| In Omne Tempus by Holly |
| Chapter #4 - Where The Road Goes |
Where The Road Goes He truly could not stand the passage of time. Before, when he was unaware of it, time seemed to fly as though the hand of God could not stop its course. He had barely blinked and the Boxer Rebellion came and went. His fifty-year anniversary with Drusilla happened nearly the day after he was turned. He’d lived through three major wars, witnessed a thousand smaller skirmishes, and with a few exceptions, had all but ignored the chances brought with each passing day. Technology was gained, but he took to it without fawning. He’d learned to drive, grew into music fads, and picked up smoking, it seemed, all in the same weekend. When Buffy was six, he watched through the window as her mother prepared her for her first day of kindergarten. Watched as she was given the low-down on the dos and don’ts, and how Joyce promised six times within five minutes to be at the school the minute the dismissal bell rang. He watched her as she struggled to find sleep. Watched and waited, and felt all the more useless for not being able to comfort his mate. Felt more and more like some Angelus wannabe for the way he couldn’t seem to distance himself from the girl. Stalking wasn’t Spike’s forte—well, not in the manner of his grandsire. He knew how to be stealthy, but rarely enacted said knowledge for the greater thrill of being startling and unpredictable. Furthermore, it was difficult for him to remain secluded for any number of years. His nature wouldn’t allow him to stay away. It was against everything he knew as a vampire. Vampires were destined to protect their mates. He couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t see her. If he didn’t know, every minute of every day, that she was all right. That she wasn’t sick, or hurt, or upset. He didn’t have the bloodlink yet. He couldn’t feel her simply by existing. He couldn’t do anything but watch and hope that some night, when he awoke, it would be her eighteenth birthday and this insufferable waiting would be over. He dreamed of her often. Dreamed of the woman she would be when he could see her eyes again, wondered if she would even remember him. If she would remember the night she had changed his destiny, and set the course for hers. He didn’t know if he wanted her to remember him. As much as he cherished the thought of her brightening the minute he walked back into her life, he didn’t want their last moments together to be the foundation of their relationship. Didn’t want her to ever think of the way he’d turned and left her as she begged him to stay. That and the thought of seducing his mate was simply too tasty to dismiss. He wondered what she would look like. How much of the girl he knew would shape her into the woman she became. He drove himself mad with the thought of her, but there was nothing else for him. Nothing else to do but watch and wait. She was eight years old the day she first came home with bruises on her arms. He watched from outside, as always, after the sun had gone down, and he was assuredly enveloped in darkness. There was a wall and a good twenty feet between him and the family inside, but distance provided no obstacle, nor did the physical barrier that kept them from each other. Hank Summers, Buffy’s father, had arrived home late again, and was none too pleased with what Joyce had to say. “So she got in a fight,” he told her dismissively. “Buffy’s ten—” “Eight,” Joyce corrected, her face marred with ire. “Eight. She’s eight. Getting into fights is what kids do.” “This wasn’t a kid’s fight, Hank! The bruises on her arms…it’s a handprint. Do you know many eight year olds with adult-sized handprints?” “You’re imagining things.” “I am not!” Joyce’s temper finally spun out of control; she’d been working up to it for about ten minutes. Spike watched with interest as the plate she was washing smashed against the counter, sending sharp, orange shards across the floor. Bugger. She ruined her fiesta plates. The years had taught him that Joyce was a woman who liked order. They’d also taught him that he hated Buffy’s father with a passion, and respect for his small mate was the only thing that kept daddy dearest alive. For the moment, though, his rage had shifted to the phantom that was harming his girl. “Buffy keeps telling us that Mrs. Krane treats her badly,” she said. “That she’s strict with children, and she doesn’t—” Hank waved his wife off with a snort and a roll of the eyes. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said. “Mrs. Krane? You think Buffy’s teacher is responsible for this? That’s a pretty serious allegation, Joyce.” “Well, I happen to think black and blue marks on my daughter’s body are also pretty serious, Hank.” “I never said—” “No, stop it. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to arrange a meeting with Mrs. Krane and see what sort of disciplinary acts she feels are appropriate against eight year-olds.” Spike had heard enough, and his demon was riled. Joyce needn’t worry about arranging a meeting. School had been out for a half hour. Spike had spent the day in the basement of Buffy’s elementary building; pacing, smoking himself into a frenzy, and angering his demon to the point of homicidal outrage each time he replayed the conversation he’d overheard the night before. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard of this sort of thing. Hell, when he was Buffy’s age, a caning was a perfectly acceptable punishment for all sorts of misbehavior. Then again, girls, as he recalled, never got it quite so harshly as the boys. Furthermore, there had been a few cases, even recently, where teachers were criticized for their disciplinary techniques; spankings and the like. He had little doubt that Joyce’s assumptions were correct, and he wasn’t exactly looking to garner proof. If he was wrong, he’d feel maybe the twinge of a twinge of guilt—but more likely a tug of annoyance at having wasted a perfectly good kill on the wrong victim—shrug, and then kill the one truly responsible. Joyce’s meeting was scheduled for four in the afternoon, right after she closed her gallery. It was a holiday weekend, and a Friday at that, and he had learned that she liked to reward her employees by wrapping up shop early whenever the opportunity presented itself. He found Mrs. Krane as he suspected he would; she was seated at her desk, grading what had to be spelling quizzes. She didn’t even notice him come in. The sun was on the other side of the building now. It was dark, and she was alone. All too bloody easy. People never paid attention anymore; whether it be in a classroom, not a notably hostile scene, or walking down alleys after dark. The stupidity of the human race seemed to fluctuate by the year. Honestly, this was Los Angeles—and not a very respectable neighborhood, at that. Mrs. Krane didn’t seem bothered. “My, my,” Spike drawled, sticking a cigarette between his lips. The woman screamed and jumped out of her seat, and he felt her pulse intensify. “Looks like a li’l birdie is workin’ after hours.” Seeing him only appeared to intensify her discomfort. Yeah…that was good. “C-can I help you?” The woman leapt to her feet, straightening the few wrinkles in her skirt and adjusting the glasses on her nose. She was a small, mousy thing. Her hair was long and brown, pulled back into a severe bun. She couldn’t be more than thirty, but her fatigue gave her the look of forty-five. Amazingly, Spike wasn’t moved to sympathy. “’m here on part of a student of yours.” “Ohhh…really? Which one?” “Buffy Summers.” “Oh.” Color returned to her cheeks, and she offered a tentative smile. “I thought it was going to be Mrs. Summers that—” “Joyce is still comin’.” The strictness in his tone caused her skin to pale again, her eyes widening in fear. There was something, he admitted, about people that charmed him for their ability to sense danger the minute it was directly in front of them. Not before—not when it mattered—but they were extremely talented in pinpointing their final moments right before said final moments commenced. “You, I’m afraid, won’ be here to take her meetin’.” He stepped forward; she stepped back. And then they were dancing. “I…I don’t understand…” “Buffy’s been comin’ home with bruises,” he said gravely, prowling another step forward. “Bruises that look to be a li’l…well, let’s jus’ say, adult, considerin’ the kids in your class.” “I don’t—” “Yeh, you don’t.” “Mr. Summers—” Spike’s eyes narrowed. “’m not Buffy’s father,” he growled. “’m her…benefactor. An’ I have a special interest in makin’ sure she gets her learnin’ in an environment where she doesn’ feel she might be beaten if she answers a math question incorrectly.” “I would never—” “Now, now. We’re both smarter than that.” He smiled thinly. “Let’s be adults about this, right?” Her expression turned from fear to defiance in a matter of seconds. “You can’t prove anything.” The smile turned malicious, and her bravado vanished. “Thanks to that,” he snarled, his fangs descending. “I won’ need to.” Mrs. Krane threw her head back and screamed. She screamed loud and well. Screamed like a woman trained to scream when faced with actual danger, however fruitless it might be. He had her cornered in seconds. Then her screams stopped, and he drank. Five years passed before he found it necessary to directly interfere with Buffy’s life again. She was thirteen. God, he couldn’t believe she was thirteen. She was bubbly and sweet, and popular from what he could tell, and blossoming in the way all young girls blossomed when they first entered the radar of the opposite sex. Spike had promised himself somewhere along the way that, regardless of what happened, he would not let his jealousy motivate his demon. There was a protective need among mates, especially when approached with competition, to eliminate whatever factor stood between them. He didn’t think Buffy would warm to him too much if she found out he was the cause of her adolescent boyfriends’ nasty habit of turning up dead. Thus, he watched as she experienced her first kiss from the shadows. Watched her fall into what she thought was love while barely maintaining his need to rip the boy’s head off his shoulders. There were a couple days when he found himself so consumed with possessiveness that he ended up killing three or four similarly-looking blokes simply to feel vindicated. He didn’t interfere, though. It took everything he was, but he refused to interfere. He didn’t want to do things now that would spurn hatred for him later. It wasn’t as though she knew any better. Wasn’t as though she was doing this to purposefully torment him. He wagered she had long ago dismissed his memory as a distant dream. He didn’t know whether to feel valiant or like a big wanker for restraining himself. The years hadn’t seen him change his lifestyle. He still hunted. He still killed. He still enjoyed it. On the surface, nothing had changed to make him any more or less the vampire he had been for over a century. On the surface, nothing had. It was all internal. He refrained from killing when he thought it might upset Buffy. He stalked her from the shadows because it was as close as he dared to get to her. And he hated every moment of it. Spike didn’t belong lurking in the shadows. For the past near-decade, he had nearly gone mad with silence. And it wasn’t over yet. Five more years waited for him. Five more years of watching. If any bloke came close to taking Buffy’s virginity, though, they would die. He didn’t care what she thought of him. There were parts of her that belonged to him, and he wouldn’t allow anyone else to get close enough to even know the thrill of her scent. Not that he credited human males for appreciating the musk of an aroused woman. Not that he’d been close enough to Buffy to know the scent, himself. She was still a child. She was blossoming into a woman, but she was still a child. Something a git by the name of Thomas Randall didn’t seem to understand. It was the first actual date his girl had ever been on. The boy even came by to pick her up at her house. Spike waited on the sidelines as he always did, and followed in his Desoto, and watched. Thomas Randall took Buffy to a park. That was the first warning sign. A park, after dark, in Los Angeles. He might be a male kid, but he was still male. Either he wanted to show off, or he was interested in getting her somewhere secluded and vulnerable. Buffy said no three times. Thomas Randall didn’t want to hear it. And the minute he got forceful, the demon within Spike snapped. The demon didn’t think. He couldn’t. He vamped and roared, and it was over. In a blink, he rushed them, tackled Thomas Randall to the ground. Buffy was already across the park by the time the kid was dead. Spike dropped by her house later to make sure she arrived home safely. She had, and he about collapsed with relief. Buffy didn’t have any dates after that for a long, long time. In eleven years, he’d only interfered twice. In eleven years, he’d stood in the shadows and watched her grow up. They were extreme circumstances, understandably. A power-hungry teacher and a kid who wanted to become a man much too early, and now never would. Eleven years, and he only had to interfere twice. Then the day happened. Buffy turned fifteen. His girl turned fifteen. And everything changed. To be continued in Chapter Five: The Minor Fall And The Major Lift… |