffy told me you'd been badly hurt, but-" He broke off. "You had better sit," he finally said, and watched as Spike obediently limped over to one of the chairs.
"If you want a better look, just say so, Watcher," Spike rasped, catching Giles staring at the marks on his chest.
Buffy realized with a very sick feeling in her stomach that what she had thought were just random cuts had some sort of pattern. Needing to get out of there, she took the less disgusting option. "There's more blood if you need it," she offered, rather sweetly.
The vampire looked up at her with some surprise, both at the offer and the generous tone. "Yeah. Thanks." There was a moment as they shared a glance and then Buffy left to get Spike's blood, letting Giles get a better look at the vampire's lacerated chest by himself. In the kitchen, she took a deep breath as she leaned on the counter. Her attitude had taken a turn during the night, as she'd thought about Spike's condition as well as what he had told her mother. But there was something he hadn't said, and that something was bothering her immensely. He hadn't told Joyce why he had been so bent on stopping the lunatic warlock, other than the fact that she had enough on her plate with Glory. That might have been true enough, but the Spike she knew wouldn't have cared one way or another. She shook her head. Trying to figure him out would only give her a headache.
When she got back into the dining room, Giles was making notes on the markings on the vampire's chest, and Spike was looking none too pleased with the situation. "Can you tell me anything about what he did to you?" Giles asked, hurriedly finishing up his transcription.
"Sure," Spike replied, taking the blood from the Slayer with a grateful nod. "Bloke nailed me to the wall before I knew anyone was even in my crypt, he carved up my chest a bit, and then he left me hanging. End of story."
"I hardly think that's the end of it," the Watcher protested. "These aren't simply random cuts. There's a meaning to them, and-"
"Pain," Spike snarled. "That's the meaning, Watcher." He quickly drained the blood. "Look, I stopped the bloody bastard from endin' the world and all. Can we leave it at that?"
"How do we know he's not going to return?" Giles protested. "If he's as powerful as you've led me to believe, this could prove difficult and especially dangerous since the Glory problem has not yet been resolved."
"Not my problem," the vampire replied bluntly. "Besides, he's not comin' back. He came into town for the ceremony, I bollocksed it up, he tortured me, he left."
"Are you sure he's not coming back?" Buffy asked, her eyebrows raised. "Because if you're wrong, you're putting yourself and the rest of us in danger."
"It's done," he nearly yelled in return, and if the Slayer wasn't mistaken, there were tears in his eyes. "He's satisfied, or at least he bloody well should be. There's not a lot left for him to do." And with that, he limped back down to the basement.
Buffy was about to follow when she felt a hand on her arm, and she looked over to see her mother standing there. "I'll talk to him," Joyce said gently.
Spike sat down on the cot with a muffled thump and cursed his temper. If he could just hold it together for a little longer he would be able to leave. And then go somewhere and sit very, very quietly for a long while. He was exhausted, he hurt, and he couldn't get the images out of his mind. All those people who had paraded in front of him for days, he wasn't sure for how long, as he'd been trapped in his own mind, pinned to the wall. For a while he'd even believed what they'd been trying to tell him: there was nothing good about his life. Of course, waking up, he'd realized that it was pretty much true. That had been a disappointment.
Funny that it hadn't ever occurred to him before that his life was a sad series of failures. He'd liked being a vampire. Hell, he still liked being a vampire, but there were things-He had been pathetic as a human, he'd known that already of course, but he was pathetic as a vampire too.
"Are you all right?" Joyce asked, startling him out of his thoughts.
"Fine," he mumbled. "I've told them all I'm going to."
She smiled at his stubbornness, as though she were humoring him. Which she was, of course. Joyce was a mother, first and foremost, and she knew how to get answers out of unresponsive children. Not that Spike was a child, or that she always succeeded with either of her daughters, but she had impressive range of arsenal. "Why don't you tell me?" she asked.
Spike looked at her in surprise. "Huh?"
"Why don't you tell me?" she repeated patiently. "I'll tell them whatever you'd like me to."
He stared at her, wondering if he should take her seriously. "You're not going to go away until I do," he said suspiciously.
"Probably not," she admitted cheerfully.
Spike wasn't used to admitting defeat, certainly wasn't used to admitting it to a human, but he was tired, and he hurt. His very soul was bruised, never mind that he didn't have one. Or maybe he should say his heart had been bruised, even though it didn't beat. "Tell the Watcher that the ritual he used was the Blood of the Victims. He'll know what it is, and it'll tell him why that wanker's not comin' back."
She left then, as he knew she would, and he lay back down on the cot, wanting to save his strength. He would need to leave soon, before he could screw this whole thing up any more than he had already.
~~~~~
"Okay," Xander said skeptically. "What you're saying is that this ritual makes a person relive every bad thing they've done from the point of view of the person they did it to. I fail to see how that's a bad thing."
Anya glared at her boyfriend. She had known exactly what Giles was talking about the minute he named the ritual, and they were the only two people who seemed to have any understanding at all of what it entailed. And he wasn't listening to her. "No one in their right mind performs the Blood of the Victims," she said for the fifth time. "It's the only curse forbidden to vengeance demons."
"And it's forbidden for Watchers as well," Giles said tiredly. Once he'd discovered what Spike had been intent upon hiding, he'd felt much better. No doubt the vampire was right about the warlock leaving town. No one stuck around after cursing someone like that.
"It's fair play, though," Xander protested. "It's giving them a taste of their own medicine. What's so wrong about that?"
"You are so dense!" Anya exclaimed. "You don't get it, Xander. I told you. It's not just everything you've done, it's everything that's been done to you, too. Think of the absolute worst moment of your life. I mean the worst."
The first thought, and the least embarrassing, was when he'd had to stake Jesse. From the look on his face, Anya knew he was thinking of something bad, and she went on. "Then imagine you had to relive that moment and every other horrible moment over and over again, an infinite number of times, until you couldn't even remember being happy." When he paled, the ex-demon knew he'd gotten it.
"Anya has hit it," Giles admitted. "Actual experiences take much longer than their memories. The ritual traps the victims inside their own minds and forces them to relive their worst moments over and over again. While it was first created to punish those who had committed a crime like murder, it was soon being used even for petty revenge, and that's when they discovered that it wasn't just the crimes you committed, it was also all the horrors that had been perpetrated against you. Any number of people went mad."
"Okay, but why can't Watchers do the ritual thingy?" Buffy asked. She'd been listening to the whole explanation, uncharacteristically silent, still trying to figure out what was going on with Spike.
Giles began to rub his glasses. "The head of the Council performed the curse on a vampire who had murdered a number of people. It was done as an experiment, because they wanted to know what would happen. The vampire went crazy and killed itself, but a member of its family went and performed the same curse on the Watcher. Because of the nature of the spell, to make one relive all the crimes, he relived not only all of his, but also all of the vampire's he'd cursed, since that was one of his crimes against another. He died, but not before the Council learned a valuable lesson and forbade its usage again."
"And that's why vengeance demons won't do it either," Anya said smugly. "You do it one time, and it's that much easier for anybody to turn the tables on you."
Buffy frowned. "So you're saying that the people that had this done to them went crazy?"
"That's one response," Giles replied. "Sometimes they killed themselves, others seem to have an easier time handling it."
"So Spike's not going to go crazy," she stated.
Anya shrugged. "He probably would have already gone nuts."
"There's something that I don't understand though," Xander said. "Why would Spike even try to stop this guy in the first place? What's in it for him?"
That was the question, Buffy thought later as she walked home. As she walked by Spike's cemetery, she made a quick detour to his crypt. Why had Spike gone after the warlock when he didn't have to? Talking about the timing of it all, from what the vampire had told Giles, there had been a day or two at least when he could have told her what he'd done, tried to garner brownie points, but he hadn't. And from what he'd said, he'd spent at least five days on that wall, maybe six. Even if he hadn't planned on getting caught, he had taken care of a potentially dangerous enemy, with apparently no thought of recompense. It made no sense.
She paused once she'd gotten into his crypt, realizing suddenly that she really didn't want to go looking for a clean set of clothing for him. Who knew what she'd find? But she saw the duster where it lay discarded on the stone bier, and refused to think about why she was even doing this for him.
The house was quiet when she got home, and Buffy figured that her mom and Dawn were already in bed. Opening the door to the basement slowly to avoid the squeaky hinge, she stepped softly down the stairs. She could see that the cot was empty immediately, and she called out quietly. "Spike?"
Silence met her question, her only response was a slight shifting from a corner, and she could see him suddenly. It seemed impossible that a man who was so bright, so fair could blend so well in the darkness, vampire or no. "I brought your coat."
He uncurled himself from the tight ball he was sitting in and stepped out towards her. "Yeah? Thanks." The coat hung limply from his hand once he'd taken it, and he seemed to be forcing himself to move, to even speak to her. "I'll be gone by morning."
"What?" Buffy asked incredulously. "Why? You're not in any shape to-"
He pulled his coat on wearily. "I'll be fine, Slayer. Doesn't matter anyway. Not now."
Buffy bit her lip. "Spike, I know there's something that you're not telling me, and I want the rest of it."
"Slayer-"
"So here's the deal," she continued, as though she hadn't heard him. "We go to your crypt, you get clean clothes, and then we go to the Bronze where you explain to me why you'd even want to take on a warlock in the first place."
Spike wanted to tell her to bugger off. He was not in the mood for any of this, and yet it didn't seem like she was going to give him a choice. "Fine."
They walked to his crypt in silence, the night settling in around them with its usual sounds. The wind and the crickets played their symphony, and Buffy wondered idly what it would be like to walk the darkness without fear. Without wondering what lay in the shadows. What it would be like if Spike were simply a man she knew, rather than a vampire she hated. She clamped down on that thought quickly, having no idea where it had come from.
When they arrived at their destination, Spike looked at her and said curtly, "Wait here."
Stung by his tone, and never liking imperatives, she asked, "Why should I?"
"Because there's blood all over in there, Slayer, and since you probably don't want to watch me change, there's no point you following me in," he explained patiently, and then ducked in the door.
Buffy stayed, but only because she realized that he had a point and because she didn't really want to go inside. It wasn't like she was actually following Spike's directions. And then, just a few minutes later he came out. The shirt he wore was a button-down, and for once it was buttoned, probably because it wouldn't rub against his chest quite so much. But the black jeans and duster were firmly in place, and he was even lighting up a cigarette, so he really was back to his normal, annoying self. Unless you caught the slight tremor of his hands, or you knew that for Spike's hair to be anything other than slicked down was unusual in the extreme. But Buffy was intent upon answers, not on the psychological state of her erstwhile ally, and she didn't notice. Spike, for his part, was grateful.
They maintained their silence all the way to the Bronze, and neither could help remembering what had happened between them the last time they were here together. The circumstances were the same to a large extent; Buffy wanted answers from Spike again. On the other hand, Spike knew now what he should have known then: she believed him beneath her. And he was.
Buffy managed to snag a table in an out-of-the-way corner, where hopefully they wouldn't be interrupted. Without preamble, she said, "Spill."
"What do you want to know, Summers?" he asked tiredly. There was little snark in his tone, unlike last time. He was the one beaten and confused; she the one on solid ground.
She stared at him, and her voice was hard as steel when she said, "I want to know why, Spike. Why you'd even risk yourself for something like this."
"Did Giles tell you what the key ingredient for the spell was?" he asked, almost hopefully. She raised a skeptical eyebrow, and didn't respond, knowing by now that to ask would be to feed his ego. "Blood. Blood of an innocent, to be specific," the vampire said. "And only one way to make sure he couldn't use it."
"You drank the sacrifice?" Buffy asked, horrified.
Spike shrugged, nonchalantly. "'Course. How else am I gonna get human blood, Slayer, with this bloody chip in my brain? So, free meal and a chance to bugger someone else. What more reason would I need?"
But Buffy wasn't buying it. Maybe there had been something special about the ritual sacrifice, maybe all Spike had wanted was a spot of violence before bedtime and a good meal. But he could get blood at Willy's if he wanted it that badly. He could even steal it from the hospital. No, there was something else going on here, and she wanted to know what it was. "All right. Now you can tell me the real reason."
"Buffy-" All pretense was gone, both knew.
"Spike." She was implacable.
He met her eyes, and in their depths she could see the truth, the burning of emotion that had, perhaps, been there all along. It was impossible. "No," she said firmly. "Oh, no. There's no way."
"Fine," he grated out, standing to leave. Spike didn't want to be there anymore. He didn't want to be with her, the girl who had managed to turn his unlife upside down with a punch and a kick. Suddenly, he didn't want to hear what he knew was coming. 'I hate you, Spike. It'll never be you, Spike.' What he wanted was to get away, lick his wounds, and figure out the best way to leave Sunnyhell behind him.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
He rounded on her, snarling, blue eyes sparking yellow. "I'm getting the bloody hell out of here and leavin' you alone, Slayer. Isn't that what you wanted? You don't want to know, and I don't really want to tell you, so it works out for both of us now, yeah?"
"Wait." Buffy thought furiously. If Spike thought he was in love with her-if he was obsessed with her-it could get dangerous. She needed to know the depth of his obsession, and what he was planning on doing about it, besides trying to get himself killed. She needed to make sure he wasn't going to put her family in danger. "We never had this conversation."
"Huh?" he asked, not understanding, and not sure he cared to.
Buffy motioned for him to sit. "If we have this conversation, it never happened. No one ever knows, nothing is ever mentioned, and we never bring it up again."
Spike eyed her suspiciously, and then gingerly sat down again, still not sure he should be staying. "Fine. I-" he broke off, and then finished, "I don't want to see you dead anymore. Can we leave it at that?"
For a moment Buffy was about ready to get up and pound it out of him, to make him admit, in words, what he felt. But something stopped her. "Alright. That's why you took care of the warlock?"
"Yeah," he said, no longer meeting her gaze. "You had enough to deal with in the Hellbitch, I figured I'd cut you a break." He laughed ruefully. "You weren't supposed to find out."
Buffy let that thought sink in for a minute, and then asked, "What changed, Spike? You hate me."
He shrugged gracefully. Even torn up, he moved like the fighter he was. "Dunno. Just did. Look, Buffy, I'm tired, and you know now. There's no point in goin' over it anymore."
She hesitated and then nodded reluctantly. "You're right. You know that-"
"I know." He looked at her full in the face. "Please. Don't say it."
"Okay." She watched him leave, and felt as though she were still missing something very important.
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