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Chapter Six
 
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What do you know? You know just what you perceive
What can you show? Nothing of what you believe


Ten deep breaths later Buffy straightened up and walked past Spike to the basement door. "You can sleep down here, yeah?" she said, cutting off any comment he might have made. "It's a bit musty but there's a bed, and the sun won't get you in the morning. I mean in an hour," she amended ruefully.

"'M lucky really. Vampire dust's got no value; lots of species were sliced up for parts."

The words were obviously meant as a sop to her and they touched Buffy in a very well protected place. That he would wish to comfort her and take away the pain of learning about his suffering. Meeting his eye again was a mistake and she dashed angrily at a second wave of tears.

"You alright?" Spike asked bluntly.

"I'm sure I'll be fine tomorrow." And because he looked as if he really cared, and Buffy didn't want to add to his worries, she reached out and squeezed his hand briefly. "And so will you. Well maybe not fine, but better. Safe. Is there anything you need before I go to bed?"

Spike's eyes crinkled as he looked at her, and there was something disturbingly familiar about that affectionate half smile. Maybe it was the affection.

"I'm starting to think you're not all that scary, Slayer," he said softly. "Been three years since I slept in a bed, I'll be better than fine."

Buffy's subconscious, crying for sleep, tried very hard not to hear that last sentence, but her mouth was already working.

"Three years?"

He nodded. "Well that I remember, as you seem to think I'm missing a couple. Been three summers since they got me."

"Three years?"

She could see the panic start to rise again in him and guessed it must be plain on her face that this wasn't good news. This time she was too tired even to bang her head against anything.

"You're not my Spike," she groaned in explanation. "You don't have amnesia at all. Spike only left town three months ago, you're not him."

They stared at each other for a beat that stretched and stretched. "I didn't lie to you," the vampire whispered eventually. "I feel like Spike."

Maybe she was reaching the point of hysteria, because despite the frightened little boy expression he'd been pulling on her all night Buffy couldn't stop a giggle that bubbled up in her throat. "You feel like Spike," she confirmed, then giggled again as she heard her own double meaning. "I mean Slayer senses, you just seem... You know what? I don't care. We can worry about who you are in the morning, if you don't go and murder me in my sleep."

********


Buffy waited until the basement door had closed before switching off the lights and trudging up the stairs. She wasn't quite tired enough to skip her shower, she needed five minutes to empty her mind under scalding hot water but it was an automatic exercise and not entirely successful.

She didn't even notice the stone the demon had given her earlier or the brown leather thong looped around her neck until she was towelling her hair in front of the mirror. She took it off to examine it closer, considered throwing it out but remembered it must have some purpose and maybe Giles would know what it was. In the meantime she put it back on and admired the way the shining emerald surface brought out the green flecks in her eyes.

The pretty shiny thing could only distract Buffy for so long though, and as she slipped into her pyjamas her mind naturally returned to the vampire. It was almost easy to decide she wasn't going to think about the fact that he wasn't Spike - that all practical considerations could just wait till tomorrow - but harder to shake the mental image of his back or the look on his face when she'd tried to reassure him. And just impossible to forget that whoever-the-hell-he-was was in her basement, probably still scared and finding it much harder to dismiss the practical considerations.

********


Spike walked down the stairs in the dark, vampire eyes easily adjusting as the door swung shut behind him. The bed was there, just like she'd promised. Small and lumpy but a bed, not a rack or a cage or a set of chains and Spike wasn't quite sure what to do with that. Sleep, he supposed. Had been days since he'd slept in a not knocked unconscious way but he had a feeling rest wouldn't come easy tonight.

A full meal after three years on congealed scraps and Spike was on the vampire equivalent of a sugar high, but beyond that he was flat out scared. It seemed ridiculous even to his own mind to be more scared of a bed than regular torture but there it was.
The part of his brain that had begun to wonder these last few weeks if he'd gone insane half believed the bed was as imaginary as the house and the Slayer and this whole bizarre night, figments of memory or hallucination. Testing the mattress and finding it solid would not dispel the illusion.

Everything had changed faster than he could understand after years of trying not to think on anything. His whole world, small and painful as it was, turned on its head, individual facts percolating through because the whole was just too much to comprehend. There was only so much information anyone could absorb in one go and the vampire had been used to a very simple life. Do what you're told, don't question, don't scream, don't think; he'd almost forgotten how. And now he wasn't the only person who didn't think he was real; Spike thought he could be more or less happy with that if he could be sure she was. No reason to think otherwise but still he doubted.

Because who was rescued by their mortal enemy? It was a ridiculous notion and surely one that could only be conjured up by an over-abused and desperate mind. And if she were real, the kindness and sanctuary she offered was meant for someone else. Spike tried not to dwell on that, because he couldn't pin down a single piece of evidence that he really was Spike. The last three years were a blur of torment without specifics and he couldn't clearly remember how it started, had only recently begun to question.

And though he could clearly remember a time when he knew exactly who he was, even that seemed more like a nightmare from this distance. The acts he had committed, though the memories were crisper, turned his stomach as much as the atrocities performed on him. He'd told the Slayer he felt like Spike but realised the words weren't quite true as soon as they'd left his lips. He really didn't know what being Spike felt like. He remembered, the lust for life and joy in destruction, but from this distance the feelings were foreign.

He sat down on the mattress, still marvelling at the lack of restraints. He could move his hands however he wanted, stretch out or curl up, could sit here and wank if he chose to. If not for the sounds of the Slayer still up and about above his head he could walk straight outside and look at the stars. Couldn't leave, of course, but freedom was relative and Spike felt like he'd been given his.

He remembered Buffy well, at least the girl she had been. Had obsessed over her and his inability to kill her until other things had driven every thought of his previous life from his mind. He'd pegged her wrong from that first view of a bubbly and shallow teenager dancing with her friends, nothing special. And though she'd managed to thwart his every plan and avoid his fangs Spike had put that down to luck. He hadn't really sat up to take notice till she'd evaded the Order of Taraka and put him in a wheelchair, by which time all he could do was sit. She was upgraded in his mind then to a worthy and amusing opponent, and delectable eye candy with it, but even then he didn't see the steel in her until Angelus returned.

Since then she'd become a legend, and the bare fact that she was still alive made her unique, as far as Spike knew. And terrifying, he'd thought at first. He couldn't imagine the force of personality that had kept her fighting for six years, how that might change a person so much they'd pick themselves up a vampire slave. But she hadn't, and it was impossible to stay scared of the girl who'd cried silently as she'd touched his wounds and thrown up when it had finally sunk into that innocent head just what he was.

The Slayer wasn't what he'd expected. Worlds away from his previous owners and different again to the perky punning girl he recalled from better days. She had the power to end his life in screaming agony with her bare hands but he was already coming to realise it was so far from her mindset as to be impossible. He'd been wrong, the worse she had to offer him was a quick death.

He wasn't the person she'd cried for and Spike couldn't begin to conceive of how that had come about or what this other Spike had been to her. Maybe when she'd slept on this knowledge a quick death is exactly what he would receive, but it was not a thought that chilled him. The threat of a sudden ending, unable to defend himself, had been hanging over his head for years now and he'd often wished he was able to do it himself. To die standing and unbound would be a blessing compared to dying chained and tortured and begging for the pain to stop. And it was fitting, she'd beaten him twice in a fair fight now and it was no shame to be killed by this remarkable Slayer when far more illustrious foe than he had died by her hand.

Dusting was nothing to the nightmare of waking up to find he'd never left LA. That hope really was an impossible fabrication and he was destined to spend his interminable existence as a whore held in place by chains and silicone. There's a limit to how much you can hurt someone when there's nothing left to take. Now, he had a full stomach, a bed, full range of movement and the compassion of his mortal enemy. And other things it was harder to put a name to, hope and choice and chance and feeling. Maybe they were all illusions but Spike already knew if he lost them it would destroy him.

********


He was still sitting when the basement door opened and the Slayer reappeared, armed with a duvet that swamped her small frame and almost hid her adorably childish pyjamas. Business-like she marched down the stairs, dumped the duvet on the bed and handed him a bottle that had previously been hidden from view.

"It's Giles's. Thought you might want it," she explained. "'Night."

The vampire watched her exit, a warm glow spreading that had nothing to do with the half bottle of whisky in his hand.

If this was insanity maybe his mind didn't hate him after all.

 
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