Chapter 9
Twenty four hours…twenty four hours….twenty four hours for what?
Buffy paced the living room trying to figure out what she had twenty fours hours for. In truth, she didn’t know much about her curse. She knew that Jarmon was the name of the vampire she had killed, and she knew that he was specially chosen to go against her because of his powers in Voodoo.
While at the Watcher’s Academy, Ethan had stunned his professors with his ground breaking thesis on how educating Slayers in the art of witchcraft could help in the longevity of their life and the increase of demonic kills during their time. Elizabeth’s grandmother had been a Seer and had already noticed the magic skill in Elizabeth before she was taken away by the Watcher’s Council. Ethan had honed Elizabeth’s magic and once she had been Chosen, her power had increased. So, the Council decided to try her magic against a vampire with magic…just to see what would happen.
To say that the battle between Jarmon and herself had been more of a battle of magic skills than fighting skills would be an understatement. The house was considered haunted from that day forth and no living things would ever thrive there again. Any person with magic in their veins avoided the place as though it held the plague and, in a way, it did; the spells the two had wrought, the curses they had thrown. And somehow, this was how it ended; with Elizabeth being forced to spend eternity battling for the side of good without her love and with Jarmon as her ethereally link to the Powers That Be.
Although she had spent the past one hundred and twenty five years keeping an eye on Spike and saving him whenever necessary, Buffy had carefully avoided direct contact with him. This was the only part of the curse that she knew- if she approached Spike at any time on her own volition, he would die. But if Spike approached her, then all bets were off and they could live happily ever after and all that rot. Apparently the problem lay in how Spike approached her. The curse was not specific, from what Buffy understood, all Spike had to do was approach her. Now it looked like he was supposed to approach her because he knew who she was.
Buffy screamed in frustration and banged her fists against the wall. This was so unfair. She had done everything ever asked of her. Everything. What more could she give?
XXX
Spike lounged on the bed with the journals spread out around him. He’d already skimmed through the journals of Elizabeth’s childhood, stopping to read and re-read the parts she’d written about him. He was now convinced that no one had ever loved him as much as Elizabeth had. The first entry in her first journal was about three things; her leaving her family to live with her “Uncle Ethan”, the move into the new house, and “William, who is to be my new bestest friend ever”. After that, there was barely an entry that didn’t contain some note about him, and through Elizabeth’s journals Spike relived his first “date”, his first attempts at poetry (all of which she had careful reconstructed on the pages, much to his chagrin), and his first kiss. He sniffed every flower that he had ever given her (they were dried and pressed between the pages) and recounted every gift they had ever exchanged.
He had read each journal and now the only notebooks that lay before him were the ones that she had written in after their separation, and Spike was afraid to pick them up, afraid to see what was written in there, afraid to see what had happened since the last time he had seen her. He sighed and picked up the nearest journal.
23 August 1880
It has been seven years since I have written anything and my head spins when I think of the changes that have happened. I died. I came back. Ethan, who I trusted explicitly, betrayed me. The Watcher’s Council betrayed me. The horrors…I shall not write them down. I will never forget what they did, but I will not give them power over me. I will always remember it in my mind, but I will NOT leave it about for others to read. It is my burden, not theirs.
I escaped. That is all that ever need be said. I escaped and took my journals with me. I leave them neither my body nor my words to dissect any longer.
Here is what I know:
1. The vampire that I fought was named Jarmon, and he was a Voodoo practitioner while alive.
2. Somehow, during our epic battle, we managed to curse each other. I’m not sure what the curse entails as of yet, but I have been able to hear Jarmon’s voice in my head.
3. So far, nothing has been able to kill me.
I’ve broken into my old house and I can see William’s house through the windows. He still lives there. My William. How often I have dreamt of seeing him again. He does not appear to be home though. I wonder how I shall explain my re-appearance to him.
A fearful thought has struck me. What if my William has moved on? That is what I told him to do, made him promise to do. William never breaks a promise…ever! I do not know what I will do if he is with another woman. My heart shall shatter.
24 August 1880
Oh God! The horror! I found my William too late…being turned. I watched him drink the blood of that whore and my first thought was, now he’ll be immortal too…and I was happy! I am a horrible person. I sat in the alley with his dead body cradled in my arms and thought, now we can be together. I cried until someone found us and the police were called. I took his spectacles when I left. I couldn’t be there when his mother came to identify him. But while she was at the morgue, I broke into his room and found where he kept his memoirs of me. My necklace, his mother’s ring, our engagement portrait, I took them all.
Spike closed his eyes and swallowed. He had known that reading the journals would be hard, he just hadn’t figured on how much it would hurt.
A knock at the door pulled him out of his revelry.
“Wot?” He asked harshly.
The door opened a crack and Willow popped her head in.
“Um, hi, I, um, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to talk? I mean, I know you and I, not the bestest of buds or anything, but I just thought you might need a friend…and I thought that I could be the friend…um, that you need…that sounded much better in my head,” she rambled.
“Come in, Red,” Spike sighed.
Willow walked hesitantly into the room, pausing to look at the engagement portrait that he had propped against the mirror on the dresser.
“It’s strange,” she said. “Logically, I always knew that you were alive before you became a vampire. I knew that you must have had a life, with friends and family who loved you…but until today, I never thought about it. I never thought about the kind of person that you were when you were alive. I never thought about what happened to the people that were in your life. I sorta assumed that you had always been the way you are now…which doesn’t work ‘cause punk rock, not so popular in the eighteen hundreds.”
Spike remained silent and Willow fidgeted nervously before sitting down on the bed across from him.
“Didn’t come up here to hear about life before un-life, did you Red?” He finally asked.
Willow shook her head. “I’ve been thinking…a lot about Buf-Elizabeth coming back into your life. I saw the way you looked at the portrait. You loved her, didn’t you?”
“She was the reason my heart beat.”
Willow looked startled. “Wow, that was…strangely poetic and not something I thought I would ever hear myself say about you.”
“Do you have a point for being here?”
“Yes,” she muttered. “It’s just, I was thinking about how much you loved Elizabeth and how much she loved you, and I got to thinking about Tara and me. I loved her so much that it hurt and when she died…well, I think everyone remembers how that ended up. But I started wondering how I would feel if I suddenly found out that she was alive, and not only was she alive, but she had been keeping tabs on me all this time and hadn’t let me know she was there. My first thought was how happy I would be to see her, but then, I realized that I would be angry. Angry at her for watching me without me knowing and angry at myself for not sensing her near me. I mean, she was the reason my heart beat, so shouldn’t I have know she was there? And then I felt ashamed at the things she would have witnessed me doing; killing Warren…Kennedy…And I realized that love may not always be enough. I loved Tara with all my heart and soul, but I’m a different Willow than the Willow that she knew and if she came back, she would be a different Tara. We would have to start at the very beginning, getting to know each other, before we could just jump back into the whole girlfriend/girlfriend thing. I guess what I’m trying to say is; that in your heart of hearts, you are still William and Elizabeth, but now you’re Spike and Buffy too and Spike and Buffy have never met.” Willow stood up and walked to the door. “If you ever need to talk…” She trailed off and closed the door behind her.
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