full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Home Is Where They Have to Let You In by slaymesoftly
 
Ten
 
<<     >>
 
Chapter Ten

When Dawn came down to make coffee the next morning, she was surprised to find Bob sitting in the kitchen and the pot already perking.  He looked tired, but he glanced up and smiled at her. It occurred to her that his face had recovered to the point that it was now possible tell what kind of expression he was wearing under the scars.

“Morning, Dawn,” he said.

“Good morning. I didn’t really think you’d be here when we got up.” Her face reflected both relief and disappointment.

“Your sis had a good point to make. If they’re here for me, they aren’t going to stop looking just because I’m not in this house.  And can’t say I fancy going back with them, so I’m not particularly interested in throwing myself on their mercy…”

Dawn narrowed her eyes at him.  “You know they’re here for you, don’t you?  You remember.”

He sighed and nodded.  “Remember enough to know I’m putting you all in danger. Was never my intent to… Don’t know what Blue was thinking, bringing me to Buffy’s doorstep.”

“Whatever a ‘blue’ is, it probably figured the Slayer was the best one to protect you.” Dawn shrugged.  “It’s what she does best – protect people.”

“That she does,” he said softly.  Along with all his other soft tissues, his vocal chords had also been recovering, and something in his voice brought Dawn’s eyes flying up to his. He looked away, trying to avoid her suspicious glare while she studied his disfigured visage with suddenly sharper eyes. Nodding to herself, she turned away, saying with deliberate casualness, “Well, you need to get back in shape soon, Spike. Buffy needs you.”

“Know that, Nib—” He bit off his response a split-second too late.

There was an ominous silence as Dawn froze with her back to him. She turned around slowly, a spatula in her hand. “It is you! You. Lying. Piece. Of. Shit.” she ground out as she advanced on him, spatula raised. He winced, but didn’t try to duck or move away as she hit him several times, opening new cuts on his barely healed head and getting blood in the short brown stubble there.

The blood startled her out of her grief-driven rage, and she dropped her arms.  “So, is this going be your MO from now on? Die, come back, don’t bother to tell the people who love you, die again, let them grieve again, then die again… Tell me, Bob ” when were you planning to tell us? To tell Buffy? Or were you just going to let her take care of you until you got healthy enough to leave again?”

“It’s not like that, Dawn. I swear.  I just came to myself last night – didn’t know what to do, what to say, and wanted time to think on it.”

“And now that you’ve thought?” She crossed her arms, tapping one foot and clutching the spatula tightly.

“I still don’t know,” he whispered. “I’m still trying to figure things out. She can’t tell it’s me – all she sees are the scars and—and now that I know I’ve brought danger to her doorstep…”

“Spike, you cannot seriously be thinking about keeping this from her. Not again.” He winced, but stood his ground.

“Think about it, Bit.  If these things are here for me – and I’m sure they are – who’s Buffy more likely to risk her life for? Me, or some random vamp she pulled out of a garden shed?  If it comes right down to it, she’s safer not knowing.” He stood up and flexed his still-recovering arms and shoulders. “Not until we’ve sent them back to the hell they came from.”

“We?”  Buffy’s voice preceded her into the room. She raised her eyebrows at the two panicked faces in front of her.  “What did I miss? And when did you join this fight?” She turned her gaze on Spike, not a trace of recognition in her eyes. He gave an audible sigh of relief, and flashed Dawn a pleading look. Her mouth set in a tight line, she turned her back and threw the spatula into the sink.

“What happened to your head?” Buffy tore her attention away from her sister’s obvious temper tantrum and back to Spike.  “Did she hit you?  Dawn! What the hell?”

“It was an accident,” Dawn said through clenched teeth as she left the room. “Could’ve happened to anybody.”  She ran upstairs and slammed the door to her room.

“Wow, she hasn’t done that in years.” Buffy frowned at Spike, who was refusing to meet her eyes and trying not to speak.  He just shrugged and grabbed a paper towel, wetting it down and patting the small cuts Dawn had given him. In more normal vampire fashion than what Buffy had yet seen, they stopped bleeding very quickly and appeared to be closing up.  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

He shook his head, struggling to make his voice sound as rough as it had been the night before.  “It’s no big thing. Made her mad. She had a right.”

Buffy glared at him, but he refused to meet her eyes and didn’t volunteer anything else.

“What did you mean by ‘until we send them back to hell’?”

Roughening his voice again, he said, “Come on, Slayer. We both know they’re here for me. Do you expect me to hide in your cellar while you go out and risk your life for me?”

“We’ve already had this conversation. They’re here. It doesn’t matter why they came, or what they’re looking for. We—the other slayers and I—are going to have to fight them anyway.” She cast a critical eye on his body. “You’re not even close to being up for that yet.”

“You could let them have me,” he said softly. “Let them take me back.”

“Back. To wherever they were starving you and letting a dragon use you for target practice?  Are you nuts?”

“Not saying I want to go. I’m just putting it out there as an option. Don’t want a lot of people getting killed on my account.”

“It’s not an option,” she said with great finality.  “Just keep getting better. If we’re still fighting them in a couple of days… we’ll see then.”

She poured herself some coffee and sat down.  “I guess buying you underwear is going to have to wait,” she said. “I’m going to be spending most of the day at the school, planning strategy with Giles and the coven.  There might be some magical way to close the portal they came through — if we can find it. Then all that will be left is cleaning up the demons that get stuck on this side.” 

Spike got up and went to the stairs. “I’ll just go slather myself up then and work on getting stronger.”  He stopped and stared at her over his shoulder, only turning away when she began to frown and he could see the confusion growing in her eyes. 

“Did you know some demons have tentacles?” she asked, watching him through eyes that were troubled and doubtful.

“Yes,” he said and disappeared into the basement.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Giles, what do we know?” Willow gazed at him expectantly.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said with a wry smile. “What has the coven learned?”

“Demons—big and ugly. Other dimension probably kinda unpleasant. Whatever they’re looking for is something alive and they want it back.”

“I see. So nothing that is of any use to the Slayers?”

She sighed. “Not so you’d notice, no. Except, if they could find what the demons want and give it to them…”

“And what are the chances that they are looking for the crippled vampire in Buffy’s basement?”

Willow sighed again. “Pretty good, I think.  Katrina said he looked like he’d been systematically tortured over a long period of time. She said she wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t or wouldn’t remember; she thought most people would have gone insane from being hurt that much.”

“Vampires are not people.”

“No. I suppose not. Although with the soul…”

“Ah yes, the soul. And what was it about the soul that bothered you?”

“Well, when I read it, it looked like the soul of somebody who’s dead… like dead and gone, you know?  So I thought maybe his soul had been given to this vamp, and that’s why Buffy didn’t stake him and why he ended up at her house. But Katrina says the soul is with its rightful owner, so I guess I was wrong.  It can’t be his.”

“Angel’s?”

“No! Goddess, no. Spike’s. It felt like Spike to me. But, you know, I only looked at Spike’s that one time while he was crazy – just to see if he really did have one. It was a long time ago, and things were kind of… busy. So I guess I was wrong. Either that, or he is Spike and just doesn’t know it.”

“Surely Buffy would have recognized Spike?” Giles stared at her in clear disbelief.

“You’d think so, but this vamp… he’s such a mess, Giles… no hair, scars everywhere, burned eyelids, burned vocal chords and other internal organs… I dunno. I don’t think even Buffy could tell who he is unless he told her.  And he doesn’t know who he is either, so, there you go.”

“But Katrina doesn’t think it is Spike?”

“She doesn’t know. She just knows that the soul belongs to the man – er, vamp – that has it. She never met Spike, so…”

“Have you shared any of this with Buffy?”

Willow shook her head. “No. I didn’t want to say anything unless I knew for sure – and then Katrina said it wasn’t his soul… And then the demons started showing up and we got too busy.  She doesn’t need to know that’s what I thought. Not if I’m wrong.”

“Agreed.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Spike was sitting on his bed, alternately flexing and stretching his arms when he heard tentative footsteps.  He stood up and moved to the bottom of the stairs to find Dawn making her way down, cup in hand.  She handed it to him, frowning when he sniffed it and recoiled.

“What the bloody hell?”

“Look. I know you. And I know Buffy. She’s not going to give you up – even if she doesn’t know you’re you. And you aren’t going to sit here letting her fight without you, so you need to speed up that healing. And pig blood isn’t going to do get the job done fast enough.” 

They glared at each other, the year of estrangement and the lengthy gap in their relationship disappearing as they argued.

“This is your blood!”

“What? Is my blood not good enough for you?  My blood is awesome.  I’m made from Buffy, right? Plus, gazillion-year-old Key here. It’s gonna be like Slayer-blood plus.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

She sniffed. “Just drink it. I’d try to get you some other regular human blood today, but I’m going to be stuck at the school compound until this is over.”

“I thought you were mad at me,” he said as he raised the cup to his lips.

“I can be mad at you and still… lo—care about you,” she said, dropping her gaze. “Just like Buffy can.  You really, really need to tell her, Spike. Really.”

He sighed. “I know, Bit. It’s just….”

“There’s no ‘it’s just.’ It’s what needs to happen. You do it, or I will. I’ll give you the rest of today but if you haven’t told her by tomorrow, I’m going to. She has a right to know.”

“You’re right, luv. I know that. Already feel like a bloody wanker for not telling her this morning, I just… Got nothing to offer her right now, do I? Can’t fight, the sight of me makes her cringe… How am I making anything better by letting her know I’m me?”

“It’s the right thing to do.”  Dawn turned away and went up the stairs, her voice drifting back to him. “And I know you still know how to do right.”



It had been two more nights of street-to-street fighting between squads of slayers and the invading demons, and they were no closer to finding the portal through which the seemingly unending stream of demonic creatures was escaping.  Buffy came home just before dawn, nursing a deep wound from a dirty claw, and a bruised back from having been thrown against a building. 

There was no sign of Bob, so she continued through the kitchen and up to her own bathroom, to shower off the sweat, blood and inevitable gore that came with fighting things that bled disgusting colors and odors.  She had just dried off and was laying out gauze and ointment for a bandage, when she heard a soft knock on her door.

“Bob?”

“Yeah, Slayer. Just wanted to know how you are. I smelled blood.”

“Hold on. Let me get some clothes on…” She grabbed her pajamas and pulled them on quickly.  Walking to the door, she opened it and looked up into worried eyes that were suddenly only too familiar.  In spite of Dawn’s threat, there had not yet been an opportunity for her to tell Buffy about Spike; but two more days of daily salve applications, as well as the constant gain of weight and muscle now going on, had made too many changes in Spike’s appearance for him to keep up the charade. With Buffy standing in front of him, bleeding because of him, he didn’t even try, saying softly, “Hello, Buffy.”

“Oh my God,” Buffy whispered, falling back into the room, her hand to her mouth.  “Oh my God…” As he entered, tentatively, but with determination, she continued to back up, her eyes huge in her face.  “Is it… are you really…” Moving too fast even for vampire vision, she grabbed his arm and squeezed. “Not the First, then.”

“No, love. Not the first. And not ‘Bob’ anymore. Know who I am now, and why I’m here.” He risked raising one hand to cup her cheek.   “I’m so sorry I brought this on you. If I’d had any idea—”

“Dawn knew!” Buffy focused on the only thing she could be coherent about. “She knew. That’s why she was hitting you.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to kill her.”  She flinched back from his hand. “How long have you two been keeping this from me?  Did she know right away? Is that why you saved her? Because it was Dawn?”

“Ah, no, no, love.” He dropped his hand when she recoiled from it.  “I swear to you, Buffy. It only happened the night the demons came. I didn’t know what to do, was still confused about what’s real and what’s not… Dawn figured it out before you got downstairs that morning; didn’t give me a chance to explain before she went off on me. I asked her to let me tell you in my own time, but you’ve been so…” He stepped back and hung his head.  “I’m sorry, Buffy. I’m as big a coward as ever when it comes to you. Should have told you straight away.” He turned away, head down, shoulders slumped, and began to walk toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Her voice rose to a shriek as he disappeared from her line of sight.  She ran to the door and turned to follow, only to crash into him as he hastened back.  His hands automatically went to her shoulders to steady her when she rocked back from the collision. Buffy leaned forward, resting her head on his chest, her arms going around his waist and holding on so tightly that his only-recently-healed side began to throb. He ignored the pain, dropping his head to hers and burying his face in her hair while his arms went around her back.

“I’m sorry, love. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry I was such an insecure bastard all those years ago, sorry I let myself get taken without having told you how much I still love you, sorry I brought all this destruction to your doorstep—”

“Shut up,” she mumbled into his tee-shirt. “Just shut up and hold me.”

They remained like that, standing together with their arms around each other until Spike felt Buffy’s tears soaking his shirt. “Ah, love. Don’t. Not worth it, am I? Shhh, Buffy.”  His own tears were now wetting her hair as he tried to quell the emotions rippling through him in response.

Eventually, her prior exhaustion returned and Buffy sniffled her way into some semblance of control. She leaned back and stared into the face she could now recognize, even under the still-disfiguring scars.  “How did I not know?” she marveled, running her fingers lightly over his brow and cheeks.  “How did I not know?”

“You didn’t know, because I didn’t know,” he said, kissing the fingers now feeling his mostly healed lips.  “How could you?  Can’t see it in a mirror, but I’ve got some idea what I look like. Can only imagine how much worse it was when you found me.”

“You’ve got no idea how close you came to being staked…” She shuddered. “I could have killed you, and I would have never known... Oh God!”  Her eyes welled up again, but she blinked the tears away. “Okay. Get a grip, Buffy. I didn’t do it, so—”

“Almost wish you had, love,” he said, brushing his fingers against the cut on her arm. “Don’t want you anywhere near this hell-spawn.”

“Don’t say that!” she said fiercely.  “Don’t ever say that!”

“Buffy, you don’t know what… “ He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Alright, then. They’re here. What can I do to help?”

Taking him at his word, she pulled away from him and backed into her room, falling into a fighting stance.  “Show me what you’ve got,” she ordered.

He blinked at her, then broke into a grin. “Ready when you are, Slayer.”

“Just don’t break my furniture,” she said, snapping two quick punches at his face. He slid to the side and retaliated with a leg sweep, which threw him off balance when his bad leg didn’t respond the way he’d hoped. He recovered before Buffy, whose back was still hurting, could take advantage. They exchanged blows, neither one really trying to do injury, until Buffy held up her hand for a break.  The cut on her arm was beginning to bleed again, and Spike was favoring his injured leg.

“This would be a lot more fun if we weren’t both hurt,” she said, yawning. “I need some rest, and you need….” She looked at his anxious face and said, more gently, “And you need a couple more days.  You’re good,” she said quickly when his eyes flashed yellow and he began to snarl. “But you’re not what you should be.” 

“I’m good enough,” he said. “And I’ll be even better tomorrow. Not sending you back out there alone.”  Two sets of equally stubborn eyes battled for supremacy, until finally Buffy sighed and turned away.

“Let’s get some sleep,” she said. “We can fight about it again in the morning.”

“We’re not fighting. We’re having a disagreement.”

         She just rolled her eyes, then dropped them, looking embarrassed. “I… do you wan—” She blew out her breath. “I’m exhausted and hurt, but now that I know who you are…” She glanced up.  “I don’t want you to go back to the basement. Can… will you stay here? With me?”

“Wasn’t planning to go anywhere else. Not unless you made me.”
 
<<     >>