Never Alone by Lilachigh


Chapter 16 Memories


‘Spike! Look out!” Buffy launched herself off the bed as one of the tentacles lashed forwards and wrapped itself round Spike’s arm. With astonishing power it dragged the vampire across the room until he got his other hand round the door frame and hung on, roaring in anger, vamping out into game face.

Buffy dodged the second tentacle and gazed wildly round the room. She needed a knife, an axe, something sharp. There was nothing. “Spike - I need a weapon!”

But the vampire was busy keeping himself from being pulled out of the room. She saw a flash of fangs as he buried them in the tentacle and green pus like slime oozed out of the black skin. Then as she grabbed a chair and began smashing it down on the second tentacle, Spike’s grip weakened and he was hauled bodily through the door.

“Slayer!” She could see him fighting to stay on his feet and she leapt after him. Outside, was a scene from a nightmare. The demon’s tentacles were black and shiny, but its fat, pulsating body was covered with coarse black hair - a cross between a spider and an octopus.

Six more tentacles were flailing the air, propelling the beast down the corridor, then suddenly, Spike’s fangs were working once more and with a high pitched scream, it dropped him and the tentacle was pulled back inside the body, dripping a green liquid that smelt of sewers and death.

But the other seven tentacles were just as vicious and reached eagerly for its prey. Deep in the hairy body, Buffy could see a red and purple mouth opening and shutting with a heavy sucking, squelching sound.

Spike had rolled clear and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nice little friend, pet,” he shouted. “One of yours?”

Buffy ducked as a black horror with shiny suckers underneath it swung towards her with the speed of lightning. “Very funny,” she shouted back. “Why haven’t you got any weapons handy? I need an axe.”

Spike leapt to one side, vaulting over the yards of black muscle that were coming dangerously close to him again “Told you before, sweetheart, vampires carry our weapons with us - you have to reach for - ” Then he stopped, his eyes widened, the game face vanished, and he clutched his head as the new scar throbbed violently.

But this time, he wouldn’t let it stop him remembering - those words, his tone of voice, the smell of beer, the taste of Buffalo wings, music, dancing, cigarette smoke in the air, a girl who hated him - “Buffy - ” he started in a whisper, then went crashing to the ground as a tentacle smacked him on the back of the head.

Buffy dodged again and jabbed fiercely at shiny black skin with a stake, but she was beginning to feel desperate. This creature seemed to be growing more tentacles and she still didn’t have a cutting weapon.

Then, suddenly, the door at the end of the corridor was flung open and three demons, two big and one very small, hurtled through. Long ears flapping wildly, their faces contorted from their usual happy smiles, Clem and his wife attacked the octipider with a knife and - oh joy - an axe.

“Elsa - Clem - I need a weapon!”

Elsa pulled another knife from her belt and tossed it to her. Buffy had a brief view of the demon couple chopping desperately at a tentacle that was even now trying to pull Spike towards its mouth. And to her amazement, there was the toddler, Tosh, running in to slash with a knife that was almost as big as he was and then diving out again before anything could touch him.

Buffy leapt forwards towards the octipider’s heaving body. Her fist smacked down hard on the hairy mass and as it spun its mouth towards her, the knife in her hand flashed down with all her Slayer power behind it,

There was another high-pitched scream, the tentacles squirted back inside the body and with a curious, heaving motion, the demon creature spun and slid away, back down the passage that led towards the Hellmouth.

Spike picked himself up, groaning, and the four adults stared at each other, panting, their hands and arms covered in the stinking green blood. Only Tosh seemed quite happy: he’d found four inches of tentacle that his father had sliced off and was busy hacking it into tiny pieces with his lknife.

Clem waggled his long ears at Buffy. “That was close. What was it?”

“I didn’t wait to be introduced,” Buffy replied dryly. “I’m only too thankful you and Elsa were around. Spike didn’t have a single weapon in his room that I could find.”

‘Only too pleased to help,” Elsa said shyly. “Clem told me how you saved Tosh. I can’t ever thank you enough, Buffy. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost him.”

Buffy’s smile was warm. “Well, Spike helped too - a bit!” She turned to grin at the vampire, then hesitated. He was standing, leaning against the wall, looking at her with a very odd expression on his face. “Ewwww., I know, this stuff stinks,” she said. “Can I use your shower, Spike? I reckon Clem and Elsa will be busy for hours getting themselves and Tosh clean!”

The platinum head nodded. “Sure. Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll just check it’s gone - whatever it was.”

His voice sounded odd, Buffy thought. As if he was miles away, thinking of something else completely. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. Fighting with him by her side was so exhilarating, made her realise all over again that he was back, alive , that all her dreams and prayers had come true.

And so what if he didn’t remember her. Did it matter? She loved him; that would never change. Even if he had been having sex with a stranger, there was no need for her to feel guilty, because she had been making love to the man who’d won her heart against all the odds.

“Is it a big shower?” she asked cheekily and then frowned as he muttered, “What, oh no, not really. You go first. Plenty of hot water. I must just....make it safe....Tosh....back in a second, Slayer.” Spike walked slowly along the passage, trying desperately to stay and appear calm. Once down in the darkness of the underground tunnel system, he leant against the cold wall, then slid down it until his head was resting on his knees.

The pain was thundering through his brain again, but there, underneath the agony, were the beginnings of bright pictures. None of them made much sense. There didn’t seem to be any pattern or order to them. A red headed girl, a guy with dark hair and a silly smile, a beautiful young teenager with long black hair.

Fighting, jeering, kissing, no, no, no, now a thin, dark haired woman in a long white dress was running her fingers over his face. She’d been important to him once, but not now. And another vampire - a quick bright flash of broad shoulders, dark hair, eyes that could see right through you.

Then the pictures faded and the underground chill surrounded him once again. Spike shuddered. Was he remembering his past or was this all a dream? But surely you didn’t feel emotions like this in a dream when it was past. Fear, anger, hate, jealousy, power, and above all, the emotion that came roaring to the surface whenever her face swam into focus inside his head. Those green eyes, blonde hair - long, curly, short, tied up in a pony-tail, under a silly woollen hat, matted with blood, tangled with dirt, with sweat, sticky with - oh god, sticky with his cum when her mouth had been round his dick.

But all the time the emotion was there, too, love for Buffy Summers, the Slayer.

The woman he’d shagged so carelessly hours ago had, he knew, at some time been the love of his life. He couldn’t remember any details, but the brief pictures kept coming.
And yet he’d treated her like - well, there was a word for girls who enjoyed sex with strangers and he’d believed her to be just such a person. He’d thought she was hot, aching for it, a randy little girl who was begging for it, had wanted a good seeing to and oh boy, had he been overjoyed to give her the good hard fuck she so obviously required.

There had been no tenderness, no delicacy, just hard thrusting, making her come and then - he groaned again. He’d finger-fucked her into a screaming mess. Deliberately pushed her over the edge, thinking this was what she wanted. And he hadn’t been wrong. Even now his prick tightened and pushed against his pants at the memory. If ever a girl had wanted fucking, then the Slayer had today.

But he could see all too clearly in his head her reaction when they’d finished, the look of pain and - yes, betrayal, in her eyes. He hadn’t understood then and with all the business of rescuing Tosh, there’d been no time to ask questions. But now....

He rubbed furiously at the scar where the pain was now subsiding and with it the flashing pictures that his words earlier had conjured into being. ‘I told her my body remembered her, even if my mind didn’t,” he muttered, but that was no excuse. it didn’t even sound genuine - it sounded like some bloody pathetic chat-up line that the dark haired guy would have used - God what was his name? - he forced the pain back into his head and with it came another memory - ‘Xander Harris!” he gritted the words out loud.

Spike brought his hands up in front of his face and stared at them. Pale, strong fingers. Scars and cuts and grazes all over them, liberally covered with demon blood at present, but earlier she’d let him use them on her, let him touch her.

He brought them to his mouth and even through the green slime he could smell and taste her arousal still buried in the pores of his skin. He remembered how hot and tight she’d been., how he’d brought her to climax without even thinking about it, knowing instinctively what she wanted, what she liked, where to put each pressure point inside her body to make her scream.

He groaned. For a fleeting moment he’d had a memory of the woman he’d loved, and it was the same woman he’d pounded against the rock wall. But he hadn’t loved her then, had he? So what did that make him?

None of this made sense. He was evil, a vampire. So why did he feel ashamed of what he’d done? She knew what he was, she hadn’t said no. He just wished - oh soddin’ hell, how he wished they hadn’t done that.

He froze suddenly as he heard a stone rattle and footsteps. And he realised that he would know that step anywhere. He could smell shower gel, wet hair, the fabric conditioner on one of his old shirts that she’d pulled on. And as she sank to her knees beside him in the dark, he knew, too, that she was naked underneath it.

Buffy and Spike sat in silence, the dark wrapping around them like a warm cloak. He couldn’t speak - him who usually found it hard to shut up, couldn’t find the words he needed to - what? - apologise? Vampires didn’t say sorry.

At last Buffy sighed, but it wasn’t a sad sound. To Spike’s astonishment it sounded more like a groan of utter contentment. “It’s weird, isn’t it,” she said at last. “You, me, a dark tunnel, fighting monsters. It all seems so nice and normal. What to another girl would be the most terrifying and dreadful day of her life, makes me feel happy.”

“Why’s that, pet?” he managed to say, his head still cradled on his folded arms across his knees.

He felt her shrug in the dark. “Oh, because it‘s you and me and the normal way of our life together, I suppose. I thought I’d lost all that. I’ve been going through the motions of being a happy little Slayer, but it hasn’t been real. When I thought you were - gone - it all became mundane, irrelevant.”

Spike felt his lips twitch unwillingly. “Big word, Slayer.”

Buffy punched him lightly on the shoulder with a blow that would have sent a normal guy sprawling. “I know words! Lots and lots of words! Anyway, how can you know how I usually speak? You don’t remember - ” She stopped abruptly. “Do you remember, Spike?’ she whispered, her voice an agonised gasp in the dark.

“Not everything,” he admitted. “In fact, very little. Just flashes - people, places, things. Can you tell me why I should remember a plaster model of a bride and groom from the top of a wedding cake, for god’s sake? And wrapping a stuffed pig in brown paper?”

Buffy smiled. “That was Mr Gordo. You sent him to me, via the demon network, when you thought you were going to die when we fought the First here in Sunnydale. It was getting that parcel that made me realise the link between us had never been broken and that you were alive somewhere. What else do you recall?”

Spike shook his head wearily. She sounded so bloody happy, so enthusiastic. All he wanted to do was sleep for a million years. “Told you, pet, hardly anything. Every time I try, I get this blinding pain in my head, as if something’s trying to stop me remembering.”

Buffy reached out instinctively, her fingers finding the curve of his slender neck where the curls grew tighter. She ran her hand down it and felt him shudder. “Then don’t try, Spike. You’ve no need to remember for my sake. This is our life now, from today. Yesterday has gone. What use is it to us?”

Spike lifted his head and gazed round at her. His night vision was far better than hers and even in the darkness he could pick out the tender curve of her lips. She was smiling. “I don’t think we can just forget it, Slayer. It made us what we are. And that’s the whole point. I need to remember because I don’t know what I am any more!”’

Buffy shifted on the hard rocky floor. She wished she could crawl into his lap and let him cradle her against his chest. But he’d made no move towards her since the fight with the octipider. She frowned. He was beginning to worry her.

“I need to....need to say sorry about earlier. I should never have done what I did to you. I treated you as if you were - ” he stopped, words failing him, or at least, words he could use in front of her.

“You treated me exactly the way I wanted,” Buffy said, her patience beginning to crack. “Is this what all this is about, Spike. You’re having a guilt trip because we made love when you didn’t know who I was?“

“We didn’t make love, Slayer, that‘s the whole point,”’ he said, jumping to his feet in one smooth, lithe movement. “We fucked. I fucked you. Hard. I made you scream. But there was no affection on my side. It was just sex. Now - now I can remember loving you and doing that makes me feel sick.”

Buffy got up too and leant against the passage wall. She needed the cold hard stones behind her for support. She’d seen Spike in many different moods over the years, but remorse was not one she’d come across before. “Well, you certainly still know how to make a girl feel good about herself,” she snapped. “I’m sorry that making love to me makes you feel sick, Spike.”

“That‘s not what I meant. Having sex with someone who - who has some affection for you when you don’t know them at all. That isn’t right. What’s worse is that I know it shouldn’t worry me, but it does. And that isn’t right, either!”

“God, Spike, get a grip! I wanted you - badly. I knew damn well you didn’t remember me and that we should have waited until you did, but sorry, I love you, you idiot. I thought you were dead for months! All I wanted was to feel you inside me again. If that‘s so very wrong, then blame me, but do stop hitting yourself over the head about it. It makes you sound like Angel!”

She bit her lip as she threw the insult at him. It was the very worst thing she could think of to say, but she had to try something to get inside that stupid blond head of his and sort him out.

But there was no response, just, “Who’s Angel? You’ve mentioned him before.”

Buffy sighed. She really didn’t want to go down this road. “Angel was your grandsire. He turned Drusilla, who turned you. The two of you go back a long, long way. You don’t like him, but you were fighting on his side in Los Angeles when you vanished.”

“Is he dead?”

Buffy dug her nails hard against the implacable stones. “No, he isn’t,” she said tersely. “Now can we please stop talking about Angel, and talk about us?”

Spike spun round to face her. “But he’s a big part of my past, isn’t he? I need to know, Slayer. I have to find out who I am. Why I am.”

“You‘re the man I love. The man who once loved me more than life itself,” she whispered, feeling the hot tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

“Then why can’t I remember?” he roared, his fist hitting the wall beside her head. “If I really loved you, how could I have treated you like I did? That wasn’t loving, Buffy. That was just fucking!”

Buffy felt her temper rising. She’d forgotten in all the anguish of loosing him just how irritating he could be when he chose. How he could effortlessly make her want to smack him. It gave her a jolt. Was this what happened when someone you loved went out of your life? You only remembered the good things and not the bad? Did you build them up in your mind as perfect when, of course, they weren’t.

“Spike,” she tried to keep her voice calm and steady, but failed. “You’re getting things out of proportion. Look, come upstairs and have a shower. You’re still covered in that icky thing’s blood. Get a wash and we’ll go find a bar and have a drink. I don’t suppose you remember the Bronze where we used to drink. There must be somewhere half decent been built in the New Sunnydale. Clem will know.”

The Bronze. Spike shut his eyes and tried to think. And for a second or two he was there. He was stalking his prey, coat flapping at his heels, moving through the crowd, scenting her, then seeing her through the cigarette smoke and the flashing disco lights - dancing, arms raised, blonde hair escaping to surround a small, pretty face. Her body tight and hot and calling to him.

Then as swiftly as it had come, the memory was sucked away by a great wave of pain and he winced and clutched at his forehead. “It’s no good, Slayer. I have to find out why I can’t remember,” he said at last when he could make his voice work once more. “You said I was fighting in Los Angeles. Well, that’s where I’ll have to go then.”

Buffy felt her blood ice over and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “Spike, that’s ridiculous. All you’re going to find in Los Angeles is a load of pain and misery.
And what about the Hellmouth here? It’s opening again. These Shades and monsters prove that. I’ve got to find a way of shutting it again. I need your help, Spike. I...I don’t think I can do it on my own.”

Spike winced at the uncertainty in her voice but he knew without even trying that she was wrong. If anyone could cope with the Hellmouth it was this woman. She certainly didn‘t need his help. “I’ll be back,” he said quietly. “Once I find out what happened to me, why I’ve become the person I am.”

“Oh great,” Buffy said sarcastically, not believing he was going to walk out on her. “I’ll just tell the Shades and various other assorted monsters to sit and wait for you then, shall I?”

“You don’t have to start closing the Hellmouth straight away, do you?” Spike said, beginning to get annoyed at her attitude. Bloody hell, perhaps this was why he didn’t fully remember her. She could be a right royal pain when she chose.

Buffy stared in the direction of his voice, wishing he could see the expression on her face. She reckoned it would tell him more than a thousand words. “Listen, Spike. The Hellmouth is my job. Always has been and by the looks of it, always will be. There is no way I can just walk away and leave it to flourish.”

“I need to go to L.A.” Spike said stubbornly.

“Then go!” Buffy turned on her heel. “I’ve really had it with all the soul searching and introspection. I’ve done that gig. Played those games with another vamp. Go to L.A., find Angel, discover what happened to you. Perhaps you’ll come back, perhaps you won’t. To be honest, I don’t care any more. I’ve got a job to do and I’m going to do it.”

She didn’t wait for his reply, but walked rapidly away, back down the passage towards the shopping mall. She was trying hard not to cry. Now wasn’t the time. There would be time for tears later.

So he was leaving her. Nothing new there then! she thought bitterly. It was what every man in her life did at some time. And at the end of the day, the truth was simple. She wasn’t enough for him. She wasn’t good enough for William the Bloody.

That was a cracking joke. One day soon she’d sit down and have a really good laugh about it. Yes, discovering where he came from, who he was, what he’d become, was obviously far more important than loving her. She pushed aside the little voice in her mind that asked her why she couldn’t have gone with him to L.A. Why she was so scared of him discovering the truth behind his injuries. Because if she was honest, she was terrified. Once he knew who he truly was, then perhaps he wouldn’t want her after all.

Buffy reached Spike’s room and sank down on the bed to catch her breath. She curled up and buried her face in the pillow - just for a moment. She could smell a lingering trace of the vampire on the incongruous pillow slip. A child’s pattern of yellow teddy bears and green kittens - obviously all Elsa, Clem’s wife, had spare.

The tears came at last, slow and hot, trickling down the side of her face to pool on the pillow. She was too tired to sob. She just lay there and let the pain of rejection flood out of her.

At last she sat up and swung her feet onto the floor, pushing her emotions away, putting another layer of bricks ontop of the wall she was busy building in her head to keep Spike and everyone else at bay. When would she ever learn? she wondered wearily. You gave your heart to someone and they walked all over it. Well, it wasn’t going to happen to her again.

The octipider’s body had gone. Clem and Elsa had tidied it away. But Elsa‘s axe was still lying on the floor. Buffy picked it up and tucked it into her waistband. “I don’t need anyone!” she told herself fiercely. “I’m the Slayer and this is my job. I don’t need Spike! I’ll never need Spike again!”

to be continued