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A/N: Sorry to anyone who found
chapter 5 confusing. It was a pain to write as well, but the idea was
that because of the spell Buffy was experiencing Spike's dreams as if
she were Spike. So she was quite often "seeing" or "talking to" herself
which was all a bit weird. It took about four passes through to try to
get the pronouns vaguely consistent all the way through.
Spike in his dream could watch the
Buffy in his dream, bring Dawn down from the tower, because killing Doc
the night before meant he wasn't there to start the sacrifice. Just one
of the ways that Spike did something smarter and saved Dawn, and Buffy's
consciousness saw it all from his viewpoint.
Hope that helps clear things
up.
Chapter 6 - Spike Brain, Brain of Spike
Saturday, May 4th, 2002
'Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bloody bitch!'
Spike pulled a pack of cigarettes and his lighter from
underneath the corner of his pillow. Flicking the pack open, he pursed
his lips around one of the exposed butts, pulling it from the packet.
A brief blue-orange flicker of flame provided unnecessary illumination
as he indulged one of his rapidly dwindling number of vices.
It was still only just after full dark. He'd got back
to the crypt before sundown, as soon as the sun was low enough in the sky to let him flit from one patch of shade to another. He'd cast
the spell straight away and gone directly to bed in an effort to make
up for the absence of sleep the previous night. An hour later, he was
awake again.
'All that bloody bitch's fault... unless of course you
believe in karma, in which case it would be all my fault for how I treated
Harm, and I'm still due a staking.' He picked up his jeans from the
floor and pulled them on, rummaging in a casket on the floor for a clean
T-shirt, shirt and socks.
'And, if she is a bitch, whose fault is that? God
knows she had her moments, like in that alley... "beneath me", but she was
never the Wicked Witch of the West before. So if she's turned into superbitch,
it's no more than you deserve. If you'd kept your promise... Anyway, she's
your superbitch, so what are you complaining about?
'Cause she isn't, not really, and even if she was
I'd still rather never have her and see her happy, like she was before
Glory. I haven't seen her laugh in years, but I made her smile. Not often,
but now and again on the back porch, I made her smile.'
Images from his dreams came back to him as he prepared
to head out on patrol.
'Okay, Doc and the tower, I get. Three hundred and
forty two days and I'm still occasionally coming up with a new twist on
what I could have done to save her... And yeah, can't say the bit at the
end isn't obvious, but Cecily or Halfrek or Hallie or whatever the hell
she's calling herself these days? Where the hell does she fit in?
Right next to the slayer.
No, Cecily was just some spoiled, upper-class bitch,
who couldn't see anything except the fact that "society" would never approve
if she were to even consider a suit from someone with fewer resources
than her family. I was a damn sight better off once I realised that.
And except for not being upper-class and it being
the vampire thing instead of money, Buffy's different how?
Face facts. No woman has ever thought it was worth
the effort to get to know you. Dru saw straight through you like a sheet
of glass the minute she met you, and in her own darling, demented way she
loved you for eleven decades... Even if you were second best, she at least
loved you... She knew you better than you knew yourself and she still loved
you. There's not one other woman who even tried. Well, Harm, but there
was as much chance of her understanding you as there is of a chimpanzee
understanding nuclear fusion... But she tried.
Yeah, Dru knew you... She knew you never really tried
to kill her. Yeah, slayer throws you through walls and you keep fighting
but one little tap with an axe from her mother and you call it quits.
It's not like slayer strength's hereditary. The slayer could kick you
harder than Joyce hit you with that axe. And you knew that going in early would cock up the Annoying One's plans for St. Vigeous, and
if they had worked... and the big scaredy run away at Halloween... and, yeah,
of course you would have still given Dru the bits of The Judge if you
actually believed he would really come back together and destroy the world.
Nothing to do with the fact you thought the whole thing was a total crock...
and Acathla... and the little na-na-na-na 'It's the ring' speech.
Hell, you make it sound like I was in love with her
the minute I saw her. Make me sound like that bloody child-molesting Ponce.
I gave up on little girls once I hit eighteen, so who are you trying to
kid?
No, you probably fancied Joyce more at the start,
especially after she had the balls to thump you with that axe, but you
were always attracted to what she had the potential to become. Especially
once you met her mum. You do at least realise that the traits they get
from Joyce are the ones that make you love them all. You never wanted
to kill her. Except in a bloody pissed-off, lasts for five minutes kind
of way. Most of the time, killing her was just an excuse to come back.
Dru was just a bit premature about saying you loved her, but then sometimes
she had a better grip on the future than she did on the present. Can't
really blame her for being a bit confused.
Okay, so why that night with the eggs? Why do I keep
coming back to that?
'Cause that's the closest you ever got to not being
just another Riley. In her bed, well, in her arms, at least, but never
in her heart. That was the one time she let you in, before her and Cardboard
screwed the whole thing up between them. Still don't know which is worse,
if I'd never had any part of her, or having her body while her mind and
her heart stay shut up in ice.
It's all her fault anyway. What the hell are you meant
to do when your bimbo girlfriend kills your poker buddy's mate in the
middle of nesting season? Surprised he didn't just string us up there
and then. Mated for seventy years and then 'cause some bint doesn't open
any of her watcher's books long enough to tell the difference between
a species that's perfectly peaceful if occasionally grumpy when losing
at poker and known to get a bit territorial when they're nesting and your average
psycho sewer-dweller, I get shafted again.
And it's not like I can play her little trick and
tell everybody she's not my girlfriend 'cause - demons - they can smell
her all over me. So I end up stuck in a room with a guy that's wife's
just been killed by my 'never be my girl'-friend for no good reason other
than the fact she can be as thick as two short planks from time to time.
If he tells me that I'm looking after his bloody eggs while he's out of
town, it's not like I can say, 'let their mother look after them', is it?
And I mean, God, had we heard about those eggs? He'd been happily anticipating
eating all his young for weeks. Bloody good job he didn't make it back
to town 'cause even I'd feel guilty if I had to kill him, and he'd definitely
want to kill me, now. I don't think the two that fitted in the icebox
would be much consolation. I'll have to clear them out some time.
But will she let you get a word in edge-ways to explain?
No, just gives the ex a helping hand to beat me up, and I mean, as if
the wanker would dare face me one on one without this chip in my head.
Listens to all his little stories as if they're gospel cause human equals
good. Demon equals evil. The fact that the soldier boy and I have detested
each other from the second we were aware of each other, well, I suppose
really from the point he realised I wasn't 'a friend of Xander's'. Up
until then it was a bit one-sided... That wouldn't have any influence on
anything he said. Wouldn't make him believe some pile of crap somebody
feeds him in Willy's, a bar I can't even drink in any more, thanks to
my association with little Miss Prissy Britches. And, of course, he'd never
just make stuff up himself just to see me shafted, no-o-o. Course not.
Only the evil soulless demon would lie to precious little Buffy.
And, yeah even if they did hatch, it's not like a
dozen baby Nevlon's are such a threat they warrant blowing up somebody's
bedroom. Never seen Nev go for anything bigger than a kitten. Half the
bloody albums they wrecked were older than either of them. Bitch. Wanker.
Whichever. Don't really want to know which of the pair of them did it.
Doesn't matter. It'll probably still cost a good few grand to replace
half the albums, and the other half just can't be replaced.
Probably work out cheaper renting a place, buying
a PC, subscribing to broadband and downloading everything than trying
to replace them on vinyl or CD. Not the same though. Hell of a lot of
good memories went along with those albums. Bitch. Hate not having music...
But not a hundredth as much as you hate losing her... not even a thousandth.'
Spike's internal monologue, or should that be dialogue, Buffy wondered, since he did seem to argue with himself a lot, rumbled on through his
head as he patrolled through all twelve cemeteries, and the slayer heard every
word of it. She thought he'd been being melodramatic when he claimed that
he dreamt about her, and thought about her all the time, that he was drowning
in her. Now she knew it was nothing but the truth. Well, except for the
half-hour he spent wondering what he'd missed on Passions while he was
holed up in the mansion.
Buffy was beginning to wonder if you could get a headache
when you didn't have a head. Spike's brain seemed to whirr constantly,
and, fascinating as the insight was in places, she was wondering if he would
ever shut up. And she wasn't thick as two short planks, whatever that
meant... and boy was she going to have words with him about his ice-box...
if she ever got her mouth back.
"Okay, so Buffy is catatonic, again. Anya is missing,
last seen at the Bronze with Spike, and Xander hasn't called, so we're assuming
he hasn't made it home from work yet." Willow summed up the situation.
Dawn looked across the room at the only members of the
Scooby gang she'd been able to round up, Tara and Willow. She hadn't wanted
to leave Buffy on her own and by the time Willow had made it home it was
too dark to go looking for Spike without back up. Tara had come over once
she got a message on her answering machine.
"That's about it, except for the fact there's no food
in the house and if we order pizza it'll use the last of the money in
Buffy's purse," Dawn added.
"I'll cover us for pizza for tonight," Tara offered,
"and, if Buffy's not any better tomorrow, I'll do some grocery shopping
and I'll cook. Everything's going to be okay, sweetie. We'll make sure
you're okay."
"I think I'd rather have Buffy back. No offence."
"I know, Dawnie, but I don't know yet if there's anything
we can do." Willow put in her ten cents worth. "We have to work out what's
causing it, and what is actually going on in her head before we can find
out what we have to do... But I'm not even sure that that should be our
number one priority."
"How can you say that?" Dawn squealed. "She's supposed
to be your best friend."
"Dawn, whatever else, Buffy is here at least in body.
No one knows what's happened to Anya or even Xander for that matter. We
know that Buffy saw Xander this morning and that Spike hadn't come home.
If Xander met up with either or both of the others after he left Buffy,
there's no saying what might have happened given the mood he was in when
he left here last night. I mean, do any of us know for sure that Spike's
chip is still working?"
"Spike wouldn't hurt anyone even if his chip did stop
working." Dawn refused to even contemplate the suggestion. "He might give
Xander a black eye or two but nothing serious and he wouldn't do anything
to Anya or to Buffy."
"Besides, I know it was working a couple of weeks ago,"
Tara added quietly.
"How do you know? Did he try to hit you or something?"
Willow asked.
"No, nothing like that. Buffy told me... unless... Buffy
wanted me to check up on the resurrection spell, because Spike's chip
wasn't picking her up as human. It still worked on other people, but not
on her. Maybe it's nothing to do with the spell. Maybe it's some sort
of gradual failure in the chip. We don't know what criteria the chip uses
to decide who's human and who isn't. If Buffy was when it started to go
wrong maybe there are more and more people 'falling through the net'..."
"I'm not saying you're wrong about the chip, but Spike
wouldn't hurt any of us whether his chip worked or not." Dawn was adamant.
"But you weren't the one he kidnapped or threatened with
a broken bottle or tried to drain," Willow interjected.
"I don't think he would either, sweetie," Tara replied
to Dawn, "but right now, we haven't a clue what's happening and we have
to consider all the possibilities.
Why don't you try calling Xander again? Maybe he's got
back and he just hasn't noticed that he's got a message. I'll go up and
see Buffy. I might be able to pick up some clue as to what's
going on by having a look at her aura. If we can get hold of Xander, then
maybe a couple of us can go look for Spike, unless Xander has any news
that helps us out.
Otherwise, I think maybe we should all stay together.
It might not be coincidence that people who help Buffy are disappearing
at the same time she's incapacitated. That is... if you don't mind
me sleeping on the couch?"
Both the other girls shook their heads, Willow most vehemently
not having any objection. | 
