When Eternity Lies In The BalanceBy Jericho TGF
Chapter Eleven
Spike stood for long minutes and stared at the space where Buffy last stood. It was over, all of it, and the emptiness he was feeling left no room for anything else. He was a dead shell, a husk of a monster who had reached the end of a journey only to find nothing but a gray blankness humming in his chest. He couldn’t even find it within himself to grieve.
All of his emotions had been used up. Spent on a responsibility to a place that he would never see again, spent on a girl he had loved too deeply to forget. Now that she was gone, returned to the world in which she belonged, all he could do was stare at the place of her passing.
When Spike had seen Buffy’s body lying broken and dead in the construction site after the fight with Glory he had been ripped apart. It had been the most painful experience in his existence. He grieved for her then, and for Dawn, and for himself too. He had crumbled, sobbing out his anguish because he had lost the one person that shed light on his unlife and he had thought he lost the sister he had sworn to protect as well.
It wasn’t until the death of one that he realized just how much he loved the other. A brotherly, protective love the likes of which he’d never known before.
Then he’d been drawn into this Shakespearean tragedy and had focused on the joy of seeing the fallen one again to survive. And it had been joyful, and twistingly painful, and grotesquely macabre. He’d forgotten, in the interim, that there would be an ‘after’. He’d allowed himself to forget - to completely disregard - that he had willingly embraced a path that would repeat in agonizing detail the most painful event of his life. He’d lost Buffy twice.
You would think that he’d feel something at the new loss but he was completely numb to everything but the gray hum vibrating through the walls of his dead chest. Spike couldn’t even find it within himself to care that he had just punched his ticket for the next outbound train from heaven, and the destination was a lot less pleasant than Buffy’s had been.
He found himself standing at the open doorway, staring up at the blood-red sky, not even aware that he’d stepped forward. Oddly fascinated at what he saw, a sight that should strike fear in his heart but didn’t, he watched in grim wonder as the sickly yellow storm clouds massed on the horizon. Instead of rolling in from one direction, however, he could see them bubbling and frothing, advancing from every side. He was surrounded and he knew it and he didn’t care.
There would be no escape and he just had nothing left inside him to care.
The weight of the eyes that had been weighing him for so long were gone. They had blinked off as soon as Buffy stepped through the door. It was a release from the physical torment, but so what? What difference would a little searing agony make in the grand scheme of things? Spike felt almost robbed of the sensation, cheated from even that much pain because he wanted pain, he wanted to feel something, anything, and couldn’t. He would gladly be the masochistic pincushion for a little while longer just to be able to have something to feel. He felt he owed her that much.
“You didn’t tell her you weren’t going back.”
The voice that came from behind him was a surprise and he jumped slightly at the foreign sound. He had forgotten he wasn’t alone.
Spike sensed Joyce move closer, knew she was standing right behind him, close enough to touch. He might have sighed at the interruption of his thoughts if he cared. It wasn’t a question, but he had to say something. There was only resignation in his voice as he responded.
“No.”
“May I ask why?”
He heard the curiosity in her voice. And the gentle concern that had always been there for the demon he was, even before he’d done anything remotely deserving of it.
“No.”
Spike winced slightly at the abruptness in his tone. This was Joyce, Buffy’s mum. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. She didn’t deserve to be punished with his apathy - that was his burden to bear. Without turning away from the growing maelstrom in the sky, he tried to put into words what were now only memories of emotion.
“Have you ever loved somethin’ so much that it consumed you? Burned you? Ate you alive while you stood in horror, unable to stop it and knowin’ - even if you could stop it - you wouldn’t?”
Spike’s words shook under the pressure of such bleak honesty. He wanted to - needed to - purge himself of the truth about himself. A truth that he would have been at a loss to explain to anyone except this one woman, this kind soul behind him. She was probably the only person that would listen and not judge, not be tainted by the memories of what he was and how truly absurd his feelings had been for a vampire. It was a truth he had hidden for too long. Hidden because he didn’t understand it and it frightened him.
“Have you ever loved somethin’, someone, so intensely that the power of it strips away everythin’ you are, changes you utterly, fills you up and spits you out a different person, a better person than you ever thought you could be, than you ever wanted to be? A little cleaner, a little more whole.”
He had told Buffy...told her, that was such a weak euphemism...he had proclaimed in a loud voice more than once that vampires were capable of loving without a soul. It was true, they could. But he hadn’t wanted to admit that the kind of love that vampires felt, that any creature without a soul felt, was really just a pale comparison to the emotions humans were capable of. Basically because the absence of a soul had a tendency to foster selfishness, and that took up too much space for blinding love to take hold.
“Have you ever had love drag you kickin’ and screamin’ down a path that is so far off from what you’re very nature demands you follow, that you wake up one day and find yourself taking on heaven itself to right wrongs that you had no hand in creatin’, will reap no benefit in rightin’, just because of the effect that love has on you?”
He hadn’t wanted to explain because he didn’t know how to even try to convince Buffy that he was different. Since meeting the other he’d been different. He never knew why, but it was against everything that was in him to care much for the whys. Spike just accepted it, knowing he could never tell her because she would never believe it without either proof or a damn good reason. He had neither to offer. Where Spike accepted, Buffy questioned - that was her nature. She denied anything that smacked of absurdity without a logical explanation and he couldn’t give her one. What would he say?
“A love so vital, that has become such a part of you, that you would do anything...kill - or not kill as the case may be - even die to ensure it survives. That love itself survives.”
And that was the horrible truth he had kept hidden from everyone, even himself at times. The love he felt was a pure, selfless love. It was a love he shouldn’t be able to feel. He was a monster; that kind of love was supposed to be denied to him. It hadn’t started out that way - that was true enough - but that’s how it ended up. Spike didn’t know why, didn’t care how, but it had dictated his actions for too long to be ignored further. That’s why he never told Buffy he wouldn’t be going back. She wouldn’t have understood. She wouldn’t have believed.
“Oh, Spike,” Joyce whispered, a sad and understanding look on her face. “You loved her that much?”
Spike chuckled with a complete absence of amusement. “Not her.”
He turned away from the doorway, twisting his head slightly to meet Joyce’s eyes, and knew she was weighing him just as the watching eyes in this realm had weighed him. The ugly truth needed to be finished. Because in the end, when the play had run its course, he realized it was no longer just about one anymore.
“Not her, mum. Them. Both of them. Sisters. Taken together, apart, makes no matter to my dead heart. It’s both of them, each of them.” Spike laughed wryly at how little sense he was making, and how big an ass he must seem.
“Apparently,” he said sardonically, “I have a weakness for the Summers ladies. Must be the genes - could be the jeans, too, though.”
Joyce reached a hand out and brushed it gently down his gaunt cheek. There were tears in her eyes and she gave him a watery smile. Spike was floored when she leaned forward and brushed a very motherly kiss to his forehead.
A shock wave of searing emotion poured over him, hitting Spike like an avalanche. He staggered a little at the weight of it. Pain, blinding and freezing pain lodged like an arrow in his chest and spilled through him. He gasped at the agony, the clutching sorrow, the fear and self-doubt, the loss - oh God, the loss! A sob was wrenched painfully from his chest and he doubled over, tears falling freely as he grabbed at his stomach, his chest. He was a blade of grass in a tornado of feeling, swept away, spinning crazily - out of control and unable to speak through the horror of it all.
He’d never been more grateful for any gift.
Joyce had given it all back to him, brought his emotions back to him with her gentle kiss. He could finally grieve for everything he had been through and everything she had yet to go through. He could weep for Dawn, his sweet little Nibblet, and the anguish of not getting to say good-bye. He bayed at the bloody sky for Buffy, for what could have been, what should never have been able to be but was. The undiluted love of an eternity.
It took minutes, a lot of them, but the swell finally receded enough for Spike to gain control again. He noticed he was sitting on the floor in the doorway, knees drawn up to his chest and cheeks wet with salty tears. He used clenched fists to wipe them away and forced air into his dead lungs for balance.
Spike’s eyes searched out Joyce’s. There was only tenderness and acceptance in them and it soothed him as he said, “Thank you.”
She knew what he was thanking her for and she smiled slightly and lowered her head a bit in a slow nod.
He dragged himself to his feet and composed himself, staring out at the fast approaching storm while he straightened his duster around him. Watching him, Joyce smiled. It was almost as if he was cloaking himself with Spikeness - and that was too amusing, given the circumstances.
“You could have told her,” she finally said. “At least let her know.”
Spike smiled, actually smiled at the mothering instinct of the woman he considered more than a friend.
Just gonna keep draggin’ all your dirty laundry out there, mate. Wants to hear it all, she does. If you had a bleedin’ soul this would be you barin’ it. ‘Course you had one of those, like as not you wouldn’t be in this bloody corner. Right then, get on with it. Not much left to lose, is there?
He didn’t turn from the sky.
“There comes a time, Joyce, when you want something so badly, need something so desperately that when you get your chance to see if you just might be lucky enough to get it, you step back. Shy away from the knowin’. The need is so huge that even the thought of it not being there, even if you get what you want, is too terrifying to risk giving it up. Because what would you have left?”
“Peace.”
Spike practically barked in amusement. “Yeah. Right. Peace. You want to know what that need of mine is? That desperate desire? Just to know that it mattered. That I mattered. That what I did in comin’ here mattered to her. How’s that for selfish? The only thing I have left is that need. The need to know that maybe I finally got it right. I don’t mind being bad, mum, hell it’s too much bloody fun. But I’d like to know if what I did was enough - enough to let her see the man first, instead of the fang.”
“So, why didn’t you?”
“Because if it wasn’t enough, if the sacrifice wouldn’t have mattered to her, I’d lose everything. Even the dream of the possibility. And then there’s the other. The tragic comedy that’s the other. What if it was enough, what then? Well, that would be worse, wouldn’t it? Because my bleedin’ gift had already been given. Her life for mine. Nothin’ to do ‘bout that. Game over, top scores for Spike. And if it mattered, she’d hurt, and I don’t want to be responsible for any more of her pain.”
Joyce stared with compassion at the back of the man who cared more about her daughter’s pain then his own anguish. What monster is this, she thought, that could give so much for so little?
The wind picked up, drawing his duster back to flap against the open door. Spike knew it was time. He couldn’t hide in here forever, and he didn’t know if the realm would take pity on the house in its zeal to remove him from its purview. Lightning cracked its blinding fury just beyond the porch and Spike turned and gave a cocky smile to Joyce.
“That would be my chariot, I believe. Best be gettin’ out of here so’s not to disturb your fine furnishin’s. It’s been quite a ride, though, got to say.”
He gave in to his impulses and stepped over to Joyce, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her tightly to him. She was surprised but flattered. He pulled back a bit and met her eyes.
“When you see them again, tell ‘em...tell ‘em I’d do it again. All of it. I don’t regret any of it. It was a damn good time they gave me. Tell ‘em I said thanks.”
Spike swung out of Joyce’s arms, the duster billowing out behind him as he strode out the door. He leapt off the top step and landed gracefully, turning briefly to flash a dashing, arrogant grin at her. There was confidence in his wide legged stance, and he felt the heady feeling of that old confrontational side of himself. Just to be difficult, he slapped his game face on. If the realm was going to destroy him, better it be well known just who and what it was destroying.
He yelled into the rising wind. “Alright, you sod, here I am! One Spike-sized morsel for you to do with what you will. Let’s get on with it then, shall we? ‘Cuz I’m startin’ to get bloody bored with all this hype. Start the bleedin’ show already!”
The ground trembled beneath him and he felt a pulling sensation, the landscape around him spun and blurred in front of his eyes. An odd feeling of vertigo overwhelmed him before everything went dark.
The vampire disappeared from the yard in front of the Summers’ house in heaven.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Giles and Xander had carried the unconscious Tara through the dining room and down the hall to the family room. Anya grabbed a damp cloth and some first aid for Giles’ head out of the bathroom and Dawn stopped to close the doors to both rooms, cutting the sound considerably and preventing any potential damage from escaping into the rest of the house.
“Ow.” Giles winced in pain as Anya pressed hard - again - on the growing lump on the back of his head. “Bloody hell, Anya. It’s a head wound, not a spot on the counter that needs to be rubbed clean. Do you think you could go a little easier please?”
Anya sighed and tried to go easier, “Big baby.”
Giles spun around and glared at the girl. “I heard that!” He looked over at Dawn, who was wiping Tara’s forehead with the damp cloth. “Dawn, would you please come here and take over? I’m afraid I might not survive Anya the Hun’s idea of nursing.”
Anya’s, “HEY!” was drowned out by the choked laughter from Xander and Dawn. Dawn handed off the cloth to Anya as she stormed by in a huff.
Xander looked over at Giles, a question in his eyes, “Okay, Giles, you want to fill us in on the Dorothy and Toto gig you got going on in the living room? ‘Cuz I’m thinking...mini tornado? Not the best way to redecorate.”
“I’m afraid I really have no idea. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I’m assuming that it has something to do with the merging spell, but as for specifics...well, I was hoping Tara would be of some help. How is she?”
Anya looked down at the witch, “She appears to still be unconscious, but her heartbeat is good and she’s not as pale as she was at first. It’s very doubtful she’ll die.”
Giving Anya little more than a quick grimace at her less than tactful description, Giles said, “I believe Willow may have been overwhelmed by the merging, what we’re seeing may be a manifestation of the emotions she’s suffering. Her...power...her magicks, they may be reacting to it in some way. It’s Willow, but – ”
“Not...Willow.” Tara’s soft voice broke in, interrupting the Watcher. Giles got out of his chair and Dawn followed him over to stare down tenderly at the frazzled and tired looking - but thankfully conscious - girl.
Tara hadn’t opened her eyes, but she had heard the conversation going on over her head and needed to tell them. She felt so strange. Drained and exhausted. “Not Willow,” she said again, stronger this time.
“Tara,” Giles coaxed calmly, “can you tell us what happened? Can you tell us about the energy vortex in the living room?”
Lifting a lead-filled arm to shield her eyes from the brightness in the room, Tara tried to peek at her hovering friends. She gave Dawn a grateful smile when she quickly moved to switch off the lamp closest to her. Struggling up into a sitting position with Xander’s help she pressed the heel of her hand to her aching head.
“The spell...something went wrong.”
“Kind of the master of understatement there, Tara.” Xander felt Dawn’s sharp elbow poke him in the side while he was being pinned by Giles disapproving glare. He shrugged self-consciously. “Don’t mind me, just doin’ that whole talking with my mind blank thing again. Continue.”
“Everything was fine at first, Willow and I made it to the nether realm - just like always. Her aura separated and went across. I had established the link, we were connected. I think she tried to direct her aura down the path, but it didn’t want to move. Then I saw it turn and head to the start of Spike’s trail. It merged with his aura before Willow could stop it. I felt her fear. She was so scared. I-I t-tried to p-pull her out. T-tried to use the l-link. There was too much power, then her essence got separated from her body and sucked in, too. It joined the auras. That’s when the power back lashed on me and the next thing I know I’m here.”
She raised her large sad eyes to Giles’ stunned ones as the implications of her words sunk in. “It’s not Willow in there, Giles, Willow’s gone.”
Xander didn’t understand. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he didn’t understand what Tara was saying. “Wait. What do you mean, gone? She’s in there. Sure, she’s surrounded by a spinning wall of drafty badness, but she’s not gone.”
Giles spoke to Xander in a serious tone without breaking Tara’s gaze. “There are three things that connect a person to their body, their mind, their essence - some call it a soul - and their aura. What Tara means is that all three of those things in Willow are now in the nether realm and there is no longer anything connecting her to her body. For all intents and purposes, Willow is gone.”
It was a while before anyone spoke, the gravity of the situation hanging like a thick cloud of smoke around all of them.
“So,” Dawn said, frightened at everyone’s expressions but in no way ready just to give up so easily, “how do we get her back?”
“I’m not sure we can at this moment, Dawn,” Giles explained reluctantly. “One of us, Tara presumably as she is the only one of us with formal Wicca training, will need to go into the room and try to link with Willow again. The problem is that we can’t get in there. The energy - probably the magickal power that Willow commands which is currently without focus - is defending itself against intrusion.”
“Not against me.”
Giles realized what she was offering and looked at her, horror at the suggestion plain on his face. “No Dawn. You mustn’t. We don’t even know why you weren’t targeted, why Willow’s magick avoided harming you. There’s no way to be sure it wouldn’t change its mind if you were in there alone. And you know nothing about the steps that would need to be taken to get her back. I refuse to risk losing you - or anyone else. We need to do more research - “
“Research?” Dawn crossed her hands over her chest and stared hard at him. “Fine. You do research while the energy drains Willow until she dies. ‘Cuz that’s what’s happening, right? The energy in that room is feeding off of her. Using her while she can’t do anything to stop it.”
The Watcher stared down at the ground, took off his glasses with a tired hand and nodded. “Yes. That’s what is probably happening.”
Dawn’s mind spun as she tried to figure out what to do. Suddenly she was hit with an idea and she blurted out excitedly the first thing that popped into her head. “Spike!”
Four glum adults stared blankly at the smiling girl. She sighed. Man, adults never follow the logic bit, ya know?
“Giles, if Willow’s gone, and there’s no connection anymore between her and her body, then something or someone else has to be responsible for the personalized attacks that you all got when you entered the room, right? No control equals random fire. But it wasn’t random. You all saw it. It left me completely alone, even seemed to be protecting me from getting hurt when you were getting Tara out. It wanted to get to you, but it didn’t want to risk hurting me. That strike anyone else but me as a tad bit non-coincidental?”
Xander glanced at Giles, who was frowning in concentration and didn’t look ready to jump in with any of his pointed questions. That left Xander to ask some of his own. “I’m following so far...but what does the disappeared Evil Dead have to do with any of that?”
Dawn pinned him with a look but didn’t have time to reprimand him for his continued gibes on the vampire. “I’m saying that Willow might be gone, but there’s something - some connection - left. Something we don’t know about. And I think that something is Spike. Think about it. It’s got to be something, and it’s not Willow or it wouldn’t have targeted any of you. Or if it had, it would have had no reason to leave me alone. Spike is the only other answer. When Willow merged with his aura, and her essence came out, something must have slid back along the flow - something of Spike, a memory of emotion, whatever. Spike would never hurt me. Not even subconsciously. But if he’s in protection mode, he may view all of you as a threat. Especially if he knew...”
Dawn didn’t want to bring up the memory of the night her sister died, but she had to make them all understand what Spike’s mindset had been the night he was taken. Because she knew, if Willow connected with Spike’s trail at the beginning instead of the end, then the past month would be as if it never happened for him.
“Especially if he knew you were all ready to kill me the night we fought Glory.”
No one spoke. None of them could look at her. They understood what she was saying and it made sense. So much time had passed, Spike had been gone for so long, that the memory of his disappearance seemed to have separated itself from the events leading up to it. Especially seeing as though there was no known connection between what happened with Glory and what happened to Spike. But Dawn was right, if anything of Spike slipped back along the connecting stream between Willow and the nether realm, it would be the earliest memories and emotions from the time right after he was taken. The night Buffy died and the night he tried everything he could to save Dawn. It explained quite a lot of the reactions of the energy vortex.
Giles’ mind was spinning, and not just because of that nasty bump on his head. Dawn was really rather intelligent. She saw things differently than the rest of them; she was very bright and willing to add her opinions to the group. It could be disconcerting, when one realized just how much she paid attention to - just how much she saw. It wasn’t normal for a girl of her age to be so not self-involved. And it reminded him so much of Buffy in Slayer mode he almost couldn’t speak. Except Buffy had her normal teen mode, too. Dawn was like this all the time. It was positively scary.
“Alright,” he said slowly, trying to make his mind form around a plan, “so we’re going on the assumption that the energy vortex is being controlled in some unconscious way by the emotions and memories that would be contained in Spike’s aura trail at the moment of his capture. That would lead me to believe that some connection - however slight - still exists between Willow and her body. If we can get in there, one of us should be able to follow that link just by coming in contact with Willow. Dawn, I know you think it should be you - but someone will need to work to separate the aura’s and bring Willow back into herself so that she can gain control of her power and drag herself back. I still believe Tara would be the best choice. And there’s one other thing, Dawn. Something I hesitate to bring up, but it must be said. You are The Key. Energy created for opening dimensional doors. I have no idea what would happen - if anything did - if you went into another realm.”
Dawn knew that was coming and didn’t say anything. She felt the tears welling in her eyes, but seeing as though no one could look her in the face, hiding them wasn’t going to be a problem. They didn’t think she could do it. What’s more, they were afraid to try because of what was inside her. But this was not a bloodletting ritual and she was not just a key. She was human. She was made from her sister. Some part of her knew - really knew - that being The Key was no longer an issue. It was not something to be afraid of. It just didn’t matter anymore.
And they also didn’t think she was strong enough to be able to get Willow to separate a bit from Spike’s aura. She thought they were probably right about that. But she also believed something else that they hadn’t taken into consideration. She didn’t need to.
Willow didn’t need to be separated from Spike’s aura if Spike’s aura could be persuaded to let go of Willow a little bit. And there was nothing Dawn believed more than she was the only person that could get that done. If Willow could pull away from the lessened draw from Spike, she could get that control back that Giles mentioned and could get both of them out of there.
And hopefully Willow had made it to the end of Spike’s trail and seen where he went because nothing that had happened so far could dissuade Dawn from giving up on her quest to get Spike back. Nothing ever could.
The group still hadn’t looked at her, they were talking amongst themselves. No one noticed the determined glint in her eyes or the way she squared her shoulders and raised her chin a little in defiance of the dictates set down by Giles. Dictates she had no intention of following.
Backing up from the group slowly, making sure no one noticed her withdrawal, Dawn edged to the back of the room. She was halfway to the door before Xander looked up, surprised, and met her steady gaze.
Dawn, not caring what he was going to say, turned quickly and ran to the door, throwing it open and crossing the hall in four fast steps.
“Dawn, NO!!” Xander’s frantic call got everyone’s attention and they rushed after the fleeing girl.
They weren’t fast enough. Dawn had flung open the doors to the living room and got well inside before they had a chance to catch her. Xander tried to run after her, but the energy in the room picked him up and tossed him back out as if he weighed no more than a bag of flour.
Dawn didn’t even look back before she entered the vortex spinning tightly around Willow’s body. She took a deep breath, knelt down next to her, and reached out her hand.
Grabbing Willow’s clenched fist with her own, Dawn felt the strange pull at her mind and she gave herself over to it. I’m coming in, Spike. Show me where Willow is.
It was her last conscious thought on this side before her mind was separated from her body and drawn into the nether realm.