Chapter Nine
The house on Revello Drive was ablaze with lights. Of
course the Scoobies would be looking for Dawn. Or they’d bloody well better be,
at any rate, Spike thought darkly, wondering a bit at the fact that none of
them had shown up at his crypt in search of her. Would’a been the logical place
to start, considerin’ the circumstances, right?
Only Tara was inside. When they came in the front door,
she closed her eyes in relief at the sight of them, smiled tremulously, and
punched in a series of numbers on the phone she was holding cradled in her
hand.
“Dawn and Spike just walked in. The bot is with them,”
she reported briefly and hung up.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked tenderly, as she
moved toward them, her hands reaching for Dawn’s.
Spike’s opinion of the quiet girl went up a notch at
the caring he detected in her voice. Willow’s bird stuck pretty much to
herself. She hadn’t ever been very chatty, and Spike didn’t really know much
about her. Bleedin’ rotten family, he remembered, but that was about it.
Dawn was, of course, still angry and upset, but she
didn’t seem willing to take her feelings out on Tara, at least not too
strenuously.
“I’m fine,” she said firmly. “I went to Spike’s. Because
I care about him and I wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“I know you care about him, Dawn,” Tara included Spike
in the small smile she gave. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But you
shouldn’t have run off. You know how dangerous Sunnydale can be, especially
after dark, and we were worried about you.”
“I’m safe with Spike.”
“Of course you are, sweetie,” Tara acknowledged without
hesitation. “He loves you.”
Spike and Dawn both looked surprised, but Tara didn’t
say any more. She had been in terrible shape at the hospital in those awful
first hours after Buffy’s death. Despite having her mind restored, she had
still been in an extremely fragile state. Of course, she hadn’t been the only
one. Traumatized by the night’s events, they had all clung to each other in
their grief and need, afraid, perhaps, to separate. The group, except for
Xander, who was in another part of the hospital with Anya, had hovered about
Dawn, as close as the doctors would allow. And, recognizing their trauma, the
doctors had been pretty lenient with the standard rules.
Tara had sat quietly in a small chair next to Willow,
clinging to her lover’s hand. And through the hours they’d spent there, she had
been mesmerized by the small pool of blood gathering slowly around Spike’s feet
as he held Dawn’s hands, comforting and soothing her through the worst of the
visit. He hadn’t said a word about himself, hadn’t given any indication that he
was injured. Instead, he had been a rock of support for Dawn, while blood
dripped, dripped, dripped from somewhere on his body and collected around his
boots, seemingly unnoticed by anyone but her. Tara knew she would never forget
that. It had been one of those rare moments in life that can alter ones’
perceptions and perspectives forever.
Willow arrived back at the Summers residence first.
She’d been assigned to search the route between the Magic Box and Janice’s
house, leaving her relatively close to Revello Drive. She looked from Dawn’s
glowering face to the inscrutable expression Spike had worn for several weeks
now, and sighed, looking frazzled, and a bit fed up.
“I’m glad you’re safe, Dawnie,” she said. “And Spike,
I’m sorry. No matter what this whole thing with the bot looked like, Giles and
I weren’t trying to –” Willow broke off when Dawn’s eyes widened in outrage,
and she sighed, dropping the topic for the time being. She had so much to do.
Important things. Why didn’t people understand that? She really didn’t have
time to be running around looking for Dawn. Couldn’t the girl just start
growing up? She went to attend to the bot, who was standing silently to one
side, observing the scene with a pleasantly attentive expression.
Dawn was tightly wrapped up in righteous indignation
and refusing to speak, an attitude that she held to tightly as the remainder of
the usual suspects – Giles, Xander and Anya – arrived.
The last two, who hadn’t been at the Magic Box during
the ‘incident with the bot’, as it would come to be referred to, had been
delegated to search the most direct route from the magic shop to Spike’s crypt,
and because they had gotten a later start than the others, Spike supposed that
explained their failure to show up before he and Dawn had left the crypt.
Xander looked frantic when he came in the door, his
eyes racing around the room until they located Dawn and ascertained that she
was uninjured. His sign of relief was clearly audible.
“Your place – it’s trashed, man,” Xander told Spike.
“Have you seen it?”
“Yeah, we’ve seen it.” It was Dawn who replied. “And
we’re both fine,” she went on, answering the unasked question. Then Dawn
straightened her shoulders and addressed the group calmly. “I think what you
did tonight, testing out the bot on Spike, was one of the meanest things I’ve
ever seen. I just can’t believe you would do that to him, after he’s...” Dawn’s
voice cracked and Spike and Tara both moved toward her instinctively, but she
held them off with a teary eyed look of determination.
“I told you, Dawn,” Willow interrupted. “It had no idea
Spike was upstairs. I just sent –”
“Don’t lie to me!” Dawn said shrilly, and at her tone,
Willow dropped her protest. “I’m so sick of people lying to me!” She tried to
force herself to breathe normally. “I don’t want to talk about this any more
tonight. It’s late, I’m pissed at half of you, and I just – I just can’t. And
just so you all know, Spike is staying here tonight. Like Xander said, his
place is trashed and I told him he should stay here.” Dawn’s eyes pleaded with
Spike not to reveal her lie. They hadn’t discussed anything of the sort. “I
told him he can stay on the sofa, or in the basement, or in Buffy’s room.
Wherever he wants.” She looked around the room, her steely expression touching
on each of the occupants in turn. “For as long as he wants. Because he’s my
best friend, and it’s my bloody house. Period.”
Dawn’s stately exit was ruined slightly when she
stumbled near the top of the stairs, and they all heard the quiet sob escape
her.
Tara moved to follow her. “I’ll make sure she’s
alright,” she told the others, and Willow smiled her approval, letting her hand
slide down Tara’s arm.
“Thanks, sweetie.”
As soon as Tara left the room, all eyes turned to
Spike.
Spike shifted restlessly. His earlier tension had been
building up in him again almost since they’d come in the door. The bot had been
smiling and staring at him without respite since they’d left his crypt. Every
time he caught a glimpse of her, he wanted to scream out his pain. The rage and
agony he’d vented so violently at his crypt was starting to press down on him,
hard, and he knew he’d better get out of the house – get away from all of them
before he exploded.
He couldn’t explode in front of them. Couldn’t.
They’d never let him near Dawn again.
Giles was the first to break the uncomfortable silence.
“Dawn’s right. It is late, and we’re all tired. I suggest we leave any further
discussion until tomorrow. Tonight’s events have been – most unfortunate – I
must say.” Giles ran his hand through his hair, unsure how to proceed. “If
you’re planning on working out tomorrow at the Magic Box, Spike, perhaps you
could give me a few moments. I’d like to speak to you.”
Spike stared at the Watcher intently, trying to contain
himself. When he spoke, he kept his eyes trained on Giles, even though his
words were addressed more specifically to Willow. His left hand was clenching
rhythmically.
Clench.
Flex.
Clench.
Flex.
“If you’re gonna be usin’ the bot for patrolling, I
want its’ programming changed.” His eyes slid away from Giles, from all of
them, focusing on some undetermined spot on the wall behind Giles. “I don’t
want it to – know me.”
His jaw was moving now too, clenching and unclenching
in time with his fist, as he continued to struggle for control. Xander,
however, seemed oblivious to his tension.
“Whoa, who’s changing his tune?” Xander asked
gleefully. His tone shifted, becoming snidely sarcastic, an inflection he had
long ago perfected. “You sure wanted it to know you before – really, really well.”
“Grrraah,” Spike roared. There was really no other word
for it. He roared. And his fist came smashing down onto a small bureau against
the wall that was the usual resting place for car keys and the day’s mail. It
shattered, splintering into irreparable pieces on the floor.
Shock froze all of them in place and kept them silent.
They all stared.
Spike’s breath was heaving in and out of his open
mouth, and his fists were tightly clenched at his sides. He was desperately
trying to keep himself from exploding further. But none of them were watching
his hands. Their eyes were riveted to his. They were burningly blue, and just
for the briefest of moments, before Spike wiped his face free of expression,
they all saw the same thing.
A creature in utter torment.
He turned away from them then, suddenly. Instead of
leaving the house, as most of them expected, though, he went up the stairs. In
the complete silence that was blanketing the room, they all heard Dawn’s voice
greeting him. He’d gone to check on her.
“Xander, do please attempt to learn some tact,” Giles
said finally, his voice weary.
Xander was about to say something, when he was stopped
by Anya’s hand on his arm.
“He talked,” she informed them all, and Xander
registered the information with surprise.
Spike’s request to change the bot’s programming was the
first time any of them, with the exception of Giles, had heard him speak since
he’d left the hospital the day after Buffy’s death.
~*~
“People are always lying to me,” Dawn told Tara
quietly. A lot, but not all, of her anger had drained away, and she just was
feeling kind of hurt by the whole incident, and not only for Spike. He was
her friend. They should respect that. She had a right to pick her own
friends, didn’t she?
“I know it can seem like that, sweetie,” Tara
sympathized. “So much was happening this last year, and I guess people wanted
to protect you.”
“I’m not a kid!”
“But you’re not completely grown up yet, either, are
you?”
Dawn looked at her, a little resentful that Tara could
always sound so reasonable. The teenager ducked her head, and began
picking at her bedspread. “Not completely, I guess,” she conceded.
“And I don’t think Willow was lying to you tonight.
I think it really was an accident.”
Dawn’s lips tightened. “It was mean. Really mean.”
“B-but not if it wasn’t deliberate. Then it was just
sort of sad. That it happened that way, and that Spike was hurt.” Tara touched
the back of the younger girl’s hand. Dawn’s bedroom was softly lit by the small
lamp on the bedside table, and Tara was sitting on the edge of the mattress
near her side. “It’s important to try not to hurt other people, b-but sometimes
it just happens. Kind of like a car accident. It’s not always someone’s fault.”
“Yeah, and sometimes it’s pretty on purpose.” Dawn said
with some bitterness.
“Yes,” Tara had to agree. “Willow told me that it was
just an accident tonight, though,” Tara told her again. “And I believe her,
b-because I trust her. Look at me, Dawn,” she urged, and Dawn looked up. “It’s
so important to be able to trust the people you love and who love you. You and
Willow have been friends for a long time, and you’ve always gotten along pretty
well, right?”
“Yeah,” Dawn had to admit. Willow had treated her less
like a kid that most of the others.
“Hasn’t she earned the right to be believed, then?”
Dawn’s face looked a little mutinous.
“Kind of like Spike is earning my trust,” Tara added
quietly. “When he had the bot built, I didn’t trust him at all. In fact when we
thought the bot was Buffy and that she and Spike were, er…” Tara trailed off in
embarrassment. She hadn’t meant to bring that up.
“When you thought Buffy was boinking Spike,” Dawn
filled in the blank for her.
“Um, yeah,” Tara admitted. “Then. I didn’t trust him,
then, or like him at all. But since then, after he let Glory beat him up to
protect you… After Buffy died, and this summer… Sometimes it’s a gradual thing,
learning to trust someone. That’s one of the reasons it’s important not to
break someone’s trust. Because it’s hard to earn, and can be even harder to
re-earn if it’s lost.”
Tara squeezed Dawn’s hand and released it.
“And one of the best things about trust is being able
to believe someone when they tell you something, even if the evidence seemed to
be stacked against them. So I hope you’ll see that you can trust Willow.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dawn conceded. She supposed it could
have happened the way Willow said.
Tara rose, and snapped off the bedside lamp. “You need
to get some sleep.”
“Tara?”
Halfway to the door, Tara turned back.
“Yeah?”
“Good mom-type talk,” she smiled.
Tara looked pleased and she even preened a little.
“Thanks!” Her soft, comforting tone had changed into
amusement.
Dawn hesitated. “Does it ever make you sad?” she asked.
Tara was confused. “What?”
“That you’ll never be a mom?” She asked bluntly. Then
she seemed to retreat a little, thinking it might be an inappropriate question.
“Um, ‘cause you know, gay and everything...”
“I can still have a baby, Dawn,” Tara said. The subject
didn’t make her uncomfortable in the least. She thought about it a lot. She
wanted children very much. Not yet, but not too far down the road, either.
“Huh?” Dawn was completely confused. “How?”
Tara laughed. “There are ways, sweetie.”
“Spike!”
Tara blinked. “Huh?” Where had that come from? Spike?
“Came to check up on you,” the vampire said from the
doorway.
Oh! Tara could feel herself flushing wildly, and she
was glad the room was dark. She moved quickly toward him, hoping to find a way
to get around him with having to touch him at all. He stepped further into the
room, opening up a path for her.
“Night, Tara!” Dawn said. “And thanks.”
“Um, n-night Dawnie,” Tara muttered, and fled.
~*~
No one had taken the time yet to clean out Buffy’s
room. Perhaps they just didn’t have the heart. Snapshots of her with Willow, or
Xander, or of the three friends together, adorned her bulletin board. A few
older pictures included the wolf boy and the bitchy bint who was working in
L.A. with Angelus now. There was another picture of Buffy in a cheerleading
uniform with the rest of the squad, their names squiggled onto the photo with a
gold pen; Brynn, Miranda, Chelle, Steph, Ariane, Kimberly. She looked so young…
The uniforms weren’t from Sunnydale High, he noted. Must be from before she
moved here. There were posters, one of which was of some ridiculous boy band,
another of Brad Pitt, decorating the walls. Brad
Pitt? And her clothes still hung in the closet. He swallowed. Her scent was
heavy in the air.
Spike wasn’t sure why he’d come in here. He’d been
frankly horrified when Dawn had suggested he stay in Buffy’s room. If he had to
stay in this house at all, the basement was much more appealing. That’s where
he’d headed after taking advantage of the miracle of modern plumbing by
standing under the pounding spray of the showerhead for a good, long time. He
really hadn’t wanted to stay here at all. He was still tense and out of sorts,
and since his Slayer’s death he’d been unable to relax in this house. Besides, it was night, and he usually got in
a few hours of hunting before taking up sentry duty on the roof outside Dawn’s
bedroom window. He chaffed somewhat at not taking full advantage of the power
still surging through his veins from the last bag of his Slayer’s blood. But
Dawn had gotten kind of teary eyed and all needy-like when he’d stopped up to
see her, and he’d let her persuade him to stay. It had been almost like it was
a matter of pride for her or somethin’; that he actually stay after she’d
announced to the Scoobies that she’d told him he could.
Spike had never had much trouble understanding pride.
He’d settled in quite nicely in the basement, hauling
out some long unused camping gear. He arranged it to his satisfaction as he
tried without success to picture any of the Summers women in any sort of
camping scenario. They’d probably have been willin’ to spend the night in their
car in the mall parking lot if it meant getting the drop on the other shoppers
during a shoe sale, he thought, but other than that...
He frowned. Nope. Couldn’t even visualize Joyce
crawling out of a tent in the morning, much less the girls.
‘Course, once he was laid out, sleep was its usual
elusive self. And he blamed the setting and his Slayer’s full strength blood
for making him even more restless than was usual for him these days. After
thirty minutes, he was up again, keyed up, needing to move.
He’d felt drawn here, to Buffy’s room, pulled by some
force. Actually, he’d felt as though Buffy was calling to him, but that just
sounded crazy so he tried to ignore the certainty of the feeling and pretend it
wasn’t true. All the waking visions he seemed to be having of his Slayer were
giving him enough doubts about his sanity. At least he couldn’t hear her voice
in the waking visions – well, not anything he could make out, anyway, and he
didn’t need to start. He ignored the fact that he was always desperate to
understand what she was saying to him, and never could. He was learning to
ignore a lot of things. Gettin’ pretty good at it, too, he thought.
Whatever the reason, he was here, in her room. He’d
been to the house almost every evening for the last couple of months. Walkin’
Dawn home, spendin’ time with her. But he’d never come near Buffy’s room. Never
wanted to.
Until tonight.
Maybe he was just a glutton for punishment.
Spike wandered around the room slowly. He picked up an
item here or there, touched it, looked it over, and then carefully replaced it
in its original position. Didn’t want to disturb anything too much. Might upset
someone.
He touched the chain of one of Buffy’s fairly large
collection of crosses and crucifixes, his brow furrowing slightly as a memory
tugged at him. His hand unconsciously moved to the spot on his chest, directly
over his unbeating heart, that now carried a cross shaped scar. He had no idea
when or how he’d gotten it, but there was something...
Burn me, burn me, burn me, burn me...
After a moment, Spike shrugged, and his thoughts moved
on. His mind refused to put the pieces of those lost weeks together, and the
memory slipped away, remaining elusive, as it always would.
He stepped toward the bed, and glanced at the hardcover
copy of ‘The Mists of Avalon’ sitting on the nightstand, before picking up the
framed photo propped up next to it.
~*~
She’d
worked on the bot for quite awhile, and was anxious now to get to bed. Altering
so much of the robot’s basic Spike-centric programming was going to be a
challenge, but Willow knew she was more than capable of getting the job done.
They were going to need the bot for patrolling purposes, and she would strongly
prefer that the bot take orders from her rather than making googily eyes at a
vampire. Besides, working on the bot would give her a break from being a total
archives grrl with all the research she’d been doing lately.
She
smiled to herself. She’d found the last pieces just this afternoon. It was
gonna happen. She was wildly excited and almost sick with nerves at the same
time. It was so scary, so incredible... She still had to talk the others into
it, but she was sure she could persuade them. Tara would probably be the most
difficult to bring around to her way of thinking. Tara so often insisted that
the natural order of things shouldn’t be unnecessarily disturbed. But Willow
was sure that eventually, even her lover would cooperate. It would take some
time to work out all the details, but before too much longer...
It was very late, and the house had been silent for hours. When she heard a sound – a small thud, like something being knocked over – from Buffy’s old room, Willow was startled, and her thoughts flew first to Dawn. The young girl had been so upset, so angry… Willow forced down her annoyance. Even if she did think Dawn needed to do some serious growing up, and that she was spending way too much time with Spike, and with Tara too, for that matter, she still loved the girl. She wanted Dawn to be able to come to her, Willow, with her pain and problems, as she should be doing. Perhaps she should poke her head in and make sure she was okay. Willow moved quietly to the not quite closed door to the room and pushed it open.
The
familiarity of the bedroom assailed her, and Willow felt the pain of memory
clutch at her. For a moment she wanted nothing more than to slam the door,
forcing the memories away. The rare, but oh-so-normal, nights of giggling
together, talking about boys, back when she’d still been interested in boys,
about school, about life...
Perhaps
because her own emotions were hitting her with such force, she almost missed
Spike. The vampire sat on the floor to one side of Buffy’s bed, one of his arms
resting on a drawn up knee. His other hand rested on the back of his down bent
head. A framed photo of Buffy and her mother lay nearby – probably the “thud”
Willow had heard.
Willow said nothing, taking in Spike’s
posture and the solitary picture he presented. He lifted his head, and his
eyes, dry and unblinking, met hers. For just a moment she felt her own heart
wrench painfully as she acknowledged the ravaged agony in the blond’s blue eyes,
the hopeless despair pouring from them. Then she retreated mentally, forcing
her instinctive sympathy away. He was a vampire, she reminded herself. It’s not
like he could really feel the pain the rest of them were feeling. He probably
didn’t even understand true mourning.
She straightened her shoulders, physically shoring up the mental gymnastics it
had taken her to arrive at that conclusion.
Vampire.
Not. Like. A. Living. Person.
Hadn’t Angel and Giles both strongly
suggested that years ago? That without a soul…
Spike looked back down at
the floor between his feet.
“Get out.” The words were
spoken so quietly that Willow detected them more by the movement of his lips as
his head was lowering than by any sound she heard.
She
hesitated for a moment, trying to think of something, of anything, she could
say, but her sympathy for the blond was so wrapped up in her conflicting
emotions about his place in their group, and her fears about the – threat – he
might present to her plans, that nothing came to mind. Instead, she flipped off
the light, pulled the door closed, and made her way down the hall to her own
room, her own bed. And into the comforting warmth of Tara’s embrace.
~*~
Spike placed the photo of Buffy and Joyce back where
he’d found it.
Willow had
turned off the light and the room was darker now, lit only by moonlight. For a
long time, he stood beside the bed, staring at the pale bedding. His hand was
trembling when he reached out to pick up a pillow, shaking as he brought it to
his face.
Oh god.
Buffy.
Her scent,
even stronger on the fabric than it was in the air of the room, sent a bolt of
agony through him.
Buffy.
What the
hell was he doing? he wondered. Why was he doing this to himself? But even as
he asked himself the questions, he was kneeling on the bed, stretching out face
down on the comforter. He jerked back up, pulled the comforter away and lay
down again on the soft sheets, almost feeling her presence surround him.
Just for a
minute, he assured himself. Just for a minute.
Then I’ll
never come into this room again.
~*~