Chapter 4: French Night
The next day, Buffy returned to her old habits and did not knock before entering Spike’s crypt. The sun wasn’t going to set for another half-hour, but she had felt restless in her friends’ company, mostly annoyed at Xander’s pointed silence. She had left Dawn at the Magic Box with the others, gone home to change to slaying clothes, eaten a bit, and been on her way to Spike’s cemetery.
She could hear his voice but not see him. He was singing, nicely on key, with that beautiful voice she had remembered fondly since the singing demon had ruled over Sunnydale. However, she couldn’t understand the lyrics.
La nuit t’habille dans mes bras
Pâles rumeurs et bruits de soie
Conquérante immobile
Reine du sang des villes
Je la suppose, la voilà
Following the voice, she walked to the ladder that led to the lower level. Spike had moved out of it completely after she torched it with fire grenades to kill nasty buggers. It was the night she broke up whatever relation they had. She wondered what he was doing down there.
Tout n’est plus qu’ombre, rien ne ment
Le temps demeure et meurt pourtant
Tombent les apparences
Nos longs, si longs silences
Les amants se perdent en s’aimant
She finally recognized that he was singing in French, but she remembered too little of her high school study of the language to make sense of any of it.
Solitaire à un souffle de toi
Si près tu m’échappes déja
Mon intime étrangere
Se trouver c’est se défaire
A qui dit-on ces choses-là?
Trying to be silent, she stepped down the ladder, intent on finding what he was up to. She discovered him in a corner. He seemed to be rolling up the heavy carpets that had covered part of the floor. As soon as she was down, he stopped singing and said: “Came to give me a hand, Slayer?”
She jumped at his question. He had not even turned to her, not stopped working, giving no hint that he knew she was there until he had spoken.
“How did you know it was me?”
“How wouldn’t I know, pet?”
He finally faced her and gave her his usual smirk. Suddenly feeling uneasy, she tried to change the topic.
“What were you singing? It didn’t sound like the stuff you usually listen to.”
“I listen to a lot of things,” he said defensively.
She snorted. “If you say so. Was it French?”
“Yes. You know French?”
His raised eyebrow showed he was surprised at the thought, and she had the sudden desire to smack him. Why would it be so surprising if she knew French? Not that she did, but still.
“You just found yourself a new job. Dawn needs tutoring in French. Thanks for volunteering.”
She expected him to protest, and indeed his face started to show a sullen expression, but he wiped it away and simply shrugged.
“OK. Want her to come here or me to go to your place?”
“You come. I don’t want her to hang out in cemeteries. Why don’t you find a real home anyway?”
A knowing smile danced on his lips, and she wondered what was so funny. With a rolled carpet on his shoulder, he walked past her and pushed his burden up to the upper level before climbing up. She remained where she was for a short instant, before following when she realized he wasn’t coming back down.
“So what was the song saying? And when did you learn French anyway?”
He was walking around the room as he answered, shedding his dusty t-shirt, putting on a clean one.
“I learnt French when I was Dawn’s age, pet. And the song says something like that”
Night cloaks you in my arms
Faint rumors and silk noise
Conqueror standing still
Queen of the towns’ blood
I’m guessing her, here she comes
He briefly cocked his head, looking at her with a spark in his eyes. “Now who did that part remind me of?”
He raised a hand to prevent her from speaking and resumed his translation. It sounded like a poem, and the softness of his voice was hypnotizing.
All is shadow, nothing lies
Time stays still and still it dies
Falling appearances
Our long, so long silences
Lovers lose themselves by loving
A breath away from you, lonely
So close, you escape me already
My intimate stranger
To find is to lose each other
To whom can you tell these things?
He moved just a step in front of her, and she fought the urge to get closer. He finished by singing the English part that completed the song.
As dawn lights up another day
Visions I once had fade away
All of these words unspoken
And my wildest dreams all broken
It wasn’t supposed to be that way
Should I leave, why should I stay?
Leaving behind me yesterday
Am I free or forsaken?
Cheated or awakened?
Does it matter anyway?
His eyes were looking straight into hers, too serious, and Buffy had the feeling he expected an answer. The song was strangely fitting to the vampire. To them. All of it, but the last part especially. Had his soul freed him or doomed him?
“It does matter,” she said in a strangled voice. “But only you can decide what it will be.”
A small smile tugged the corners of his lips. “It’s just a song, luv. Nothing more.”
She observed him for a moment. He could claim it was just a song, the fact that he was singing thatsong was unusual in itself. As she had commented earlier, the soft rhythm was anything but his normal choice of music. Was this a soul-related change? If it was, the lyrics probably meant something to him too. But why would he deny it?
She realized she had been staring at him when he spoke, almost uncomfortably.
“Sun is down, Slayer. Shall we go?”
She nodded, and followed him outside. The patrol was quiet, both from the lack of beasties and from the absence of talking.
After dusting her only second fledging for the night, Buffy decided she had enough and told Spike she was going home. Without prompting, he accompanied her.
She observed him sideways, walking next to her in silence. Yes, he had changed since he had come back, but not that much. Apart from a few oddities, like his mood swings, his new taste of music or his refusal to wear his duster anymore, he was still Spike.
“Why aren’t you more different?” she asked as they were approaching the house.
He looked at her with surprise, eyebrows knotting. “What do you mean? I am different. I am a vampire, I have a bloody soul, I am. I work with the Slayer. Can’t be more different than that.”
She shook her head. “I mean, your soul didn’t make you different compared to the Spike without soul. I don’t know, I would have expected you to be someone else completely. Like Angel is completely different from Angelus.”
“I told you not to compare me to that brooding ponce.”
“It’s not like there are many soulful vampires that I can compare you to.”
“Then don’t compare me to anyone!”
“Then answer me!”
They had reached the Summers home at last. Spike sat on the steps in front of the door, and after a short hesitation Buffy joined him.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Slayer,” he said very quietly. “It’s not like I had a soul before.”
“Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but you had one. When you were human.”
He shook his head, and a faint smile came to his lips. “It wasn’t me, pet. Not Spike. That was William.”
Buffy considered him for an instant, before asking gravely: “Tell me about William.”
He looked and sounded startled by her question. “Tell you what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. What kind of person was he?”
He fished out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt’s front pocket and lit one. However he did not smoke it, instead watching it absently as it consumed itself. He seemed lost in his thoughts.
“There’s not much to say about William,” he murmured finally. “He was just a bad poet who thought he was good. He had no friends, only acquaintances, but he was too bloody stupid to see the difference. He was in love with the wrong woman, for the wrong reasons. He was just pathetic, luv.”
As gently as she could, she asked: “If you changed when you lost your soul, why didn’t you become William again when you regained it?”
His face was tilted up to the sky. Even though she was sitting next to him, she had to strain her ears to hear what he answered.
“Wish I knew. But I don’t. Maybe. Maybe William is completely gone and I’m all that is left. Or maybe William has been watching from a corner for a hundred years, and decided that being Spike is not that bad.”
“Spike?”
“Yes luv?”
“Could it be that Spike and William have been the same all along?”
His gaze turned to her, and she realized that, soul or no soul, his eyes were just as deep. For long minutes, he watched her in silence, and she grew self-conscious. Finally, she gave up on waiting for an answer and jumped to her feet.
“It’s getting late. I gotta go.”
He got up too, stretching, and started to walk away. After a couple of steps, he turned back to her.
“Tell the Nibblet I’ll be there at 5.”
Her mind went blank for a second as she tried to understand what he was talking about.
“Oh, right, French lesson. You can come later, no need to risk turning to ashes.”
He cocked his head, looking at her intently. “I came here during the day before, Slayer. And I have other engagements for later. A little job dealing with my so-called redemption.”
A smirk, a nod, and he was gone.
Buffy sat back down and raised her eyes to the stars as he had done earlier. They were always there when she patrolled, of course, but she barely ever looked at them, taking them for granted. Some things didn’t change. Stars for example. You could ignore them for years, and when you looked again, they were still the same, just as beautiful. She had ignored Spike for a long time, certain that she knew him. But he wasn’t the same person she had met for the first time years before, in that alley behind the Bronze. He had been different long before he got a soul.
She tried to replay in her mind all the times she had fought against Spike, or by his side. It didn’t take her long to come to a startling conclusion. He had often claimed that he had changed, and she now could pinpoint the exact time it had started. When he had begun to hang around her and the Scoobies. When he had begun to show feelings for her, even if he admitted them only much later.
All this time, he had tried to tell her he had amended his ways, because of his love for her. She had refused to believe him. And now that he had a soul, she realized it had been true.
Spike wasn’t different with a soul because he had been acting like he had one for a long time.
All for her.
A line from his earlier song kept ringing in her mind, even truer now than it had seemed earlier. My intimate stranger. What did she know about this man, who had been her lover, but who, she now understood, was nothing like the image she had of him?
When the sun rose, Buffy was still sitting on her front porch, her eyes to the sky.
A/N: Song is Nuit (Night) by Jean-Jacques Goldman, translation by me.