Chapter Eighteen
In the semi-dark depths of the underground, Spike inhaled the stale scent of unused air and clutched a torch in one hand, lighting their path. He was having a hard time fathoming the truth. Even though it was plain as day in his mind, his emotions weren’t quite up to speed. Buffy had chosen him in the end even in the other dimension, even when she hadn’t chosen him to stop the ubervamps and close the hellmouth.
Now in the quiet space, in the calm before the storm, Spike found himself wondering what would have happened if he had ignored her attempt to run away from him and gone after her instead.
Shifting the pack on his shoulder, he glanced at the Slayer. . . his Slayer out of the corner of his eye. Buffy walked along beside him as she’d always done, blonde hair trussed up in a bouncy ponytail that swung with an innocence that he knew she no longer possessed. She seemed oblivious to him, oblivious to what Roxy had just revealed. Instead, she appeared focused on their mission to get to the highest possible spot within the kranook caverns, closest to the mystical energy source humming through Stephanie’s headquarters.
Spike clenched his jaw.
Roxy better not have been lying about where they needed to go, or he’d personally tear every limb from her body even if he had to get re-vamped to do it.
“So how’re we gonna call Willow again?” Buffy asked him out of the blue, a spark of green glinting in her eye as she peered up at him.
“We’re going to try to harness the energy the witch told us about, using this contraption.” Spike tilted his head toward the bag on his back. The magic amplifying device Roxy had given them felt heavy on his shoulder.
“And we got the spell. Say the right words, do a little dance, and viola, Willow contact?” Spike could picture her frowning as she went over the plan in her mind. “I wonder how we’ll know it’s working?”
Spike chuckled. “I suppose when Red starts talking in our heads, pet.”
“Inter-dimensionally? You have no idea, do you?” she asked, and Spike could see her incredulous expression in the dim lighting.
Levity between them sure was better than the alternative awkwardness that could have easily slid into place after what he had revealed to her and after what Roxy had shared. What would happen after they accomplished their task of dashing Stephanie’s dreams? Would they actually continue their conversation or would Buffy run away again?
“Actually, no. Somehow we’re supposed to help Angel retrieve his soul, so we have more of a chance in hell of defeating Stephanie.”
She laughed then. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Spike asked innocently, wanting to hear her version of the craziness.
“All these different agendas, different dimensions, different decisions, Roxy’s plan, the vagueness of the stupid prophecy that probably isn’t even a real prophecy. God, who would have known that one little decision on my part would be so important? Makes me wonder what would happen if I –”
She stumbled over something in the dark, but Spike caught her by the elbow, holding onto her so she wouldn’t fall.
“You all right, love?”
“Like this, for example,” she continued, clapping her hands together to knock off excess dirt from the cavern wall that she’d touched in an effort to balance herself.
“What?”
“You know. If I walk the wrong way or fall over, is it going to cause some catastrophic event in the near or distant future?”
“I think that you’re giving yourself far too much credit,” he said in a lower voice. He bit the inside of his cheek in annoyance at himself for breaking the amicable flow of their conversation.
She shook her head. “You’re right. You’re right. I suppose all the power I wielded in terms of huge alterations in the timeline was just around that last apocalypse at the Sunnydale hellmouth.”
“I suppose.” Spike wasn’t going to fill in the blanks for her.
She kept going on her own. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about how you said you could have come after me. What do you think would have happened if I had stayed with you or you’d have come to find me?”
Spike wasn’t completely surprised to hear that question come flying out of her mouth, and he was somehow glad to hear she was thinking the same thing he was thinking.
Afraid to be too vulnerable lest she not give something back, he chose to be logical in answer to her question. “I think we’d have mucked it up royally.” He paused, but she had no response again, so he took her silence as agreement and admitted, “You weren’t ready, but neither was I. I was a vampire for over one hundred years; think I adjusted to the whole human thing right off the bat? No puns intended.”
The light on Buffy’s face hinted at a corner of her mouth going in the upward direction. “We both make the same bad puns.”
“Have we had this discussion before?” he asked abruptly, staying with her mood.
She sounded more amused, “Hmmm. I think so. The first time, there was considerably more yelling and emotion on both our parts. And then, there was the whole boyfriend thing.” She didn’t bring up the conversation in the kranooks’ lair, which coupled with mentioning her ex-boyfriend, made him feel insecure.
“Don’t bring him back up,” Spike mock-growled.
She glanced up at him. “What were you saying?”
“What part? That we’d have mucked the whole thing up?”
“Yeah, that. You’re probably right. We weren’t ready. I know I wasn’t ready. It takes a lot to go from being the only Slayer besides Faith to being one of many. And to top it off, being in charge of the many. Do you know how much work it’s been to fly all over the world, identifying the Slayers that didn’t know they were Slayers and helping them deal with the consequences of being stronger than they ever were? They all have different personalities, too. Not all of them were like me or Kendra. A lot were like Faith.”
“Brassed off and ready to take out their anger on the world?”
“Yeah. And a lot of them were too young to know what to do with their powers. There were little kids with sudden physical strength and vampires and demons coming after them.” Her eyes filled with tears.
Spike stared at her and tried to imagine what she had seen, what she had had to do to manage so much. He pictured something a little like the S.I.T.’s in Sunnydale but on steroids (literally and figuratively). “You felt an obligation to clean up the aftermath.”
She blinked away the sadness in her eyes and nodded solemnly. “Of course. Magic always has consequences.”
Didn’t they both know that just too bloody well? “Right.”
“And to do the job efficiently and well, we had to split up. I didn’t see Willow or Giles or Xander for months. Dawn stayed with Dad for a while to go to school and to be in one place. We set up programs and schools for the Slayers and their families and worked on ways of communicating and dividing up sectors to protect.”
“I imagine that didn’t leave you much time for yourself,” Spike reflected.
She bit her lip and shook her head. “By the time I settled in one spot with Dawn in Cleveland, I realized that I hadn’t really dealt with myself. You gave me that speech about being a ‘hell of a woman,’ and I heard it. It gave me the strength to get through the fight against the First, but I-I didn’t really internalize it. I didn’t really believe it for myself. Couple that with the aftermath of the spell, and well, let’s just say I had a lot of not-so-great days.”
He related to the part about not internalizing messages. Hadn’t he just admitted the same to her earlier? “And that’s when you went to therapy?”
“Yeah, and I discovered a whole mess of things, personal feelings and thoughts, that I hadn’t dealt with. That’s when I really faced myself and all the things I’d done and talked about how all that impacted my relationships with my friends and family and. . . with you.”
She talked about him with her therapist? Spike marveled at the thought.
Buffy was still talking though, so he didn’t ponder it for long. “Therapy’s when I saw how scared I’ve been to let someone in. To let you in because you can really hurt me. . . because I. . . ”
She halted dead in her tracks and placed her hand against his forearm.
He felt like he was holding his breath as he tried to decipher what she was saying, so he focused on the concrete, “And now?”
“And now? Angelus said we aren’t different, and I think he’s right. In a lot of ways we aren’t, but in a lot of ways we are. We are different now.” She slid her hand along his arm and pressed her palm against his.
Scar molded against scar.
Spike blinked. Was she daft? Was she just repeating what happened earlier and ignoring what he’d said? He wanted to have hope, but he didn’t want to either. Instead, he just felt irritated with her and himself.
“I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have to decide now. I have to make up my mind about whether or not I trust myself enough to trust you, and you have to decide the same thing. Well, you have to decide if you can forgive me.” She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “That’s confusing. I think the bottom line is that we both have to decide to let each other in. And we’re starting to do that, right?”
“Where are you going with this, pet? We have a mission here.” He removed his hand from hers and hooked his thumb under the strap of the backpack, pulling it away from his shoulder.
She stared at him as he tried to push past her. “You can’t just drop this.”
Even though he heard the fear and vulnerability in her voice, he said, “Well, I am.”
“No, you’re not. . . not until I say you are,” she insisted, finding an untapped source of energy and dancing around until she was in front of him, blocking his way. “Besides, you started this.”
“How, pray tell, did I start this?”
“Because you let me in. . . Finally, you let me in for the first time in well. . . a really long time.”
His heart was starting to pound, and he followed his first impulse. “I didn’t.”
“Stop it. You did, and y-your denial prevents us from communicating.”
“Don’t see that you’re the expert at communication.”
“No. No, I’m not. I haven’t been. But I’m trying here. I’m scared, but I’m trying, Spike.”
“Why bother?” Her trying was frightening the hell out of him. “It’s not like we can take this conversation anywhere right now. We have a mission.”
“Screw the mission!” Buffy shouted, throwing both arms in the air. “All we talk about is the damn mission!” She studied the ground for a second with a little frown on her face. “God, no wonder everyone got sick of me before,” she said almost to herself. Her gaze slammed into his again. “My life doesn’t have to be about the mission anymore! I’m not going to let it and neither should you!”
Of all the things she could have said. . . “What did you say, pet?”
Her eyes were ablaze even in the diffuse light. “I’m sick to death of the mission ruling my life. I’m a person here w-with thoughts and f-feelings and rights and needs. Damn it! I have needs. And I deserve to take every rare chance that’s offered me to try and meet those needs! And so do you!” She said the last four words slowly and with emphasis.
Spike stared at her.
“Even if my everyday decisions don’t carry that much weight in the mystical battle between good and evil, they carry a lot of weight to me, and hell, they can make a big difference in my life! And so, I’m making a choice no matter how terrified I am! Right here. Right now. This moment.” She paused half a second to breathe, and she began pacing back and forth under Spike’s nose. He couldn’t help but be amused by the motion of her ponytail punctuating her statements. “So I’m insecure; so I’m not perfect. Everyone is, and I never will be! So I’ve had a few bad experiences, so I need a little reassurance every now and then when someone from my past tries to hurt me. That does not mean that I’m not ready to make a decision! That does not mean I’m an emotional cripple! And that does not mean I don’t know what I want!”
Spike wasn’t sure what exactly she was hinting at. “Buffy. . .”
“What?” She looked up at him with wide geen eyes and half-parted lips, all innocence as if she’d completely lost track of what she was saying with his utterance of her name.
“Bottom line, pet.”
“Oh.”
The scar above Spike’s eye jumped half an inch.
She searched what she could see of his face before closing her eyes and turning her cheek. Then, she mumbled something so softly that he almost couldn’t make it out. After all, he didn’t have vampire hearing anymore.
“What?” he asked, uncertain whether he believed what she’d just admitted.
Something akin to hurt and utter vulnerability flashed over her features, and she spun on her heel and dismissed him with a defensive flick of her hand. “But if you can’t handle it. . . or don’t want me. . . I can respect and understand that. . . “
And she was off up the next incline and closer to the heart of Stephanie’s headquarters.
He took three large strides after her and spun her around with his free hand. The pack slid from his shoulder to the ground.
“Hope you didn’t break it,” she whispered, and Spike could tell she wasn’t sure what she meant.
His fingers dug into her upper arm, but not enough to hurt her. He couldn’t really hurt her anyway. . . not physically. “Don’t say those kinds of things unless you mean them.”
She glared at him, extricated her arm and stepped back. “You didn’t even hear me.”
“Say it louder then,” he said, his voice indignant and deep with a multitude of emotions despite his attempt to sound neutral. “Say it like you mean it. You can’t, can you?”
Tears glazed her corneas, sheathing green in crystalline liquid. She focused on his chest, pointing an index finger toward his sternum. “Don’t. . . don’t you. . .you even start with that crap again. Don’t you build another wall when I’m trying to tear this one down.”
Spike’s own vision blurred before he was cognizant of the pain of the memories racing through his mind.
Buffy reached up and rested an open palm on his chest. . . over his heart. “You’re trembling, and your heart is going so fast.” Awe was in her voice.
“God, Buffy.”
Deliberately moving her hand from his chest to his hand that was wrapped around the torch, she covered his fist, splaying fingers over knuckles. In gentle motion, she pulled the blaze down so that the fire echoed against the depths of her eyes. . . so he couldn’t deny the genuineness of her words. . . .
“I love you, Spike.”