~*~

She wasn’t actually running because she was annoyed. She was running because the enormity of what she was doing was actually starting to sink in.

Spike had troubled her since the moment they’d met a little more than a year ago. At the time her Watcher had been training her for about a year. She’d already dealt with several rather powerful vampires and was beginning to forge ties with the military, starting with the guy Spike called a GI Joe—her former boyfriend, Riley.

Riley had explained to her about the military operation currently housed in Cleveland named the Initiative. They’d tried to capture Spike and use him for their experiments with the undead, but Spike had escaped and carried some information to Buffy that Riley had neglected to tell her: the military was building a sentient creature that had the capacity, and the will, to destroy the world.

Buffy had spoken with her Watcher about the creature, called Adam. They had both agreed that Adam had to be destroyed. Riley, acting in his capacity as the only one on their side who knew the layout of the Initiative headquarters, had agreed to sneak them in. At the last minute, though, he’d defected back to the military. Buffy had run into Spike and, in desperation, agreed to allow him to help her in exchange for his freedom to live—or unlive, as the case might be. She’d never told her Watcher the truth about what happened that night.

And now she was, once again, agreeing to fight with him. Buffy flopped down on her bed, feelings a strange mix of confusion, excitement over the coming fight, and resignation.

Is this ever going to end? she wondered, staring at the brown ceiling. Her conscience was plaguing her, reminding her of all the information her Watcher had presented her with: he was a mass murderer, he delighted in giving pain, so on and so forth. But he’d given her a lecture that night about how he valued the world, and in some strange, definitely twisted sense she could respect him for that.

But still.

It’s wrong. Everything I’m doing—everything I am as a Slayer—is wrong! She was the frickin’ guardian of all that was good, and the next mission she was going on would be in the company of one of the worst master vampires in the history of the world!

So why was she so excited at the prospect of working with him again?

She sighed and curled up on the bed, not even bothering to take off her boots before she fell asleep. It was at times like this that she wanted her mother most. Despite all her shortcomings, her mother had always known what to say when Buffy felt conflicted. Joyce’s simple belief in the miraculous abilities contained within hot cocoa and little marshmallows was simultaneously annoyingly naive and immensely comforting.

Her Watcher had long ago forbidden her to speak with her mother, and Buffy understood why, in a way. Still, she wished Joyce didn’t hate her for becoming an absentee daughter. More than ever, Buffy needed a mother. Not a boyfriend, not just a friend, and definitely not a Watcher. Just—a mother.

Once again, she cried herself to sleep, thinking, Mom, if only you were here...if only...

~*~

She was up shortly after when most humans ate lunch. She phoned the manager of the Doublemeat Palace and submitted her resignation before calling her Watcher and, cringing the whole time, making up a story about a contact giving her information on a soon-to-be apocalypse in Europe that required her immediate attention. Her Watcher informed her that since the Slayer Handbook said that this stage of her training should include increased independence, she was free to go.

Buffy then got off the phone and cried.

She probably shouldn’t have, but she couldn’t help it. Good Slayers never cried...but good Slayers never made alliances with master vampires, either. She was completely and totally destroying everything she’d ever worked for. The fact that part of her was certain it was the right thing to do didn’t help.

Still, she was more than a little chagrined when she couldn’t stop crying for almost thirty minutes. The Slayer Handbook stressed that it was extremely unhealthy to cry, and now she was weeping three times in two days. What kind of Slayer was she, anyway?

Oh, right. A bad one.

When she was done having her idiotic pity party, she got up and packed all her things. It was a quick process; she had only one brown bag that she filled with clothes and toillitries, and another she filled with weapons. Everything else she could either forage or do without.

She was waiting on the steps of her apartment building in the almost complete dark when the same idiotic DeSoto she remembered from Cleveland pulled up in front. She’d never understood why he drove that car. You’d think master vampires would be able to afford better transportation...

And there she went again, going off on a tangent. That happened altogether too often when she thought about him.

So, accordingly, she pursed her lips and said, “Finally. I was starting to hope you’d gotten staked,” when he walked up to the steps to greet her.

He just rolled his eyes, apparently not in the fighting mood. “’Course you did. Can we just get on with this?”

“Hey, I’m ready to leave,” she told him before stomping over to the car and slamming the door shut.

On the way to the airport, they were both silent. Buffy kept putting her hand down on her left thigh, where she kept a stake in her cargo pants, and glancing over at the vampire driving the car.

She didn’t trust him. She was letting him take her halfway across the world and she still didn’t trust him. Oh, the irony, Buffy thought sarcastically, glancing at him again.

If he so much as edges toward me, I’ll dust him, she decided.

When he saw her hand again tighten on the cloth-covered stake he sighed. “Bloody hell, Slayer. ‘f I wanted to kill you, I would’ve already.”

“And you think I would have let you?” Buffy said coldly.

He snorted. “Yeah, right. ‘m sayin’ I woulda tried. An’ since you traipse ‘round in those stupid cargo pants all the sodding time, I prob’ly woulda succeeded, too.”

“What’s wrong with my pants?” Wonderful, now she was letting the undead make her yell. Control is everything, Buffy reminded herself. You must control your emotions. Emotions are weakness.

“Nothin’s wrong.” Spike seemed unaware of Buffy’s inner Dr Phil-ing. “They’re just...I dunno, boring. Don’ you have any other clothes?”

“Is it possible for a vampire to be homosexual?” she shot back. “Because for a guy, you worry about my clothes just a bit too much!”

Spike snorted. “Poofter coulda told you that, why didn’t you ask him?”

Buffy was suddenly, violently reminded that he and Angel were related in a roundabout vampire sort of way—and that they’d traveled together for several generations. She made a face. “Okay. Ew.”

“Hey, you asked, I’m tellin’,” Spike said cheerfully. They zoomed past a sign with a plane on it—as though the government thought they couldn’t read, or something.

“Airport, twenty miles,” Spike announced cheerfully.

“I can read,” Buffy said acidly. A moment passed in silence before she added, “I don’t play well with others, Spike.”

“Good thing we’re not playin’, then.”

Buffy stared at him. His face was completely expressionless except for a slight upturn of his lips at the corner of his mouth. He was laughing at her. “I can’t believe this! Spike, you are not along because I like you or because I think you will be in any way pleasant to have around. You are along because unfortunately, for now, I need you. And if you don’t watch your step, the second I don’t need you, I’ll dust you. Understood?”

She didn’t bother waiting for his response. Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she stared stonily ahead.

She head, quite clearly, the curt, “Got it.” What she didn’t hear—whether because she didn’t want to or because she couldn’t was irrelevant—was the very human hurt behind those two words.

~*~