Chapter Twenty-Four 

There had been an uncomfortable silence for a full minute once Spike had walked out the door before a broken sob shunted them all back to motion and Willow fell to the sofa, holding her head in her hands.  Thoughts whirled too far within reach for her to grasp any peace of mind.  This led to splintering shivers of guilt- knowing she was far from deserving peace.  But as she raised her eyes, she found it in the forgiving eyes of her best friend.

Xander took a seat beside her and tentatively wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders, allowing her to sob against his chest in quiet, best-friend support.  Anya glared as she sat down next to them, but with a small space in between.  She crossed her arms in temper and looked over at Giles as she swung the foot of her crossed leg.

 

“Well,” she started in confrontation.  “That was extremely helpful.  I don’t know what Spike was all huffy about.  He didn’t have demons coming out of thin air to eviscerate him.”

 

Her matter of fact words caused Willow to silently shudder against Xander’s shoulder and he closed his eyes before quietly counting to ten.

 

“I think they may have experienced a little mental evisceration, Ahn.  Giles, Buffy didn’t look so good when she ran out of here.  Do you think we should go find her?”

 

Giles contemplated the group in silence, slumped in the armchair and bewildered about the events of the day.  It had been a confronting thing to be blind; a man reliant on his ability to read a great many books and needing to absorb that information relatively quickly in cases of crisis.  Though he felt disloyal, he had to agree with Spike.  He really had to get Willow some help.  Her power was undoubtedly great, but her maturity was surprisingly weak.  Willow’s lack of control when suffering emotional upheaval was truly dangerous, not only for the young redhead, but for all her friends.  He was mystified as to why he hadn’t recognised the symptoms of her inability to control her magical growth the first time around.  As Ripper, he knew better than anyone the seductive lure of all that power, the wielding of forces in direct challenge to what he was meant to stand for.  This time, they knew without doubt the destruction the novice witch could pile down on all of them.  Negligence wouldn’t be excused anymore.

 

Buffy. 

 

He had an inkling of what had happened with the blond pair.  Before he had the ring pointed out to him by Xander, he had noticed the healing bite mark on his Slayer’s  neck and suspected that Spike had finally laid claim to her.  To tell the truth he had been expecting it. 

 

The devastation she had shown at his explanation of events had made his own heart shrivel in remorse.  He hadn’t wanted to cause her pain.  Not when he knew she loved the vampire.  He honestly believed that the spell had minimal impact on their actions; nothing had occurred that wasn’t going to in the near future.

 

He knew his Slayer though.  The girl lived in denial.  After her experiences with Angel she ran from emotional complexity. He could understand her hesitation, but not her lack of faith.  He thought she was probably being unfair in this instance, and he feared what this could do to the couple’s relationship.  Giles had been startled by the look of hostility in the vampire’s eyes and had been relieved that he had had difficulty in looking at them as he was leaving.  To be frank, after some of the stunts pulled by these children, sometimes he hated them too.  As the elder respected in their midst however, he never felt he could chastise them quite as viciously as Spike had just done..

 

Lost in his reverie, his eyes suddenly looked on the impatient figure of Xander, fair bouncing in his seat almost commanding action.

 

“No Xander.  I believe it might be best if we left Buffy alone for the moment.  She has had quite a shock.”

 

“Shock, shmock.  It’s only Spike.  She’s probably disgusted by the thought of thinking she was going to marry him.  A bit of Scooby support is just what she needs.” 

 

He was on his feet when Willow called out in shock.

 

“Xander, are you really that blind?”

 

Giles cringed visibly at the word and Willow shrank back against the back of the sofa, trying to make herself smaller and less visible to everyone’s scornful gaze.

 

Xander slumped in a dining chair, having not made it all the way to the door.

 

“She’s not disgusted, is she?”  His voice had lost some of its forced humour, even some of the hostility, and now he was just resigned.

 

“I’m afraid not.  I think it would do you well to just accept that she is falling in love with Spike, and that it is, actually, meant to be.  If you give her a difficult time over this I think you risk harming your friendship.”  Giles felt so terribly bone weary all of a sudden and felt unable to even raise his head and look at the other occupants of his flat, but still he found himself hoping that some sense had been found from the events of the day.

 

“So, what should we do then?”  Xander hadn’t looked up from his intense scrutiny of a small patch of crumbs on the table.

 

Willow and Giles exchanged a glance and Giles finally gave her a hesitant smile.

 

“For now, I think we should leave her.  We don’t know where she may have run off to and in all probability, Spike has probably located her and they may be sorting everything out as we speak.”

 

They nodded their heads in unison and Anya stood, holding a hand out to Xander.  “I think some pizza might be appropriate right now.  Willow looks a little peaked; she needs some cheese to brighten her up a little.  And besides, I’m starving.”  Again they nodded before leaving together in search of sustenance, a slow sense of forgiveness tingeing the air around them.

 

Buffy awoke with puffy, sore eyes and a sense of panic.  The gentle tingling of the fresh bite mark adorning her neck caused her a small amount of irritation while she tried to work out why she was feeling worried.  When she was unable to recall any dreams- prophetic or otherwise- her attention turned once again to her scar and her eyes shot open in alarm.  She had never looked into the characteristics of a claiming but she felt certain that what she was feeling right now might be a sense of oneness with Spike rather than any fear manifest in herself.  That of course caused the beginnings of that sense of foreboding and she realised that Spike must be in trouble.

 

She felt torn.  Her insides screamed at her to keep her distance, but she wouldn’t be doing her job if she let him be recaptured, even if she did know where he was or how to find him. 

 

Her job! 

 

She laughed humourlessly and sunk back onto the pillow, tears resurfacing in her misery.  Was that what she was convincing herself he was now?  A job?  An innocent it was the Slayer’s duty to protect?  She wasn’t liking herself very much right now, and from what she had been feeling earlier, she wasn’t so sure that those feelings originated entirely from herself.  She had a small tingling suspicion that Spike was furious with her.

 

Her confusion took root and grew claws.  She had no idea what she was to do or how to make this right.  She didn’t even think she could fix this.  It was all so wrong.  She hated herself right then, hated herself for feeling this turmoil, because she knew it was wrong, even if everything still felt right.

 

She’d had flashes of the last time this spell had been done, but amidst the bigger picture of all their revelations, its warning had dimmed to insignificance and thus, been forgotten.  Now it stood prominent in its clarity.  Both she and Spike had hurled disgusted comments at each other, even though a spark had lain unbidden down deep.  She had behaved in a horrendously gushy school girl fashion in accepting the proposal, and they had smacked lips like a typical couple in the first flushes of superficial love.  They had been happy, though still fighting. But she didn’t remember the feeling of wholeness, and belonging, that she had experienced this time around. He hadn’t attempted to bite her last time either, she thought as she ran her fingertips over the raised puncture marks on her neck.

 

There was one really glaring difference, however, that she was only now starting to realise.  She and Spike had been working toward this.  Their direction had made no detours along the way, and the euphoria about being claimed that she had felt hours ago while lying in his arms, despite her current emotional flux, had not withered.  She felt proud and strong in her sense of belonging; she was Spike’s.  And if that offended any feminists, she didn’t care.  It felt beautiful to acknowledge a connection so deep. 

 

With a great yearning her eyes drifted to her hand and the ruby ring encircling her finger.  Harking back to a future derailed, she remembered that he had offered her an ugly gothic skull ring.  That engagement had been spur of the moment, and though he may have wanted her to have better, he had never given it; until now.  The whole of Buffy’s body suddenly flushed as she grabbed hold of the significance.  He had had the ring in his pocket; he had been prepared.  Then the look on his face when he had shouted at her, telling her it wasn’t a spell, flashed through her mind and the bottom suddenly fell out of her world.

 

It hadn’t been the spell.  He had been planning to ask her all along.  Or if not proposing marriage, then something that equally meant to proclaim ownership to the mortal world.  She knew she had been stupid in this instance, but she wasn’t always so dumb.  The claim had been to make sure the vampire world knew that she, the Slayer, belonged to none other than William the Bloody. 

 

And the ring? 

 

The ring was to make sure that all mortal men, but particularly Riley Finn, knew that she was irrevocably taken.  And no spell had caused him to want to express his proprietary attitude toward her.  Just a deep desire for her to be one with him- the man- and thus the ring that once belonged to his mother.  Her brows furrowed as she grasped something else.  A ring that Drusilla didn’t wear.  God!  He had never given it to anyone in over a hundred years.  It was like he had been waiting his whole unlife for her.

 

Oh God, she was dumb.  How could she have rejected him like that?  She had been so afraid that their perfect night had been ruined by Willow’s magical interference that she had gone and ruined it herself.  She had shown a lack of faith in his feelings of love, run out on him instead of staying and believing his desperate call, and in doing so she had driven a wedge right between them.

 

With tears once again flooding her eyes she threw herself down on the bed and sobbed for all her self-possession.

 

How the hell was she ever going to make this better?

 

With the scar pulsing on her neck she felt Spike’s relief over something, and then a distinct throbbing began and she could almost feel him pacing because of his impatience with her.  She could sense the fury, the outrage that had swept him up on a wave of discontent and she held her breath.  Now she knew.  Maybe her lack of faith in him made it impossible to make this better.  Maybe he couldn’t forgive her for not trusting in him. 

 

Their beautiful night of sharing themselves with each other was disintegrating into great clouds of dust, and it was all her fault.  She had been so afraid that meaning would be bleached from the event that she had caused the disaster herself.

 

With a very deep sense of loss and horror, she closed her eyes and willed herself to fall into a dreamless oblivion and if not that, at the very least soft memories of the earlier events of the night.