I’ll Fly Away

Chapter 18— Lost Girls

Spike tucked the comforter securely around Buffy’s shoulders and she made a wordless hum, already halfway lost to the waking world. He smoothed back her damp hair, inhaled the tang of sweat and distress, a creature of animal instinct and superfine senses attuned to the beloved’s every detail, all the tears and twitches and sighs she made in the night. The soft, tawny strands slid right through his fingers, silkier than the kimono Dru nicked off a dead Chinee during the rebellion years. Wore it for years, she did, longer than the delicate fabric called for.

Some things were just too fine for this world. They were never meant to stay.

Didn’t mean you shouldn’t fight to keep ‘em, though.

When the moths finally took to that silly shawl, Dru’d cried like her second life was ending. Scared the minions. Scared Spike with her wild-eyed hair pulling. Wept and screeched and pulled Miss Edith’s head off, yet again, then keened until he sewed it back on with sturdy thread. Miss Edith’s noggin stayed put for another decade, he was proud to say. If there was anything the barmy life with Dru had taught him, it was how to repair things, how to make it all hold, for a time, at least. The irony was astonishing, because what had changed, really? Another year, another lost girl who needed him in her tribulation. They all needed him, wanted him, for a spot of time, and this, too was fleeting. Each in her turn came and went. Dru…Buffy. Dawn.

Dawn.

It wasn’t so very long ago that she, his heart’s small darling, had mourned for Buffy in this very bed, clutching her sister’s pillow, breathing her in until the vanilla scent faded and there was nothing to do but get up and go on with life. For whatever reason—the resilience of youth, her natural exuberance, Buffy’s legacy of words and blood—Dawn had healed better than the rest of them and been his sole reason for keeping on all those months.

Until Willow’s misguided magic--and the nightmare that followed.

Looking down at Buffy, hollow and lovely in the lamplight, he couldn’t hate Red for it all anymore. Couldn’t even blame her. Like a lot of terrible things, it was done out of love. Spike could relate. He wasn’t proud of how thoroughly he’d bollixed everything up that year, feeding the flames of Buffy’s sullen hunger with his own blind devotion. Until everything exploded around them. Literally. He’d played his own part in making the Slayer miserable. So, over years and months, he’d made his peace with Willow, slipped her cigarettes on the sly, watched for the reemergence of the whimsical girl he’d met years ago, when his head was empty of technology and her hair was a deeper shade of red. Copper and heart’s blood.. Gorgeous. And young! The Scoobies were just children when he met them, nauseatingly cheerful children with stupid ideas and stupider puns. Really ridiculous. But brave? Hell, yes.

“What are you thinking about?”

Buffy’s voice startled him, caught up in his memories as he was.

Spike kissed her forehead. “Nothing dire, love. Just thoughts.” He took in the deep shadows under her eyes--they weren’t just a trick of the light--noted her resigned arm, thrown across the pillowslip. Boneless. “Close your pretty eyes and go to sleep. Sun’ll be up soon enough.”

And with it would come decisions, he didn’t need to add. Because she already knew there would be choices, cruel choices, the kind that sliced deep and reopened old wounds, exposing everything raw and vulnerable.

“Not tired,” she murmured unconvincingly, and reached for him.

Spike let himself be pulled down so she could wrap her little arms around his neck. After carrying her in from the hallway—which earned him a mild protest and half-hearted cuff on his ear—Spike had stripped her down to her bra and panties, frowning at the prominence of ribs. The knobs of her spine were easily countable, too, he discovered now, as he ran his hands down her back. Buffy was always too thin. He remembered, with a chill, how large her eyes had seemed during the mad months after heaven, all but dominating a face bereft of smiles. A wraith she’d become, indifferent to life, more of a phantom than the Buffy who came to him on those 147 nights, in dreams of the tower.

Buffy felt the tremor, and held him tighter. “What is it? Tell me.” She dropped warm breath and sweet words in his ear.

Spike sighed, but gathered all his will power up and pulled away.

How could he tell her of the fears he still held, fears that she didn’t really want to live in this world and would channel her grief into escape or a great battle she couldn’t win. It had happened before; she took her sadness for Angel to the city—that was the first flight. Later, there were dreamscapes and altered realities, catatonia and death, a wave of dark passion to drown the thought of paradise lost. Earlier, in the bathroom, when she offered him her neck so fearlessly, he’d frozen with horror, sure that she was asking to be turned or killed. To be with Dawn, or with Dawn’s soul, wherever it had fled to. She’d set him straight, of course: I don’t want to die, Spike. But how long would that last, if Dawn’s fledgling antics escalated into something deadly?

Spike raked his hand through his hair. Buffy’s panicked screams in the cemetery would shrill through his dreams for as long as he lived. And after.

Buffy pulled on his arm. “Spike?”

She held onto him, her brow pinched with worry. He wanted to kiss it smooth, then just lay his head against that lamp-lit shoulder and slender, marked neck. To wait for sleep like that, cradled. Just cradled. Not something that most master vampires and former big bads would admit to, that, but, then, Spike had always been different, more free in his ways, indulgent of the body’s deeper needs. Right then it needed hers, he wasn’t ashamed to admit. Nothing wrong with a cuddle, Spike thought wearily. Anyone who figured differently could shove their high falutin’ opinion up their arse.

I am so bloody tired. Spike was fuzzily surprised to discover how exhausted he was as the adrenaline and fear wore off, leaving him limp after hours of nonstop activity:

When was the last time he slept? Spike couldn’t recall.

Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, he blinked his gritty eyes to bring Buffy back into focus as her image wavered like the slenderest flame. It took all his concentration to shrug out of his duster. He made fumbling progress and managed to get the coat off, but, apparently, missed whatever Buffy said to him in the interim. Small fingers digging into his shoulder alerted him to the neglect. Swinging his eyes up to Buffy’s face, he found wry affection and worry etched there.

“Hello! Earth to the undead!” Her voice parted the remaining fog in his brain. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”

“Sorry, pet. Bit knackered. Tell me again?”

“Never mind.” Buffy chided him gently with a roll of her eyes. Men. Shaking her head, she went to work on his shirt, kneeling up to pull it over his head when he raised his arms like a child. The operation made his hair go in all directions, and Buffy bit her lip as she tried unsuccessfully to smooth it down to a wild rumple. Spike scowled, but Buffy just smiled and kissed him on the corner of his mouth, somewhat ruining the effect.

“Sorry, honey. But with the curls…not scary.”

Was I ever, he wondered, and comforted himself with the aftertaste of her kiss, which was saucy and sweet. Boozy. Spike arched an eyebrow. “You been havin’ a nip, Slayer?” he asked in mock amazement, knowing she’d cadged his whisky.

Buffy nodded. “Bourbon.” She raised her little chin defiantly, daring him to comment, in his usual sly way, on her lack of drinking prowess.

But Spike, who was widely famed for taking solace in the bottle, wasn’t throwing any stones. Not this time. He just nodded sagely. “Ah, the cup of courage. Did it help?”

“Not really.” Buffy played with his belt loops. “I got Tara drunk.”

Spike smirked. “Sorry I missed that. Nubile young witch lured to the dark side an’ all.” He stretched out beside her and tucked an arm comfortably underneath his head.

Buffy pinned him with a low wattage glare. “Pervert. You’re a bad influence on my friends.”

‘Hey, now,” Spike protested. “I let the Wild Bunch take my car, din’nt I?”

Buffy hopped up, trembling slightly on her own tired legs, and went around the bed to pull his jeans off. “Yes, it was very good of you to not let them walk and get eaten by my sister. A Hallmark moment.”

From his vantage point, Spike marveled at her as she worked his pants over the knob of an ankle, sporting a determined little frown. Full of pert sarcasm and aggression, she was. Glorious, gilded girl. Fascinating. “Fine. Belittle my—ah, watch the jewels there, kitten—my sacrifice. Don Donut better not have messed with the mirrors.”

Buffy tossed the jeans aside and crawled back up the bed, making more than the hairs on his neck stand up and salute the flag. “Or the seats.” she purred. “Remember Death Valley?”

Oh, he remembered. Some things a body never forgot, like speeding through the night with Buffy in his lap, wrapped all around his lower regions, hotter than the desert could ever be. Trying not to drive into a stand of cactus while she drove him mad. Yanking the car over into some sagebrush and taking his revenge.

“You were wicked, pet. In the very best way.”

He helped her the last few inches as she finished making her languorous way up his body. He was naked and she was in her scanties, powerful little thighs caging his. Which made for a lot of interesting possibilities, but sleep still beckoned. So, after copping a last, lecherous squeeze, he tipped her to he side and reached for the blankets she’d kicked away, intensely aware of her hand skipping along his back, light as a lost balloon. Merciless girl, making him love her more with every touch. Pretty baby, with her short temper and shorter lifespan.

Beautiful death to his kind..

“La belle dame sans merci hath me in thrall,” he muttered aloud.

“What?” Buffy’s hand stopped its butterfly dance.

“Nothing, pet. Just a poem.”

He lay down again, settling against pillows the color of poured cream. The whole room was delicate like that. Girly. All sherbet tones and eyelet lace. He loved this room. Loved how she made him feel here. But how long would it be before the way was barred, as closed to him as the gates of heaven? Her affinity for him would pass away soon enough, because, surely, he wasn’t meant for something so bright and sparkly as lasting happiness. She’d come to her senses sooner or later, start yearning for the things he couldn’t give her, like a bloody walk in the sun. Tots. Joyful reunion in the sweet hereafter.

Buffy immediately pulled him into her arms, jostling until his head was in the crook of her neck where he’d wanted it to lie. Lovely. She was making him pliant with her hands, draining off the violent tension that drove him. His demon shrieked at this gentling, but the poet fell at her feet.

“Did you write it?” Buffy asked, taking up that relentless stroking of his back again.

Spike snorted. “No.” William, loving fool, couldn’t compose anything that didn’t make people flee the sitting room.

“Who did?”

Spike sighed. “One whose name was writ in water,” he quoted.

“Writ in water. I like that.”

“Bloke was all excitable and passionate. Died young, too, Keats did.”

“You all do,” Buffy murmured drowsily. “Must be a poet thing.”

Spike was silent for a long moment, whirling a strand of her lioness hair around his fingers. “It’s the fire inside, love. Burns too bright, makes ‘em see things no man is meant to. All the colors in the world, an’ the ugliness, too.”

Buffy rested her cheek on his hair. “Sometimes the world isn’t good to you, even when you’re good to it.”

Or die for the life of it, Spike almost said. It doesn’t let you keep your treasures very long. Sisters and mothers and friends died. Lovers left. One soul mate betrayed the other by going where the other couldn’t when death obliged them to. If you were a lucky bloke the road to that moment was long, and there were companions on the journey. If you were a vampire and Slayer engaged in a tempestuous, all consuming love affair, then time was very, very short. The companions would probably fall before you, martyrs to the bloody cause.

He felt it when she dropped off to sleep, the not so subtle loss. Awake, she spun through his existence with the velocity of a planet, asleep she simply was. Not slaying or punning or boxing his ears. Not doing anything of the things that made her Buffy, just gathering strength for another round when the sun rose, traveling in the dreamland where things were revealed to her line. Terrible things that could break her heart, which was tender, in spite of it all.

Must be a poet thing.

Maybe she did understand him like no one else. Certainly, curled together in her bed, they could be kindred spirits, searched out and fought for, transcending death, her calling, and his immortal choice. The world wouldn’t let it last—it wasn’t good to either of them, took their treasures away—but there had to be a way to stack the deck in their favor. For a little while.

Moonlight peeked around the edge of the blanket, hung up to protect him from his old enemy, Mr. Sunshine, whom he liked to challenge with flaming jaunts in broad daylight. Moonlight that he’d hunted and rambled and made love in, turned his face up to as the night train rumbled out from Krakow or Riga or Prague, bearing he and Dru west toward this fate. He loved the moon, whether it was fat and full, or a slim, silver scythe. He gave it now to Dawn, as her guiding star. He had another.

Nibblet. Sassy little sparrow. Never thought you’d fly away.

Buffy’s neck throbbed inches from his face, exuding powerful, healing heat where they’d been connected so profoundly, so irrevocably such a short time ago. God, it was good. Like drinking from the river of life. Funny, he hadn’t felt brutal, even as he’d taken her blood. He’d felt loved. The claimer, claimed.

Like the antithesis of sin.

And with that last, strange thought still cycling through his brain, Spike fell into the dreamland, where things might be revealed.

“Maybe we should check on Buffy.”

Willow heaved a long-suffering sigh and set aside the textbook she was pretending to be interested in. “Xander, she said she was alright.”

“If almost taking a swan dive down the stairs fits your definition of alright, I’m worried. You are so not babysitting my future offspring.”

Anya wandered in from the kitchen and added her voice to the babysitting debate. “But Willow’s services might be useful if we want to go away and have sex.”

She handed Willow a steaming cup, her umpteenth cup of tea that evening. Anya felt they’d bonded over the drink and was now brewing it constantly. If Willow had to drink anymore, she was going to wee all over Joyce Summers’ tasteful carpet.

Willow hastily setting the mug aside after taking a perfunctory sip. “And I’m guessing from that comment that you two are getting back together.”

“Yes. But there’s been no rambunctious make-up sex yet.” Anya declared.

“An!” Xander groaned.

“We’ll do that later. When everyone else is asleep.”

Xander shot Willow a pitiful look, like he wanted to sink into the couch cushions. Willow bit her lip, largely unsympathetic. How do you like her now?

Anya, oblivious, settled intimately beside him, snuggling in close. Frowning at the sitcom rerun that was playing, she reached for the remote. “Is the erotica channel fifty-six or fifty-seven?”

Willow tried to beam Xander some fortitude with her eyes as he turned colors, pink deepening into red, lightly tinged with olive. “Um, yeah…” She hastened on. “As I was saying, Buffy is fine. Kind of fainty, but not comatose or trying to jump off anything.”

“Her hair was disheveled and in need of styling,” Anya volunteered.

“Thanks, Anya. We’ll have to remind her to cream rinse immediately after fleeing the sight of her mother’s decaying corpse,” Willow bit out.

Anya shrugged and resumed flipping channels.

“I don’t think it would hurt to peek in.” Xander started to rise.

Anya, eyes still on the screen, reached out and pushed him back down. “Honey, do you value your testicles?”

“What?”

“Do you like them where they are?”

“Well, yes.”

“Good. So do I. We agree on this. So you won’t go peeking and risk them.”

Xander looked flummoxed. Willow watched the two in silence, strangely fascinated. “What do my…testicles…have to do with anything?”

“Well, Spike might rip them off if you do. He and Buffy are very violent people.” She patted his knee comfortingly. “They value their privacy.”

Willow cleared her throat. “Thank you, Anya. That was actually…helpful. In a mortifying way.”

“You’re welcome, Willow. Willow, my friend. My friend, Willow.” Anya explored the concept aloud. “Would you like some more tea?”

“Um, maybe later.” When I’ve peed out a lake or two.

In the dreamland, everything seemed real, yet, she was aware of its true insubstantiality. Everything was ephemeral, melting forms that took another shape at will, objects with a meaning and importance she couldn’t yet divine. All the secrets of her past and future were there, but locked up tight, and she never stayed long enough to seek them all out.

Sometimes, there was a corridor with doors, many doors. There weren’t always rooms behind them, but fields, deserts, or highways. Each was familiar, somehow, someway, because these were her memories, and this was their palace. One memory-room held heaven, but she hadn’t yet found it again. Another contained Dawn, just shimmering into existence as Buffy entered the bedroom where they first met. A birth, of sorts.

There were rooms she wanted to linger in and others she wanted to leave behind forever. Joyce smiling, Dawn dancing, Angel under snow. She looked in upon each and smiled. Giles in the stacks. Spike in game face, laughing, feral man that would be hers. Willow casting with joy. Xander, always.

The last door she did enter. Spike’s crypt, voluminous with candlelight. And Whistler in the comfy chair, drinking her love’s pilfered scotch.

“Better taste in liquor, this time around.” He waved the bottle at her.

“What are you doing here?” Buffy asked, snatching it away. “What do the Powers want with me?”

Compassion flickered across the swarthy features of the demon-man. “Only all you can give, kid.”

My life? Spike’s? The lives of my friends?

Buffy was seized by a desire to grab the Messenger and shake him, or lay her head against his knee and weep.

“Why did my sister die?”

Whistler shrugged. “Why does anybody? To make way for the new. Its survival of the fittest, girl. Ask your boyfriend about that.”

A chill ran up Buffy’s spine. “Touch him and I’ll pull out your intestines like a rope of sausage and treat the neighborhood dogs for a week.”

Whistler threw back his head and laughed. “Some things never change, kid.”

Xander and Anya fell asleep, despite their planned…activity, heads thrown back against the couch, captured in green shadow by the flickering TV. Only Willow remained awake and watchful. Waiting. But soon enough, her own head nodded and her book slid off to hit the carpet with a rustle of pages.

“No,” Xander muttered in the mysterious way of dreamers. “No chips.”

Willow didn’t dream, or, if she did, it wasn’t anything she could recall later. At some point, Xander knocked over a bowl of snacks as he flailed into a more comfortable position. Fritos, Willow thought groggily, snuggling deeper into her armchair. I’ll vacuum. Later. A little later, canned laughter boomed from the television screen, and Willow woke momentarily, once again, before lapsing back into slumber.

But when the phone rang, she shot up like a rocket, joggling a nearby lamp.

Willow scrubbed at her eyes. Why did phones seem to get louder and more insistent the longer you left them? This one was shrilling practically in her ear. A quick check revealed it was still dark out.

Xander sat up, eyes batting owlishly under his dark shock of hair. “Reach out and touch someone doesn’t mean ring at any odd hour. Somebody’s so not getting the concept.”

“Maybe it’s Giles.” Willow yawned. “You answer it.”

She thrust the phone at Xander, who rolled his eyes and elbowed Anya, who continued to sleep, sprawled out like a wet noodle. “No returns, Ma’am, “ she mumbled, rolling over.

“Greetings, 4 A.M. caller.” Xander propped the phone between his shoulder and ear. “How good of you to--”

Willow’s eyes widened as Xander sat bolt upright. “This is who, now? From the what?” Anger rippled over his usually mild features. “No, you can’t have a word with Miss Summers… because I said so, pal, that’s why.” The one-sided conversation was beginning to be fascinating.. Even Anya was awake, now. Who is it, Willow mouthed.

Council, he mouthed back.

Xander began to pace with the phone. “Forget it, slick…It’s not gonna happen…Oh, you will, huh? Go ahead. She’d rather live in a paper sack than grovel to you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” He was clutching the phone so hard Willow though it might shatter.

Then a little crease appeared between his eyebrows as the caller apparently said something offensive.

“What? No, this isn’t her lover, William the Bloody!”

Dramatic eye rolling followed. “…yes, that’s exactly right, mister. I’m one of the ‘little helpers.’ Sleepy, if fact. Grumpy, Dopey and Doc are out in the forest chopping wood.”

Willow goggled. Anya giggled. Xander plunged on. “Listen, I’m tired. You’re a windbag. Let’s call it a night…I said I’m hanging up, now. And don’t call back or I’ll get somebody really rude down here to talk to you.” He listened quietly for a moment. “Oh, take your salary and shove it. Just…just bugger off!” He slammed the receiver down.

Willow and Anya burst into applause. Xander turned pink.

“Very nice, “ drawled an accented voice. Three heads swiveled toward the staircase.

Spike, doing the lurking thing. He regarded them with amusement, arms crossed over his bare chest.

“You heard?” Willow poked Anya, who was staring at Spike in frank admiration. Please don’t comment on the package or ask about his orgasms. I’m scarred enough.

“Every word. Superhuman and all.” At Xander’s look, he sighed, lip curling. “Relax. Harris. Just funnin’ with you. I don’t listen to you or the ladies in the loo.” He gestured to the upper floor where Buffy slept. “Picked up the other line so it wouldn’t wake up Sleeping Beauty and found myself bloody entertained.”

He shook his head. “Tellin’ off Quentin Travers. My boy, you can now go forth as a man.”

“I don’t think he was exactly trembling in his Wellies. That’s more your area.”

Spike fingers twitched, like they itched to hold a cigarette. “They’re going to cut off her stipend for the slayin’ until the ‘situation’ is resolved. Bastards. How the hell do they know what’s going on in the Slayer’s own business, anyway?”

Xander sighed. “The Grandpa squad has eyes and ears everywhere.”

As if on cue, the phone trilled again.

“Give it here.” Spike strode into the living room, snatched up the set and growled into it, not bothering with formalities like ‘hello’. “What part of bugger off don’t you understand, chicken shit?” He barked out a decidedly non-humorous laugh. “Lilly-livered little pustule, you are. Put your slimy feelers anywhere near Sunnydale and I swear I’ll”—

He broke off, looking faintly puzzled.

“Travers, you pillock! Say something or hang the fuck up!”

Willow bit her lip. “There’s nobody there?”

Anya crawled over and pressed her face as close to Spike’s as she could, listened intently. “Nothing,” she reported. “Not even breathing.”

Spike’s grip on the phone tightened. Then, so softly, “Dawn? That you, petal?”

Nobody moved, not Xander, not Anya, not Willow, who watched the various shades of emotion sweep over the unusual architecture of Spike’s face, softening the plunging angles. Love. Regret. Grief. Hope.

And, in the moment there came an audible click, despair. Willow’s heart sank. Spike gently laid the phone down as if he were putting it to bed, and no one spoke until Xander cleared his throat.

“Was it her?”

“Probably.” Spike wandered over to the window and stared out into the night, his face unreadable.

Willow pulled her knees up to her chest and shivered. Xander put his arm around Anya. United in their fear, all four waited for the phone to ring again. But it remained comfortingly, mockingly silent. Willow wondered how the caller could have been Dawn, because, really, was there even a Dawn anymore? From what she’d gathered, William wasn’t Spike after turning (poetry?!) and Angelus wasn’t Angel. Or were they?

Willow sighed, truly vexed.

“Spike?” She asked quietly, having mulled something over in her head. “Do you think it’s the Key that the council’s worried about?” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s why they’re so hot for the stakage?”

The vampire leaned against the window frame. With his rioting hair and full, pursed lips, she still couldn’t imagine him writing sonnets in the shadows. Music, maybe, loud, brash, full of white noise that made your head explode. But not poems, for Goddess’s sake.

“It’s possible, “ he agreed. “They don’t know how much hocus pocus she can still whip up. Far as they know, she’s still green energy girl, al destructive and powerful-like.”

“But she’s not, right?” Willow asked nervously. “She can’t access that power. Never could after the tower.”

Spike shot her a grim smile. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? But believe this, Red, if nothing else. She can cause plenty o’ mayhem without the barest hint of mojo.”

**************************************************

The little box smelled like body odor and pot, with a hint of urine. Ick. Dawn grimaced and opened the glass door a few more inches. The award for the stinkiest phone booth in existence goes to…mine!

Her quarters dropped down the change slot with a hollow clink that was amazingly loud to her new ears, almost musical. Drumming her fingers, she quickly checked the sky for any signs of light. Not yet, soon though. This, too, was new, her awareness of sunrise, the knowing when shadows would fade by how they sprawled on limbs or leaves.

“LA P.D.”

The voice was gruff with tobacco, like other voices she had known. World-weary, too. They seemed a piece from her, now, those voices, like some veil had fallen between worlds, barring the way to the old life. She didn’t want to want them, the people and places that belonged to Dawn, for a quartet of years, and didn’t really, except wherein she might destroy them. If they couldn’t be hers, they wouldn’t be at all. She’d see to it.

Don’t mess with vampire-ette.

“Yes, sir.’ She said in a voice as bright and fake as Buffy’s hair color, throwing in a little breathiness for effect. “I want to report possible foul play. There’s a girl missing, you see. Dawn Summers. Yes, Summers. S-U-M-M-E-R-S.” she waited, listening to the finality of an officer’s pen, scratching on paper, miles and miles away.

“No one believes me, sir, but I…I think her sister killed her. Names? Oh my, yes. I can give you names…”