Spike walked up the unfinished cul-de-sac, through the woods that skirted the neighborhood, and onto the main road leading out of town. This housing development, Sunny Acres or some other half-assed name like that, made a decent doss. Abandoned probably in the early 80s, from the looks of the barely finished and completely unfinished homes, it reminded him of that strange postwar time in America that had once amused him and Dru so much. Acres and acres of land being quilted into prefab patterns, all trying to lure the expanding middle classes into one new "town" that offered work, home, and play within one storybook place. The billboard signs beckoned to commuters "You could be home now... if you lived in the new Sunny Acres Estates!" He'd sneered at those things then; now he had, because of them, a roof over his head and a place to sleep.
An odd collection of demon types had taken up residence here; none of them dangerous to humans, as if the unspoken code of the neighborhoods was "only easy-going demons need apply." Clem had steered him here when he'd arrived -- it hadn't taken long to realize he couldn't go back to the crypt.
Living life under the radar, now, a soul and a chip (or maybe not; he still wasn't entirely certain about that, though Fred was fairly certain it wasn't active anymore) and his history with everyone in Sunnydale making all of it a necessary charade. As long as no one knew he wasn't a vampire anymore, he felt relatively safe, and even Clem hadn't sussed the new skin he wore. Spike had even landed a job at Willie's, which surprised him, because Willie usually evidenced an impeccable demon spidey sense.
It was all a question of reputation, he'd realized. People didn't look past the image they were already familiar with, they assumed everything stayed the same. Always and forever, that was the human mindset.
It bought him time, at least. Time to figure out what to do, how to start again... not necessarily to get back in touch with Buffy, but at least time to create a sense of proximity. He'd seen her a few times from afar, and it had left Spike shaken and confused. The feelings were still every bit as powerful as before he'd journeyed to Africa, but there was such a miasma of guilt, fear, and demoralization surrounding him that he wasn't sure how to go forward on anything.
Spike had always been a doer, didn't stop to think or worry about consequences. Not being able to take action was frustrating to him; but of course, he tried to remind himself over and over, it was his rashness that had got him here in the first place. As shackled as he felt by this new life, he had to play out the hand.
By the time he'd gone past the cemetery he was so lost in his own little netherworld of future and past agonies that he didn't even see Dawn until they ran straight into each other.
They both screamed "Aiiigh!" and jumped back at the same time, mouths open and eyes wide.
"Spike!" Dawn shouted.
"Dawn!" Spike bellowed at the same time.
"What are you--" they started, and stopped, then tried again. "I'm going--"
They glared at each other. He pointed at her, and she started. "I'm doing some research for Buffy."
"Aren't you little miss Brenda Starr?"
"What?" she snapped.
"Never mind. I'm on my way to... to Willie's."
"Ooookay..." Her face was set hard and it occurred to him with icy force that she was long lost to him, their connection severed when he'd attacked her sister. And there might never be a way to get her back again.
He rubbed his hand over his face. "Oh, Niblet, where do I even start?"
Her posture changed slightly, shoulders dropping and legs bending.
There was something about him, she thought, something defeated and new, a light in his eyes a world away from anything Dawn had seen before. "Why are you... how long have you... we went to see you and Clem said you were gone. No one's heard word one from you since. What's the what?" she demanded. She had a thousand questions, only some related to the night he attacked Buffy. But Dawn knew that wasn't something she could bring up with him; not alone, anyway.
"Long story. Stupid stuff. But lately I was at Giles's, with Willow, and then in LA. Angel and his mob." He looked at her with such sadness , as if his explanation was an apology. Spike had never struck Dawn as the apologetic type, and for a moment, she felt sorry for him.
"How come? Spike, what's going on?" Suddenly it hit her. The sun hadn't set. He was out in the day, the low slanting light of late summer evening still waiting to set him on fire, only he wasn't. On fire, or even smoking. "Hey! Wait a minute!"
Oh crap. She'd rumbled him. Spike had hoped the shock of seeing him might save his neck from the block. "Now, now, it's not what you might think..."
"What might I think?" she asked in a mock English accent. And a very bad one at that.
"That I'm... okay in the light."
"Yet, somehow, you're standing in the freaking sun and you're not on fire. Funny how that leads me to believe something's up." She stuck her hip out, arms crossed over her chest.
"Yeah, well, it's... it's something funny that happened, see, a while ago, and just ... really not a big thing."
He sounded sort of shaky when he talked. Like he was definitely hiding something -- it reminded her a lot of when he was trying to deny that he had the hots for Buffy. Spike was a terrible liar.
"So, you were just going to come back, not tell anyone, be all out in the sunny guy, and we weren't ever going to know?"
With his head tilted sideways, he narrowed his eyes at her and sighed. "You tell me -- did you really want to see me? Any of you?"
Tricky the way he talked about the whole gang instead of just Buffy. She knew that Buffy was all he ever really thought about. Probably never gave a single minute's consideration to her feelings when he'd hurt Buffy, because he was so busy being a stupid vampire with his take-what-I-want, when-I-want 'tude.
When she didn't answer, he shook his head. "Truth is, I had nowhere else to go; no place as demon-friendly as Sunnydale, so I dragged my whupped arse back here because I'd no idea what else to do. Seeing any of you wasn't part of the plan, because I reckoned you'd all be ready for Spike flambe if you ever got a glimpse of my kisser. Why do you think I'm living all the way out here in Paradise Place?"
Nothing she could say to that, unfortunately. Dawn didn't hate him, precisely, it was the sort of low-level irritation, that betrayed burned feeling that comes from being... well, burned by someone you loved. But you couldn't really tell Spike you loved him; not normal people anyway. She'd tried once, after Buffy had died and he'd been with her all night when she was really sick with some kind of food poisoning. All through it, waiting for Will to come home and fix it, Spike had sat by her side, never making her feel like a disgusting creep for all the puking. So she'd tried to tell him then, that she loved him and was glad he was a part of her life, especially when there was no Buffy in it. She'd explained how much it meant to her that he'd stuck around long after he probably wanted to, just because he cared. But the moment she'd said the big three words, he'd given her that cranky vampire look, the one she knew all too well from before they'd become friends.
He put his hands in his pockets. "I have to go, Dawn. But... will you keep it between us, that you saw me?"
"Not unless you tell me why you're not toast." It was easy to freak him out, sometimes, if you played the Buffy card. He cared too much what she thought about every little thing. And if it was a spell of some kind, they'd need to know about it. Now that she was research gal, info gathering was always at the top of her mind.
The gears were turning in his head. He squinched his eyes, and then glanced to the left and the right, like he was looking for an escape route. "You have to swear not to tell."
"I swear, but only if you tell me what's up." Dawn held up three fingers; she wasn't sure what for, but it seemed like an honesty thing.
It made her jump when he held his arm out, and she didn't get it at first. Then he took her hand, and put her fingers on his wrist. Like... feeling for his pulse. And weirdly, there was one. An actual pulse, in his wrist.
He felt a certain satisfaction in watching her jaw drop and her eyes widen like a scared horse. At least this shock hadn't come with a vampire bite, though.
"How..." poor kid couldn't even finish, she was so frightened. Probably had been hard enough growing up with vampires and demons and a slayer sister, let alone getting hit with the gobsmacking revelation that vampires could become human. Well, one, at least.
"Like I said, long, stupid story. I'm actually... I wanted to make it right, with your sis and all. But then other things happened." Her discomfort was palpable. Everything she'd have decided in the missing months in between would now be heading right into the toilet. Her picture of Spike the villain suddenly had a tear in it. "Look, Luv, I have to go now. Maybe... maybe one of these days it'll be safe and I can tell you the tale, eh?"
Her intrigue and well-honed annoyance warred with each other. Posture changed again, the surprise replaced with a furrowed-brow anger. She'd wanted to believe so many things about him, but he rained on her parade. He bolted, as much to get a handle on his own rollercoaster emotions as anything. More questions, and he wouldn't be able to keep his resolve to stay away.
After a couple of days spent wondering if she'd told anyone despite the promise, he finally felt free and clear. Till Harris walked in to Willie's, anyway. Spike was carrying in two crates of whiskey -- before, they would have been light as a feather, but now they were harder to move than a body -- when he spied Xander leaning over the bar, lamely attempting to intimidate the bartender, a jaded old Garoth demon called Steve. Even vampires couldn't intimidate Steve. Harris was doing the tough-guy talking with predictably lackluster results, and then turned to look at Spike as he entered, then turned back to Steve, and then did a doubletake back at Spike. For a moment, Spike couldn't decide what to do -- drop the crates and leg it, or just keep working, business as usual. But Harris decided for him.
"Spike?" he bellowed across the bar. "Spike!" Spike set the crates down at the foot of the counter and dusted off his hands.
"Keep your voice down, mate. No need to deafen everyone on the premises."
Xander looked around incredulously at the completely empty bar. "What the hell are you doing here?" He glanced down at the crates, then up at Spike. So, clearly he wasn't here because Dawn had spilled the beans. "Are you... are you working?"
"What's it to you?" Spike aked, pouring himself a pint. The only real perk about working here. Demon bars, by their very nature, didn't have a lot of rules, which suited Spike fine even in his post-soul lifestyle.
"What's it to me?" Harris exclaimed incredulously. "How about starting with what you did to Buffy?"
Uh-oh. Slayers were not a popular topic round here, unless you intended to kill one of them. Spike gestured at Xander with two fingers. Steve rolled his eyes, threw the bar towel down on the counter, and slid out the back door to the alley.
"I don't even know where to start!" Xander shouted. People seemed to be saying that to him a lot these days.
"Oh, allow me to do it for you. I've a lot of nerve, coming back here like this, after everything I did to Buffy. And what's with the working at Willie's? Why didn't I tell anyone I was back, so I could take my whipping like a man?" He took a long drink. "I get most of that right?"
No fair. Spike had taken all the righteous wind out of his sails. Reason 3,145 to hate the undead little bastard. Buffy was going to freak when she found out he was here and acting like nothing had happened. Xander opened his mouth a couple times, then closed it. "Well, yeah. I guess that's pretty much it."
"Fine. Tell you what, how about you just accept that I'd nowhere else to go, I needed the money, and you want to take me on, go right ahead because there's not a bloody thing I can do to stop you, eh?"
It was really annoying to actually feel something like sympathy for the guy, but the way he rattled off all that stuff and the weird look on his face made Xander feel slightly less than hostile for the first time in memory. He thought briefly about calling Buffy on the cell, but then he just pulled out a bar stool and sat down, chin in hands.
"I really ought to stake you." Thinking about it left him slightly wistful.
"You and everyone else in town. Back of the line, mate."
"I wish you'd stop calling me that. I'm not your mate or your pal or your bud or anything. I hate you."
"Course you do. Doesn't everyone."
The fact that he said it without making it a question made Xander nervous. Whenever Spike got maudlin and suicidal, really bad things happened. They were all finally getting on with something resembling a decent life -- the last thing he wanted was for more bad things to happen, Sunnydale-style.
"Why are you here, anyway? No one wants you here."
Xander scowled. "Research for Buffy."
"What kind of research?" Spike asked him.
"Oh... Buffy's been having these dreams..." He wondered how much he should say about Buffy to Stalker-boy.
"Slayer dreams?"
"Kinda. She keeps seeing other slayers get killed. And she thinks that it's connected with a couple of disappearances around here."
"So now you're, what? Errand boy? Thought you were busy playing construction worker in the Village People."
"Har har." Spike made a funny face at him, and then he poured another pint, sliding it down the bar toward him, just like in the movies. As he reached to stop it, the beer sloshed over on his hand. He made a point of shaking the beer off his hand, frowning at Spike, but thanked him anyway. "The nice thing about my job is that I can still kinda help Buffy out when I'm not working. And there's not a lot else to do around Sunnydale, anyway, if you're not doing demon stuff."
"Don't I know it."
Every time Spike acted average and conversational, it made Xander think that some kind of spell of Will's had gone wrong or something. It just wasn't part of the whole mental picture you got for William the Bloody.
"So, look, what I said before. Why are you here? We heard you left town, and that seemed like a pretty good idea to stay gone, you know? After everything you did... a lot of us want you not here. Not, I mean, here here as in Willie's, but Sunnydale. Or hell, all of southern California."
Spike rolled his eyes and took another drink. "My life is my life. I stay away from you and your little gang, so what difference does it make where I set up shop?" Spike thought about telling the gormless twat that he had seen Giles and Willow, and how friendly they all were now, but he realized that would be pointless. Harris was like a dog with a fucking great bone once he got hold of some notion, and far be it from Spike to spoil the pleasure of his beliefs about everything that had happened.
"You're not even going to apologize or anything?" Strangely, his voice sounded more wheedling than angry or accusatory.
"I already tried. You tell me how a person can apologize for all of that -- and I don't think Buffy's going to be getting all contrite about her behavior, either."
Xander played with the wet ring the beer glass left, drawing little starburst patterns. "She's changed. A lot."
"Yeah, heard that one before."
"What the hell, Spike? I mean, where do you get off being all superior? You tried to rape her, for god's sake!"
Spike just scowled at him. So the good Spike routine didn't work, might as well trot out the bad Spike act again. "You know, Angel told me a story once. 'bout you getting possessed by a jackal or jackally demon or something. Turning on your friends and trying to ... let me see. What was it? Rape Buffy? Only she kicked your wussy little arse. Now, admittedly he heard the story from someone else -- Buffy, I presume -- but still, it left me with a warm, fuzzy, smug feeling."
Xander sat up straighter, blinking. Spike relished the ability to score such a direct hit so easily one always got with Xander.
"Well, you heard that wrong."
"Yeah, very convincing with the voice breaking, there."
"What do you want, Spike?"
"I want you to leave me the fuck alone, is what I want. I want you to stop with the holier than thou routine just because you're graced with humanity and I'm a vampire. And I want you to keep your gob shut about seeing me and leave Buffy alone."
Then, weirdly, Spike poured him another beer. And came around the bar and sat down beside him. There were times Xander thought he and Spike had the weirdest relationship of any two creatures in the history of the planet. It was like you could hate him with the white hot fury of a thousand suns, and yet when the guy acted normal around you, you just slid into the whole buddy-like thing.
"How is she, anyway?"
"You really haven't seen her?"
"Couple times, from afar. With Dawnie. But that was it, and I wasn't looking for her."
"She's good. Really, she's... she's happy again. Much as she can be with being a slayer and all."
"Yeah." Spike raised his glass and said, "Cheers." Xander did the same.
"Anya's a vengeance demon again. Or did you know that?"
"Yeah. She was... well."
"Don't expect me to forgive you for that." Xander tried for the cold fury, but he didn't think it came out that tough. He really wished he could perfect that tough guy thing that Spike and Angel had done so well, but it probably only came with the demon package, and he would prefer to pass that opportunity up.
"Not asking you to. Not yours to forgive. You left the poor bint at the fucking altar, you stupid cunt." He took a drink and Xander boggled in his direction. He'd said it so conversationally it was like they were just talking about the weather.
"Hey! Things happened that you could never possibly understand. And then you swooped in while she was vulnerable and took total advantage of the situation. Like the evil, disgusting thing you are!" He hated it when his voice got like this, all high-pitched and reedy. Plus, he wasn't so hot with the wounding verbal wordplay. Somehow, no matter how much he wanted to rise above, Xander always got sucked into these stupid arguments with Spike. He wanted to be the better man, the cooler head prevailing against the infantile vampire, yet somehow he ended up like a stupid little kid with a totally lame vocabulary. Spike had all those cool English insults, too.
"You dragged her along for how many years on the promise that you could grow up and do the right thing, the thing she'd been dreaming about since she became human. You have no understanding of what that means, to be turned human again after all that time, to lose everything you thought you were. And there she thought her knight in shining armor rode, you with your moldy cellar and your pizza delivery jobs and your selfish, thoughtless intolerance of her past. Yet still she loved you, you stupid, worthless git. And you left her when she thought you loved her most, on what she hoped would be the happiest day of her life."
A wave of resentment and hopelessness overcame Xander as he listened to Spike spit out the litany of his failures. He wanted to be full of righteous indignation, and yet he couldn't.
Spike narrowed his eyes, and said, "So after all you did to her, you want to throw down on me now because I bonked the woman you always thought you loved, and the one you had and threw away like she was yesterday's rubbish? Well, have a go. There's nothing stopping you, is there?"
Xander sputtered, "Screw you."
"Oh stop. You're killing me with the clever retorts."
Xander got up off the bar stool, an itch in his palms, thinking he could break the stool and then finally stake this parasite once and for all. But even with the chip, there was something about Spike that still scared him.
With weariness, Spike said, "Your demons aren't here, and no one has any information on them, so how 'bout you go. We'll pretend we never saw each other."
Xander went as he'd asked. But he turned to Spike with an odd look on his face, resigned and hopeless, as if he believed everything Spike said, and Spike had a twinge of guilt. Wasn't it bad enough to have come back wrong, and be slowly dying, without having to throw things like guilt and remorse into the mix?
"You know, Buffy doesn't hate you. I don't know why, I think she's crazy, but she doesn't hate you. It's just the rest of us who would like to see you gutted and fried on a spit. She'd probably be glad to know you're okay."
Spike shrugged, more touched by the gesture than he wanted to be. It must have taken a lot out of the boy to say that.
"Too much of the past. Sometimes, there's no future with that much past."
"Suit yourself, man."
Spike turned back to the bar, and began stocking the glasses.
They all looked so happy. Almost unscarred. Buffy most of all -- skinnier than ever, but glowing, as if none of the events of the past year had occurred at all.
Spike watched them through the window, the golden glow of the living room casting its familial light across the front lawn. He stood behind his old tree, watching them all, feeling as sad and lost as they appeared happy and warm. What would it be like when Willow came back, though, he wondered. If Anya had been there? Somehow Harris, Buffy, and Dawn had made themselves a little family. Did they think about those they were missing?
He wasn't going in. The moment he'd set foot in the garden he'd known he couldn't do it, despite Harris's proclamations that it wouldn't be as bad as he expected. Taking a deep breath, Spike walked away from the window, the sense of finality settling on his shoulders like a weight.
It would have been smarter to stay in LA, or hell, even back in Bath. At least he could have died his slow, winding death with people who were friendly, who made a pretense of caring. But he believed his friendship with Willow was real. In LA Angel would have looked out for him, and Wes and Fred would have tried to comfort him as things fell apart. Here, he was alone again, naturally.
Lately he'd thought about that dream, the one he'd had in Bath where Tara had shown him the light, had shown Willow. He constantly struggled with the meaning of it, with all the strange dreams and waking visions he'd had since he got the humanity back. Especially the words Tara had spoken to him -- even the devil was an angel once. Sometimes he thought it meant he was supposed to have stayed with Angel till the bitter end; other times he wondered if he was the devil, now an angel again. Why did those fucking cunts The Powers That Be have to be so bleeding cryptic about their goals?
He was about two blocks from the Summers house when suddenly he was knocked off his feet by something brown. His head hit a parked car, and his body crumpled against the wheel as the thing tried to get a grip on him. Spike stumbled to his feet and started blindly kicking at the evil little creature. A robe. A monk's robe. It leapt up and started thumping on him, so Spike slid out from under and he made a run for the pile of construction materials on someone's front lawn over to the right, hoping there might be something nicely hefty and deadly in there. But the thing grabbed him from behind, pulling him down, and then Spike pivoted to see its face, or at least, a facsimile of a face. Eyes and mouth sewn shut to make the creepiest, most disgusting thing he'd ever seen in his life of creepy disgusting things. He fumbled behind him as the mad monk raised a dagger of enormous, disturbing proportions, and managed to bring up a cinderblock to blunt the impact of the dagger. Didn't stop the thing, though, as it leapt forward and tried once more. Scrambling, Spike crawled backwards like a crab, but then abruptly the being's head went flying off to the side in the opposite direction of his body, which crumpled to the ground.
Behind it stood Buffy, axe in hand. She offered her other hand to Spike, and helped pull him up.
"Friend of yours?"
"Not precisely, no." How could she act so casually? She gazed up at him with something like... a look of happiness on her face. As if she was happy to see him, only of course that couldn't be.
"I thought maybe that's why you were letting it kick your ass like that."
He stared at her, desperately attempting not to look the whipped puppy, waiting for her rage to boil over and for all the resentment and anger to come pouring out. Instead she hefted the axe and said, "I saw you sneaking away. You could have come in, you know. Kind of a lot to talk about."
Spike was speechless. She swung the axe up over her shoulder and poked her toe at the head, which rolled over, exhibiting the non-existent eyes and mouth. Buffy grimaced, looked casually at Spike, and said with her old perkiness, "Ew!"
Hell and damnation. All this time and he'd thought maybe he'd fallen out of love. Of course it couldn't be that easy.
End Ch. 5
My lovely cover art by X. Don't take or distribute in any way.
06/11/04