These dreams, she could accept. Nightmares were nothing more than a reflection of the dangers she faced on a daily basis.
What she hated, what disturbed her sleep and left her unsettled, were the pretty dreams – dreams in which everything was as it should be – where her mother hadn't died, where demons were nothing more than fairy tale monsters, and vampires didn't exist outside of Bram Stoker's novel and late night B movies.
The problem with these dreams was not so much in the dreaming as in the waking. For upon waking she once again was forced to deal with – nothing, for everything, anything that mattered was gone – and yet she was there, and she had to go on.
"Another bad dream, luv?" Spike broke her self-indulgent reverie.
"I told you not to call me that." She bristled and turned away from him.
"You can't punish me forever, y'know." He put on a false display of bravado, pacing the cold, stone floor of his crypt. "Sooner or later you're gonna hafta start trusting me again. After all . . ." He ran a finger down her collarbone and then threatened to tug away the blanket she had tucked protectively around her shoulders. "I'm all you've got left."
"Go to Hell!" She jumped from her seat like a loaded spring. Fists and feet fueled by nothing more than her passionate anger, and lacking any of her carefully honed finesse, flailed against him like a late summer hailstorm.
"Easy, luv." He grabbed her arms, but she still struggled against him kicking and threatening to bite him. "We're on the same side, remember."
She wrenched her arms free, but didn't try to fight him anymore. "We were never on the same side, Spike. You're only working with me because you don't have any choice. Stop trying to pretend it's something else."
He rolled his eyes, having heard this refrain more times than he could count. "If that's what helps you get to sleep at night, Slayer," he called after her as she walked away, and into the sunlight. "Just remember who it is that's keeping your bed cold."
- PART I -
THICKENING OF FEAR
He'd come back only to try to talk to Buffy. They'd gone too far. He'd gone too far – lost control – and he would do anything to fix things – to make her understand – to make her accept him. For if there was one thing that was certain in his world right now, it was that Buffy had to be a part of it, and he'd do whatever it took.
He let himself into the house, and stopped, sensing almost immediately that something was very wrong. It was too quiet; it didn't feel right. When he looked back on that day, though, the thing that would stand out the most to him would be the blood.
He was a vampire; he was used to blood. This, though, this had been different. It had been wrong.
The house had smelled of Tara's blood.
He bolted upstairs, in a panic, and on reaching the master bedroom, he saw it.
Tara was supine in her lover's arms, the red spot on her blouse growing with every second that ticked by. Willow's eyes were blind with confusion and grief, and dark with power; her face was empty of any other emotion but raw pain. As she screamed, it sounded as if the very fabric of the universe was being torn open.
He thought about ducking slowly out – turning tail and running away – and would've done just that, but she'd seen him.
"Spike!!" She pointed at him, her eyes wide with fear and desperation. "Help me! Save her! Do something??" It was not a request, but a demand.
"I can't . . . I don't . . ." He stared at her, dumb and helpless, scared for both of them.
She stared at him, her eyes brimming with tears. Still, she wouldn't listen to his protests. "She can't die! Save her!"
"Red, I . . . I don't know what . . . I don't think I can." He knew one way, but he wasn't about to raise the possibility. It was too much, too extreme.
Somehow, she'd seen though, known where his mind had gone – somehow, she'd been able to read his thoughts. "You’ve turned someone before to keep them from dying." She spoke slowly, seemingly as surprised as he by the knowledge that she'd unwittingly stolen from him.
"Red, no." He took a step back toward the door. "The Slayer . . . my chip . . . I can't."
"She's dying. . ." Willow's voice broke, and she collapsed over Tara. He took another step backward, and wound up jostling the collection of perfume bottles on the top of their dresser. The noise made her look up, pinning him in place with her eyes.
"SAVE HER!!" A shadow passed in front of the window, darkening her red hair into a deep auburn as she yelled at him. A chill worked up his spine, and he shivered.
What Willow hadn't realized or had chosen to ignore when she'd momentarily tuned into his thoughts was that it had played out with disastrous results. He'd turned, and then been forced to stake, his own mother. Now, he was being asked to do it again. He had little doubt that the results would not be any better. In fact, he could almost guarantee it would be much, much worse.
"Willow . . ." he used her name, something he rarely did, in an attempt to reach her – to reason with her. "You don't know what you're asking! Buffy . . . "
"Buffy's not here right now," Willow answered with deliberate calm, and he shivered again.
"Don't mean she won't stake me when she finds out," he reasoned.
"You're afraid," Willow spoke as though the realization was something profound to her.
"Of her, yeah!" Spike was flip.
"Fear . . . " Willow repeated. "Of course . . ."
The fireball seemed to come out of nowhere, singeing the doorframe right next to him. He looked at the wood and sucked in his breath. Damn scary witch.
He looked around the room for something, anything, that would provide him with the means to escape the situation. Briefly, he wondered why saving his own skin and currying favor with Buffy seemed to be such mutually exclusive goals.
"DO IT!" She ordered as a new fireball formed on her palm.
He took a step closer to her, trying to reach that part of her that he knew still existed – the part that had been hardwired to believe that vampires are bad and must be killed, the part that valued Buffy's friendship, the part that hadn't been corrupted with a lust for power and magic that drove all reason and understanding down.
"Willow, listen to me . . ."
"I'm done listening . . ." The fireball rose off her palm and began to spin madly. Then seemingly of its own volition, it hit him square in the chest.
He screamed and threw himself to the ground writhing and beating at the flames that licked at his clothing and threatened to burn him alive right there in Willow and Tara's bedroom. Eventually, the flames were gone, but smoke continued to rise from his chest, and he waved it away, trying not to whimper in pain and fear.
"Save her," Willow said it again, her voice empty of emotion.
He knew, as desperate and power-drunk as she was, that Willow would not hesitate to kill him where he stood. The fireball was just a warning shot. Instinct for self preservation won over all the conflicting emotions he was experiencing. Better to face possible death later at Buffy's hands, than certain death now at Willow's all-too-powerful hands.
He slowly made his way into the room; his eyes were drawn again to the large bloodstain on Tara's chest. Wondering whether it might not be too late, he slipped into his game face and sank his fangs into her neck – mentally bracing for the pain he knew his chip would bring.
It never came.
Instead, as he drained the remnants of her life's blood from her body, he felt a rush. His body began to hum with the power – the earth magic – that had been such a part of the Wiccan's life. At the same time, his mind raced with the knowledge that he might once again be able to feed with impunity. He drank greedily, like a starving man being offered respite from a fast. It was over all too soon, and he had to fight from smacking his lips when he withdrew.
Willow watched him taking note of every action – every movement – every sound. He felt naked in front of her; the knowledge that she'd somehow managed to read his mind haunted him. She'd know if this didn't work; she'd kill him.
Keeping his back to her, as though that would somehow offer a level of protection, Spike pulled a switchblade from his pocket, and sliced open a vein at the juncture of his neck and collarbone. He raised Tara to it, letting gravity assist as the blood trickled past her lips and down her throat. He felt, rather than saw, a tiny shudder pass through her, and then it was done.
Willow grabbed him by the neck, her nails sinking like claws into the already bloody wound. "Did it work?"
"Yeah, it worked. . ." He staunched the cut with his hand, and then began to lap up the blood from his fingers. He was slightly gratified to see her turn away with thinly disguised disgust.
"How long?" she asked, her eyes never leaving Tara's seemingly dead body.
"Sundown," he answered, studying the carpet's nap with apparent interest.
He stood then and started to walk toward the door, but she stopped him – a flick of her wrist, and a binding spell paralyzed him where he stood. "You'll wait with me. Don't want you running off and telling anyone. They might try to take Tara from me, and I'm not going to lose her again."
"Right. . ." he said it slowly, still paralyzed, studying her like a zoo animal would its captor – always wondering whether the next encounter was going to bring punishment or reward, and always looking for a way out.
Another flick, and she released him. He skittered backward away from her, palms up in submission. He wouldn't break any of her rules.
He spent the next several hours pacing – staying far enough away from the window that the sun couldn't harm him, but close enough that he could measure its progress as it sank slowly through the sky toward the horizon. He paid the same cautious attention to Willow, remaining out of reach, though he know that she could reach him with her magic, but not so far away that she'd suspect him of trying to flee.
The bullet hole was still in the window, and in his mind's eye he traced the path it had taken, from the garden, through the window, into Tara. The only thing unclear to him was who had pulled the trigger – or why. Not that it mattered anymore. He had much bigger worries.
In the distance he heard sirens, and could only presume they had something to do with the person who had shot Tara. Dawn came home from school – announcing her presence with a slam of the front door and a bellowed, "I'm home!! Anybody here??" but with another smooth flick of her wrist from across the room, Willow quickly shut and locked the master bedroom door.
"Uh-uhh . . ." Willow shook her head as he began to open his mouth, and he noted a glazed, distant look in her eyes. She was as mad as Drusilla – but smarter, scarier, and stronger. She looked at him again and added, "You don't want me to have to do anything drastic like zipping your lips, do you?"
He sank to the ground next to the door, defeated. Where was Buffy?
* * * * *
The hospital.
Again.
Xander felt as though the better part of his formative years had been spent in hospital waiting rooms. He'd grown attuned to the rhythms of the emergency room, the way the action crescendoed into a frenetic code blue before falling back into the steady hum of business as usual. He knew the impassioned, frantic, uncontrolled grief that accompanied a relative being told their loved one had died. He could sense the screams that came from a place so deep that there was actually no sound to them.
It was all part of life on the Hellmouth.
He began to distract himself by studying the building's construction – trying to ascertain how many layers of cinderblock had gone into the walls and whether they met California's minimal earthquake construction code or had been exempted.
"Are you the next of kin?"
His ruminations interrupted, the question caught him off guard, and he stared blankly at the charge nurse. "Huh?"
"I need to speak with Miss Summers' next of kin. Is that you?"
The antiseptic smell of the hospital and the dull hum of the background noise pressed in against his consciousness like something real; he could almost anticipate another code blue being called. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and spoke, "Her dad's in L.A. She's got a younger sister . . . here." He opened his eyes to look at the nurse, and added because he felt he had to, "Buffy – Buffy's afraid of hospitals."
"It'll be okay . . ." the nurse put a hand on his shoulder in a way that made him question the truth in that statement and then changed the subject suddenly. "Do you know her father's number?"
Too many questions. Too much to think about. This wasn't fair. He wasn't the smart one. He wasn't supposed to be making the decisions. How had this happened?
He gripped the edges of the chair and again concentrated on the cinderblocks, hoping that if that part of his brain worked, the rest would follow.
"Let me call Dawn." Dawn would know. He swallowed hard and tried to push back the fear and nausea that rose from his stomach to his throat. Dawn trusted him, and he was about to betray that, for no reason other than that he didn't know Buffy's father's phone number.
When he got to the phone, his fingers dialed another number instead.
"Good afternoon, the Magic Box. What can we sell you today?"
"Anya? It's Xander." His heart was racing in anticipation of the frosty reception he knew she'd give him.
"Xander . . ." She was even colder than he'd expected, and he counted it as a minor miracle that she hadn't yet hung up on him. "Are you calling to beg me to take you back? Because you're wasting your time if you are. I don't want anything to do with you. I've moved on; I'm over you."
"That's not why I'm calling," he abruptly forestalled any argument.
"Oh . . ." Her confusion carried through the phone wire.
"Buffy's in the hospital," he broke the news in a rush. "I need to get in touch with her dad. Does Giles have the number there, maybe?"
Xander was met with silence on the other end of the line, and then, "What do you mean she's in the hospital?" Anya's voice was small, as though a little girl rather than a grown woman with several lifetimes of experience was asking the question. "I didn't think Slayers were supposed to get hurt – not hospital hurt."
"Warren shot her," Xander broke the news as simply and directly as he knew how, and was pained to realize that this would be neither the first, nor the last time he was going to have to do so today.
The news seemed to gain strength in the telling, and he gripped the receiver and repeated, his voice breaking with emotion "He shot her."
"She's going to die; isn't she?" Anya asked.
Xander didn't answer, and Anya took his silence as agreement. "She is going to die, and then Willow will try to resurrect her, and she'll be weird and depressed, and this isn't good . . ." she trailed off.
"Anya? The number," he reminded her.
"Hold on . . ." He heard a thunk of the receiver being placed against the counter, and then, in the background, shuffling papers.
"Here it is . . ." She was back. "The number is 310 . . ." He carefully wrote the digits down on his palm, concentrating on their form – making each number with grade-school precision – so that he wouldn't have to concentrate on anything else.
"Xander?" Anya asked after having relayed the number, "Do you want me to come down there? Maybe wait with you . . ."
The question caught him off guard, and it took him a moment before he answered. "No, you should stay there try . . . try to find Giles."
"Right," Anya answered. "Giles will want to know."
"Anya," Xander whispered before she hung up the phone. "Be careful."
"You too," she answered so quietly he thought he may have imagined it.
Code Blue. Code Blue. The computerized voice droned in the background, and he prayed silently that it didn't have anything to do with Buffy.