And we reach the rewrite of Fool for Love,
which is my - and a lot of people's - favorite episode. I truly
agonized over this chapter, kept more of the original dialogue than i
intended to, and ended up with about twice as many words as my regular
chapters have. I considered cutting this in two parts, but i didn't, so
there you go. I hope you enjoy it, and i definitely would enjoy to hear
about what you thought of it.
Chapter 9 - Fools
Afterwards, Spike would replay the fight in his
mind, blow by blow, and try to understand what had happened, why he
hadn’t realized that it had been one of the few instances when Buffy
had needed his active help. But right then, with her own stake embedded
in her abdomen, all he could do was roar in outrage as he dusted her
aggressor and pray to deities he had long forsaken that she would be
alright.
She had pulled the stake out as he reached her, and he pried the bloody
piece of wood out of her clenched fingers. The wound looked bad, and he
knew she could see it on his face when she glanced up at him. He was
about to try to reassure her when she collapsed; he barely had time to
catch her before she hit the ground.
“Buffy! Wake up, luv. Come on. You’re gonna be fine.”
More to himself than to her, he reassuringly talked as he carried her
toward his crypt; she needed medical attention, certainly, but he
didn’t dare bringing her to the hospital without trying to stop the
bleeding first, and the crypt was close enough for that.
The scent of her blood filled the air around them, and it was too
intoxicating for Spike to estimate how much she had lost – was still
losing. It was a struggle to keep his demon at bay, and his control
slipped when a hand grabbed his elbow. Sliding thoughtlessly into his
demon features, he turned to the intruder, fangs bared and ready to
attack to defend his injured Slayer. Riley backed off with both hands
up.
“Hey calm down! I just…”
He caught sight of Buffy then and his eyes filled with dread.
“Is she…”
“Hurt,” Spike interrupted him, again mostly talking to himself. “Just hurt. Nothing more.”
Shaking off the fangs and ridges, he started walking again, faster now to make up for lost time, Riley already out of his mind.
Finally, he reached his crypt, and carefully deposited the still
unconscious Slayer on top of the sarcophagus before leaping down to the
lower level to retrieve the first aid kit he had acquired for Buffy’s
sake. So far, only the antiseptic and a couple of bandages had been
used, but that would soon change. He rushed back upstairs, and for the
second time that night his demon came forward when he saw Riley
standing by Buffy’s side.
“Do. Not. Touch. Her,” he growled, rushing to the sarcophagus. Riley took his hands off her but this time he did not back off.
“That won’t be enough,” he said, pointing to the kit in Spike’s hands. “She needs a doctor.”
“No.”
At once, Spike and Riley looked at Buffy as her eyelids fluttered open and she shook her head.
“No doctor,” she pleaded. “Mom would freak out.”
She tried to sit up, but Spike stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“OK. No doctor. But I still need to take care of you, so keep still.”
She gave him a faint smile and reached up to caress his cheek. Only
then did Spike realize he was still in full vampire regalia, and he
struggled to return to his human features.
“I don’t mind,” she murmured, surprising him, but before he could reply, Riley reminded them of his presence.
“I have medical training.”
Spike glared at him, ready to tell him where exactly he could shove his medical training, but the ex-soldier spoke again.
“It’s not about us being unable to stand each other. It’s about Buffy and a really nasty looking wound.”
Clenching his teeth, Spike turned his eyes back to her, from her
slightly frowning brow to her bared abdomen. Blood, too much blood. Not
to the point of being dangerous, or at least he didn’t think so; but
still, it was too much for comfort, especially for a vampire who craved
a taste of human blood. Without looking at him, he thrust the first aid
kit in Riley’s direction, hating himself for what he was doing.
Spike held Buffy’s hand as Riley efficiently cleaned, disinfected, and
carefully bandaged. She endured it all without a word, eyes closed and
lips pinched tight, as tight as she squeezed Spike’s hand. He could
have done just as well, he told himself. And he should have, rather
than let the wanker do it.
“Done?” he coldly asked as Riley put the tape back in the kit box.
“Yes. I still think a doctor…”
“She doesn’t want a doctor. Now get out.”
“Spike!”
Pulling her hand free, Buffy sat up gingerly and looked at him with
something like a cross between annoyance and reprobation. Then she
pointedly turned a much kinder gaze to Riley, and Spike seethed.
“Thank you,” she told the human, and he nodded.
“No problem. Although, I still say you should see a doctor. And you’d
better rest for a few days. The gang and I can take patrol for you.”
Spike was about to decline the offer – he would patrol, there was no
need for the others and, especially, Riley to volunteer – but before he
could do more than open his mouth, Buffy threw him a long-suffering
look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Thanks for that too,” she said, returning her attention to Riley. Spike could have growled when the wanker smiled.
“Did you have to be so nice to him?” he asked sulkily when, a little while later, he slowly walked Buffy home.
“It’s called being polite, Spike,” she replied indulgently. “I’m sure you have heard of the notion.”
He was ready to protest that she didn’t need to be that polite, especially with Riley, but the sudden pained gasp she let out worried him.
“I could carry you,” he offered again. “You shouldn’t be walking so far.”
“I’m alright, really,” she reassured him with a tense smile. “And
please don’t let anything slip in front of my mom. She’s got enough
headaches without me adding to it.”
Spike repressed the urge to tighten the arm that supported her waist
when he heard the worry in her voice. Instead, he brushed his lips to
her temple.
He tried to get her to talk about the fight, and why it had ended with
her own stake used against her, but it was soon obvious that she didn’t
know any more than he did. That bit of knowledge did not make for a
restful night.
Buffy spent her afternoon at the Magic Box, but as hours trickled by
and afternoon turned into early evening, she became tired, a little
exasperated, and was not one step closer to understanding why she had
stumbled the previous night, and come so close to being yet another
Slayer fallen in the line of duty. She had never trained so hard in her
life, had never been in better shape, and yet… She wasn’t sure she
wanted to know what would have happened if Spike hadn’t been there.
She had thought that a little research would give her some insights as
to what had made other Slayers’ last battles special, but the many
books around her weren’t helping, and Giles had just nailed down why.
“Accounts of the final battles would be very helpful. But there's no one left to tell the tales.”
That was it. She wouldn’t find her answer in books, because, for
obvious reasons, none of the Slayers who had been called and had died
to date had ever left an account of her last battle, and why exactly
she had lost. Why she had slipped up, as Buffy had done the previous
night, although not with as deadly consequences in her case.
“You two are on a research rampage,” Spike suddenly said from behind
Buffy, coming out of the back room. “If I had known, I’d have shown up
a lot later.”
Realization struck Buffy as she watched him come closer, all smirk and
swagger. He came straight to her and gave her a quick kiss before
turning his attention to the piles of books. A quick glance toward
Giles was enough to let Buffy know that he had just had the same idea,
and as one, they looked at Spike again. He had picked up one of the
Watcher’s diaries Buffy had been reading and was paging through it; he
seemed to realize that both Slayer and Watcher were looking at him
intently, and a cautious expression passed over his features as he put
the book down.
“What?” he asked, frowning.
“You’ve killed two Slayers,” Giles said coolly, calm enough that his
voice held no apparent trace of reproach. Spike however clearly was not
comfortable with the turn the conversation was taking.
“I did,” he replied warily.
“You’re gonna show me how,” Buffy jumped in, and if things hadn’t been
so serious the shock on Spike’s face might have been almost comical.
Half an hour later, nothing seemed even remotely comical as Spike
continued to refuse to talk to her about the Slayers he had killed. On
Buffy’s request, Giles had left them alone in the store a little while
earlier, but whereas she had thought a little privacy would allow Spike
to open to her, he stubbornly declined to answer her questions. It
wouldn’t be long until she pushed too much and he left. She had to get
through his defenses first. She needed to.
“I just don’t understand why you don’t want to help me,” she pleaded,
trying another approach, as she returned the last book where it
belonged on the shelf in the mezzanine. “I would have thought you’d
want to do anything to help keep me safe.”
She glanced down at him; he was sitting at the research table and had
lit a cigarette. Giles wouldn’t have liked it – and neither did Buffy –
but she chose not to antagonize him.
“I will do anything to keep you safe,” he grumbled, his fingers tracing
the lines of the wood table in front of him. “But you can’t ask me…”
“And yet I am,” she cut in. “Why won’t you just tell me? I need to understand why you beat them. How you beat them. So it won’t happen to me.”
His eyes rose toward her, unreadable through the blue smoke of his
cigarette. She itched to join him, but her instinct warned her to give
him some space, so she sat down at the top of the ladder, wincing when
the movement pulled at her wound.
“I’ll tell you,” he finally said after long seconds of silence. “But
only if you promise that it won’t change a thing between us.”
“Why would it?”
He snorted and shook his head. “And that just proved to me that you have no clue…”
“Fine, fine, I promise. Whatever you say tonight will not change anything between us; I promise.”
He considered her a little longer, and finally tilted his head to one side, accepting her word.
“So, what d’you want to know exactly?” he asked tiredly.
She refrained from saying ‘everything’, and instead tried to give him somewhere to start.
“How about you tell me how a gentleman became a fighter skilled enough to take down two Slayers?”
Her words startled him enough to send him into fits of coughing, and his eyebrows shot to the ceiling.
“I’ve met William, remember?” she said with a smile. “The cursed chocolate? The poem you wrote for me?”
“He wrote,” Spike said strongly. “Not me. And please don’t tell me you kept…”
Her face must have betrayed her because he groaned and closed his eyes.
Buffy made a mental note to move the poem from her jewelry box to a
more secure location, just in case Spike decided to try to retrieve it.
“So?” she prodded. “Did you learn to fight while you were still human?”
Spike snickered. “Hell no. I… He was as innocent as a
sacrificial lamb. No clue about the world, about women, about how to
fight back, be it with words or fists.”
Despite her better judgment, Buffy was about to interrupt him and
object that William had seemed more than willing to offer his help and
protection, but Spike seemed to guess her argument and waved it away
impatiently.
“Sure, he was ready to fight to protect a lady. Or at least, he was
ready to try. But that doesn’t mean I had any idea how to go about it.
Might have been why Drusilla chose me. So she’d have someone to mold, I
guess. Except that she tired of that rather quickly and Angelus had to
step in.”
He paused then, taking a long drag on his cigarette, and Buffy once
more refrained from talking and commenting on how fast he had switched
from ‘he’ to ‘I’. William wasn’t that far, whatever Spike wanted others
– and himself – to believe.
“He wasn’t the same Angelus you had to deal with,” he continued
somberly. “Mine was a tad less insane, for one thing. Still a complete
bastard, but I think that’s one trait that’s true of all of his
incarnations.”
He gave a half chuckle at his own joke before resuming his tale. “He
taught me a lot of things. Fighting was one of them, even if he
demonstrated more often on me than he did on humans or other vamps. He
tried to teach me, also, that nothing I did would ever be enough. That
I’d always be less than him, because he was older, he knew more, and
Dru…”
Another pause, another deep drag on the cigarette.
“Must have been when I decided I’d show him. Do the one thing that he had never done. Kill a Slayer.”
His eyes, staring straight ahead, seemed unfocused, and Buffy wondered what he was seeing exactly.
“Took me years, to find one. But I was obsessed, I’d have searched ‘til the end of the world. And I did, didn’t I?”
He blinked, and his gaze was back on her, smiling a little too sadly
for Buffy’s taste. She didn’t let herself be touched by it, though, and
urged him on.
“The Slayer in China, Spike. How did you kill her?”
Before she had even finished speaking, Spike stood and literally jumped
up toward her, catching the railing on her right with one hand as the
other cupped Buffy’s face with surprising gentleness. Startled, she
remained frozen in front of him.
“Lesson the first,” he said calmly, “a Slayer must always reach for her weapon. I’ve already got mine.”
With his words, Buffy was suddenly acutely aware that she did not have
a stake with her, and Spike’s features rippling right in front of her
into his demon visage did nothing to ease her discomfort. She had to
forcibly remind herself that this was Spike, her boyfriend, and he would not hurt her, however upsetting going through old memories seemed to be for him.
As suddenly as he had leapt up to her, he was on the store’s floor
again, graceful and sleek as a big cat, back to his blue eyes and
handsome features. Buffy missed a few of his words as she tried to
force her heart to calm down. He lit a second cigarette before
beginning to talk about the fight and the kill. From cold and detached,
his voice grew in intensity, and when he was done, an unpleasant shiver
ran through Buffy as she realized what it was exactly that she was
hearing in his voice.
“You got off on it,” she voiced, realizing too late the distaste that
had filtered into her words when Spike’s head whipped toward her, his
eyes dark and cold.
“I did. Don’t you? When you go out and hunt by yourself, isn’t it the same rush as when…”
“It’s not.”
Her cheeks began to burn, and she wasn’t sure whether it was at her own
lie or in anger at his words. The idea that he could associate killing
a Slayer with what they shared…
“See,” he gestured toward her with his cigarette, “that’s exactly why I
didn’t want to tell you. You promised, Buffy. This doesn’t change
anything.”
She nodded tightly. “I promised. But I still don’t know how you managed to kill them. Nothing you said…”
His growl was clearly one of frustration, and he turned his back on her to walk to the backroom.
“So that’s it?” she called after him. “Lesson over?”
He glanced back and shook his head. “Not even close. Come on.”
As he disappeared in the back, Buffy hesitated before following him.
What he had told her so far was not, far from it, what she had been
expecting, and she was more than a little anxious about where this
would end. Still, he was her best shot at trying to understand what had
made past Slayers fall, and she couldn’t give up now.
He was standing on the middle of the exercise mat when she joined him, and everything in his demeanor screamed ‘predator’.
“Lesson the second, luv. Ask the right questions. You want to know how I beat them?”
Without a second thought, she came closer to him, wondering if at last he would give her the answer she had asked for.
”The question isn't, how'd I win? The question is, why did they lose?”
She shook her head, confused by his word games. “What's the difference?”
His fist flew toward her face, stopping only and inch or so before
hitting her. Buffy didn’t flinch or move. She could have, had she
wanted to. But she knew, with an absolute certainty, that Spike would
not touch her.
“There's a big difference, luv,” he stated, and his words only
irritated Buffy further. She had asked a simple question, and she still
hadn’t gotten her answer.
“How did you kill the second one?” she asked, her tone colder than she wanted it.
“A bit like this.”
Only when Spike launched a flurry of punches at her, all easily ducked,
did Buffy realize that despite his actions the chip wasn’t punishing
him. As her eyes widened, she was too baffled to say a word. Spike
however seemed to understand her confusion and he stopped his attack.
“Just testing a theory. Apparently if I don’t want to hurt you, if I
don’t really try, then that chip they shoved up my brain never
activates.”
Filing the bit of information in her mind for later, Buffy refused to
follow that train of thought. He was trying to distract her but she
wouldn’t let him.
“It still doesn’t tell me how you killed them.”
Head tilted, he considered her for long enough that Buffy grew tired of
waiting and started turning away. He didn’t want to answer, he had made
it clear, and maybe she shouldn’t have insisted.
“You're not ready to know,” he said abruptly, and caught her wrist before she could move away.
She faced him again, chin high and resolute. “I am ready.”
”Okay, then. Went like this.”
Before she knew what was going on, Spike had used his hold to send her
to the floor. Judging by the chip’s lack of reaction and his little
explanation, he certainly had no will to harm her, but the wound in her
middle throbbed and sent both pain and adrenaline coursing through her.
She reacted on instinct and fought back, not actively trying to hurt
him but refusing to let him play with her.
They had fought like this before, but somehow this reminded Buffy more
of their first real battle, in the old high school than it did of their
sparring sessions. Especially with his running commentary.
“The first was all business but the second, she had a touch of your
style… She was cunning, resourceful... oh, did I mention? Hot. I could
have danced all night with that one.”
Jealousy flared through Buffy; at no moment did she realize that she was jealous of a dead woman; a woman Spike had killed.
“You think we're dancing?” she spat.
“That's all we've ever done, luv.”
He stopped fighting, then, took a couple of steps back. His next words
were quiet, but the intensity of his voice remained the same. “That’s
all you ever do. Every day you fight, and for you it never ends. It
only does for your prey. I know you’ve wondered. That final gasp. That look of peace. Part of you is desperate to know, what's it like?”
He paused, for no more than an instant, and Buffy struggled to grasp the meaning of his words. What was he trying to say?
“You asked how I killed them, luv. That’s not what matters. What does
matter is that both of them were ready to die. They had dealt too much
death, they wanted peace in return. They died because they had a death
wish, Buffy. And I’m afraid you…”
“No!”
He was too calm as he spoke of death. Too casual. As if it didn’t
matter to him, but then why would the death of two women he had killed
decades earlier have bothered him? Because they had been Slayers, like
Buffy was? She could have kicked herself. No soul. No guilt. Of course,
they didn’t matter to him.
“Tell me one thing, luv. That one time, when I bit you… you didn’t fight back. You could have, but you didn’t. Did you…”
“Don’t you dare even say it,” she practically growled. “I do not have a death wish.”
“I’m not saying you do now. I’m asking…”
She raised a hand toward him palm out and fingers spread, and he fell silent.
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
Refusing to even hear even one more word about it, she retreated toward
the back door. She realized she was fleeing, but somehow that seemed
like the best – no, the only – solution.
“Slayer,” he called out, his voice tight with what she wasn’t sure was controlled anger or pain. “You promised.”
Pausing with her hand on the door handle, she glanced back at him.
“This is not what I asked for, Spike.”
“That’s the only truth I have for you.”
“Then you can keep it. And while you’re at it, keep away from me.”
The words were out of her mouth before she knew what she was saying,
and she watched, heart wrenched, as his face changed to a mask of pure
pain. She would have taken it back if she had only known how.
“Buffy…”
“Just… just give me a little time.”
Her hand finally tugged at the handle and she slipped out, unaware that
Spike had fallen to his knees behind her. She hurried home, coming
close to running at times, but his words followed her; and with each
step, it was harder to refuse to hear them. Harder, also, to ignore
that they made too much sense. Harder to deny that, maybe, just maybe,
he was right, and she had had a death wish before. And might get one
again some day.
No, I couldn’t have told her about all that bloody mess any other way.
I gave her what she wanted, even if it was more than she could safely
swallow. Yes, I was brutal about it. But think about it for a second.
Do you think she would have liked it any better if I had held her hand
and pretended to feel guilty about what I had done? I doubt she would
have bought it. She knows me better than that. If I had still been
souled, maybe, but not at that moment. No, she would have suspected I
wasn’t being truthful, and she would have questioned me even more when
it came down to why the Slayers I killed had died. She was in enough
denial as it was, I wasn’t going to give her any more ammunitions.
So, I told her. Plain and simple. And as I had thought, she lashed back at me.
I watched her leave and had to restrain myself from going after her. In the mood she was in – hell, in the mood I
was in – things would have gotten even worse than they already were,
there was no doubt in my mind about it. What hurt most, I think, was
that she had promised this wouldn’t happen. She had promised that,
whatever I said, it wouldn’t change anything between us. And it had,
like I knew it would. Fuck.
I went back to my crypt, intending to sleep on it all and give her the
time she had asked for. When I got there, I realized I wouldn’t be able
to sleep; I was too damn agitated for that. Getting plastered wouldn’t
have helped either, and surprisingly enough I wasn’t in the mood for
patrol and a bit of violence. I had to go to her and try to fix things
right away. And I did.
All the way to Revello, I rehearsed in my head what I would tell her.
It wasn’t exactly my most tender speech; and I could already predict
that there would be some shouting. But if that was what it took to
shake some sense into her, I was ready for it.
She was on the back porch when I arrived there. When I noticed she was
crying, my carefully prepared words vanished, along with all the anger
and disappointment our confrontation had brought forth. I hadn’t
imagined she’d be crying, it just didn’t fit with the way she had left.
So why?
I asked her what was wrong, but she refused to answer. Asked if it was
about me and stifled a relieved sigh when she said no. I wasn’t sure
how she would react but I stepped closer and finally sat down on the
steps next to her. She froze for an instant, and when I rested my hand
on her back and rubbed lightly, her tears only redoubled and broke my
heart. I didn’t care, then, that I was supposed to be mad at her, that
she might still be mad at me. I didn’t care about anything but that my
girl was hurting and I didn’t know why. I grabbed her waist and pulled
her onto my lap. She resisted at first, but after a second or two, she
gave up, buried her face in my neck and held on to me as tightly as I
held on to her. Little by little, the sobs that rocked her body and the
tears that trickled inside my collar became fewer, until she was
completely still in my arms.
“It’s mom,” she murmured then, her voice muffled against me, and I knew not to ask any more for now.
We stayed like this a while longer, my hand caressing her hair, her
breathing so regular that I knew she would fall asleep in time. I
eventually stood, still cradling her. She tried to have me put her
down, but I shushed her and she let me carry her inside. I was quiet as
a mouse as I went up the steps; both Dawn and Joyce were asleep,
thankfully.
Once in her room, I sat her on the edge of her bed and closed the door.
I helped her undress, careful of the bandage on her stomach. Blood
stained it and it needed changing, probably a result of our impromptu
bout of sparring earlier. She directed me to the medical supplies in
her dresser and allowed me to change the bandage for her. I tried to
show her, with every gesture, how much she meant to me, and how sorry I
was that what I had said had upset her. But I couldn’t apologize, not
when she had made a promise and then reneged it. Not when every word I
had given her had been nothing but the truth.
When I was done, I helped her slip into her PJs and under her covers. I
leaned to kiss her forehead goodnight, and she took my hand.
“Stay,” she whispered, meeting my eyes for the first time since she had
walked away from me. I could tell I wasn’t the only one sorry about the
way things had gone. I stayed.
I undressed, hesitating but finally keeping my jeans on, and slid in
next to her. She snuggled into her favorite resting spot, against the
crook of my shoulder, and murmured a thank you. After a little while,
she told me about her mum going to the hospital the next day. Funny how
medical words you hear on stupid shows on the telly take a whole other
meaning when they relate to someone you know and love.
Eventually, she fell asleep. I stayed with her for most of the night.
Didn’t catch a minute of sleep myself though, there was too much going
on in my head for that. Buffy getting hurt, me revealing more to her
about myself than I should have, her getting spooked by my words, her
mom…
It was hard to leave her, and I finally left her a note, telling her I’d try to get to the hospital, and that I loved her.
The sun was beginning to lighten the horizon when I jumped out of the
window. I doubted Buffy would have wanted to explain my presence to her
mom in the morning, so the least I could do was save her the headache.
I had to run all the way back to my crypt, and even then I was starting
to smoke when I arrived there. Not exactly pleasant. But if that was
the price to pay for a night spent comforting my Slayer… Hell, I’d have
paid a lot more than that.
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The characters and names used in these stories do not belong to me. All copyrights remain with Fox and Mutant Enemy. No profit is made from this fanfiction.
