full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Future Sins Past by DreamsofSpike
 
Revelations
 
<<     >>
 
Buffy did not release her firm grip on Spike’s arm the entire way back to Giles’ apartment. He did not struggle, did not offer any resistance whatsoever, and he seemed rather subdued, lost in whatever troubled thoughts were echoing through his mind; Buffy highly doubted that he was going to try anything at this point.

Still – she was taking no chances.

She knocked lightly on Giles’ door, before opening it cautiously, walking ahead of Spike into the living room.

Willow and Jenny were sitting on the sofa, Giles sitting in a chair across from them, the three of them talking quietly, seriously, probably about the spell they had just done, or possibly about the mysterious spell that had been done on Spike. They looked up in surprise when Buffy entered with Spike, none of them moving for a few moments.

“I, um – I found him,” Buffy informed them unnecessarily with a slightly sheepish shrug.

“Yes, I see,” Giles remarked coolly, his eyes narrowed suspiciously on the blond vampire. “And opted against slaying him, as well. Why is that, exactly?”

“Don’t you think we’d better find out what happened out there first?” Buffy pointed out a bit defensively. “I mean – we don’t know who cast what spell, if it was just Spike that was affected or others too, or – or anything! I just thought…”

“Quite right, Buffy,” Giles cut her off with a relenting sigh, shaking his head. “I suppose I just got a bit – ahead of schedule, in my eagerness to be rid of this filthy, lying little menace.” He bit the words off clearly and pointedly, his eyes focused on Spike while he spoke to Buffy.

Spike did not meet his eyes, his expression darker and more troubled by the moment.

Buffy did not respond to Giles’ comment, as she steered Spike toward a chair on the opposite side of the room from the Watcher and the others, pushing him firmly down into it, while gesturing for Willow to bring her the chains that had been discarded on the floor
by the sofa.

Spike looked up at her sharply. “You’re going to chain me up again?”

“Come on. You didn’t really expect anything else, did you?” Buffy held his gaze without
backing down, one eyebrow raised in mild surprise.

Spike sighed, looking down again, and again Buffy was startled at how easily he seemed to just accept her decision, without arguing or making any attempt to stop her. She tensed as she crouched down behind him to chain his wrists together around the back of the chair, but was relieved -- as well as vaguely troubled -- to find that Spike did not resist, allowing himself to be bound without a fight.

As she finished, another thought crossed her mind, and she rose to her feet, looking around the room uncertainly. “Xander went home?” she asked, feeling momentarily bad for the hopefulness she felt at that idea.

Xander was one of her best friends, but she somehow knew that he was not going to be very helpful in this particular situation.

“Ah, no,” Giles replied, a bit regretfully, meeting her eyes. “In fact…”

At that moment, his words trailed off, as Buffy heard the kitchen door swing open, and Xander walked in, balancing four glasses filled with iced tea in his hands.

“I’ve got the nummy icy cold goodness, right…”

He froze, staring at the bound vampire, his eyes widening in shock. Then, he calmly finished walking across the room, carefully setting each of the four glasses on the coffee table in front of Giles, Jenny, and Willow, leaving his own there as well. Then, he stood up and turned toward Buffy with a strange smile on his face as he casually approached.

No one said a word, everyone waiting apprehensively for his inevitably bad reaction to the present undustiness of Spike.

“Buffy,” he asked sweetly, “do you want me to get you some, too?”

“Um – sure,” she replied, a bit uncertainly, glancing between her friend and her Watcher with a silent question in her eyes. “Thanks, Xand.” She exchanged another nervous look with Giles once Xander had left the room, wondering if he was going to absolutely lose it when he came back.

But he didn’t. The explosion they had expected from the most anti-vampire member of their generally speaking anti-vampire club, never came. In fact, Xander stayed perfectly calm when he walked back into the living room, sitting down on one arm of the couch and quietly listening to the others talk.

It made Buffy nervous.

It was sort of like sitting next to a ticking bomb, and having no idea how many seconds were left on the timer.

“Okay,” Buffy said quietly once they were all seated, looking expectantly in the direction of her and Spike. She felt rather self-conscious, being the focus of their attention, but knew that their curious looks were only natural. “Let’s start at the beginning, Spike. Only this time, let’s start with the truth.”

***********************************

“Okay, so let me get this straight…” The Slayer’s voice sounded more tired than skeptical, as she paced slowly in front of the chair to which Spike was bound, recounting what he had told them already.

“Those military guys picked you up at the church and put some kind of computer chip in your head that keep you from hurting humans without massive pain. Then Drusilla came and broke you out and took you to the mansion -- and that’s the first you knew of Angel’s losing his soul?”

“Right,” Spike affirmed, nodding, his serious eyes fastened on the Slayer’s questioning face, willing her to see that he was telling the truth. “That had nothing to do with my ritual to restore Dru, Slayer -- I swear it. If it did, I didn’t know it.”

“Okay,” Buffy waved his explanations off dismissively, shaking her head as she went on, “let’s assume I believe that for a little while…Angelus pretty much just left you to starve, and Dru went along with what he wanted, because…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at him for the answer to the unspoken question.

Spike swallowed hard, barely concealing a slight wince at the pain of the memories brought back by this part of the story, and opened his mouth to respond.

“Because Spikey’s not man enough for her,” Xander finished the statement with a smirk, leaning back against the wall behind the arm of the sofa he was seated on. “She moved on. As any sane woman would. Oh, wait…”

Spike could not help the soft growl that rose in his throat, until he looked away from the boy to see the Slayer leaning down in front of him, her face inches from his.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she advised him simply, her tone not threatening, but her eyes deadly serious.

Spike sighed, relenting and pointedly focusing his attention back on her. “He’s her sire, Slayer. That means a lot to vamps. She’s pretty much gonna do whatever he soddin’ tells her to do…”

It was not the whole truth -- but it was all of the truth that he could bear to face at the moment.

Buffy nodded, accepting that, as she spoke calmly, in a sort of detached voice, clearly an attempt to mask her own emotions as she reached a part of the story that was more painful for her. Spike found his eyes arrested by her intent gaze, as he realized that she was trying to tell him something, something she did not want the others to hear.

“So now we’re at the part of the story where I found you in the mansion, brought you here…”

The look in her eyes was almost pleading, and suddenly Spike understood.

She did not want the others to know what she had seen there, between Angel and Drusilla -- the devastating truth that would bring forth the pity of her friends, and with it her humiliation.

*Silly bint,* he thought with a sort of sympathy for her in spite of himself. *Doesn’t she get that it’s the last thing *I* want to bring up, too?*

“And you basically made with the big lies,” Buffy was going on now, hurriedly moving past the details of the encounter at the mansion. “Right?”

“Right,” Spike admitted wearily, lowering his head in defeat. “I didn’t want you to know that I couldn’t fight back -- makes a bloke feel bloody vulnerable, having his mortal enemies knowing that sort of thing about him. But I knew that if I didn’t give you some reason not to, you lot were going to stake me. Didn’t have much of a bloody choice.”

“Again,” Buffy replied flatly, her expression not giving anything of her true feelings on the matter away, “assuming I don’t argue with that for the sake of not having all night here -- so you tell us what you think will make us not stake you -- that you have a soul -- when you didn’t have one -- and you’re just looking for your first chance to get out of here. Right?”

“Right.”

“So you get it, bash my friend in the head and all that…we catch up to you in the alley, and the spell -- someone’s spell, no clue whose…takes the chip out of your head and miraculously gives you the soul that you said you already had. Is that about it?”

Spike stared up at her, silent for a long moment as he tried to decide where to go from here. That was all he had told them so far, and the way Buffy put it, he had to admit that as stories go it sounded fairly far-fetched, although it was the truth.

Add in that he now had bloody visions of their disastrous future to come -- and she just might stake him on principle.

*Still,* the soul within him reminded him softly, *what you’ve seen might be their only hope to keep it from happening…you can‘t just let them go through that, when you might have the power to stop it…*

*I hate you,* Spike inwardly replied to the soul.

With a heavy sigh he said aloud, “No, Slayer -- that’s not about it.”

**********************************

“You actually expect us to believe that *you* -- an evil, soulless vampire – have been gifted with vision of our futures?” the Watcher finally interrupted the heavy silence that followed Spike’s hesitant admission.

Spike replied, a bit weakly he had to admit, “I’ve got my bloody soul back, Watcher, I already…”

“So say you,” Giles shot back angrily. “I’m not so sure this isn’t all an elaborate ruse you just concocted in the alley, when you realized that you were caught!”

“No!” Spike objected hotly. “I’m telling the truth!”

“For once,” Xander muttered under his breath.

“Maybe,” Willow reminded them all in a quietly pointed voice.

“Okay,” Buffy raised her hands in a halting gesture, raising her voice as well, enough to be heard over the rising murmur of tension in the room, “okay, there has to be a way to prove this, one way or the other. Spike – what exactly did you see?”

Spike hesitated, unsure what to tell her.

There was so much to choose from – and yet, so little that he was actually willing to tell
her just now.

“Lots of things,” he answered vaguely, trying to find a way to explain it to her, without revealing too much. “Slayer, it’s like – like the whole future is just a bloody open book in my mind. Just soddin’ turn to the page I need, and it’s there.”

“Oh, please!” Xander scoffed. “You think you’re some kind of psychic now? Like you can tell everybody their life stores before they happen.”

“Not everybody,” Spike corrected softly. “Just you lot. And only so far as I experienced it – or would have experienced it – if that spell had never happened.”

“Right,” Xander scoffed, his eyes narrowing angrily as he rose from the couch and strode menacingly toward the bound vampire. Standing in front of him, his fists balled and trembling at his sides, he asked coldly, “Can you tell us what’s gonna happen in about five seconds?”

“Xander,” the Slayer said in a softly warning tone, her hand on her friend’s arm – but he shook it off angrily, just glaring down at the vampire in front of him.

“Relax, Buffy,” he said irritably. “I’m not doing anything but talking.”

His entire demeanor, however, made it very clear that he wanted to do much worse.

Spike was not particularly afraid of the boy, knowing that a mere blow from his fist would not be likely to do too much damage, but he could tell that the entire situation was swiftly becoming more volatile. For some reason, the Slayer seemed to be the only one who seemed at all inclined to believe him – so he would have to say *something* to prove that he was telling the truth.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he replied in a low, soft voice, making it clear that he was not trying to further antagonize the boy.

“Phone’s gonna ring. But might as well not answer it ‘cause it’s just one of those soddin’ telemarketing blokes.”

Giles scoffed quietly at that, retorting with a dark laugh, probably intended to dispel some of the rising tension, “Nothing mystic about that prediction. The blasted pillocks call here every day, just to…”

The ringing of the telephone still silenced him, despite his insistence that it was an obvious guess. His eyes focused intently on the vampire as he lifted the receiver and spoke quietly, “Hello?” After a momentary pause, he said, “I’m sorry, I’m not interested, thank you.” Hanging up the phone, he turned toward the others with a serious expression on his face, as he informed them softly, “Insurance salesman.”

“You see there?” Spike demanded without hesitation, but his triumph was tinged with a sense of urgency. “You all had better listen to me, or…”

With surprising speed and force, Xander’s fist came down across Spike’s mouth, silencing his words, and the Slayer quickly grabbed her friend’s arms from behind, pulling him back away from the bound vampire.

“Xander!” she cried out in alarm and indignation. “What are you doing, he can’t fight back!”

Xander ignored her, demanding furiously, “Or what, Spike? Are you threatening us, now? We’d better listen to you or *what*?”

“Or you’re all going to die!” Spike declared, loudly and forcefully, straining against the bonds that held him back as he leaned as near as he could to the boy, meeting his eyes boldly, defiantly. “And don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’m not bloody threatening you! I’m just telling you that if you don’t listen to what I have to say, and *change* what’s going to happen -- every last one of you is going. To die.”

Buffy froze, still holding Xander back from going after Spike again, her eyes widening on the blond vampire’s furious, intent expression, stunned by what he had said. Silence filled the room in the wake of Spike’s bombshell, as everyone took in the impact of what he had said. Buffy studied his face, wondering with alarm if it could be true, or if it was all just another elaborate lie composed by Spike for the purpose of saving his undead butt.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

Giles glanced toward it, unsure whether or not he should bother to answer it, as all the people who really mattered to him were gathered in this room, and the information Spike had just announced to them *was* rather important. He was tempted to simply let whoever it was go away, anyway, when Spike spoke again.

“Oh, bloody hell! The soddin‘ poof‘s got such bleedin’ perfect timing!”

Buffy’s eyes widened further, turning toward the door as she released Xander and took an unintentional step toward the door -- but not too quickly for Spike to see the sudden flash of hope as she realized who he was talking about.

“Angel?” She looked hopefully toward Willow, taking another anxious step toward the door. “It worked, right? The restoration spell for Angel’s soul? It worked?”

Willow did not seem capable of answering at the moment. Her own wide-eyed gaze kept wandering between Buffy’s face and the door, an expression of barely concealed dread in her eyes as she opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t seem to make the words come out.

“We can’t be sure, Buffy,” Jenny spoke up for her, coming to her side, and her rescue. She looked at Giles as she slipped a supportive arm around Willow’s waist and said anxiously, “Rupert, don’t let him in -- not until we know for sure…”

“Really, Jenny, what kind of fool do you think I am?” Giles gave her a mildly offended look, as he went to open the door. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Willow?” Buffy frowned with concern, though she still could not seem to pull most of her attention away from the door. “What’s wrong?” When Willow just shook her head, looking away, Buffy moved closer to her friend, with an effort focusing her gaze on her face. “Willow, it wasn’t Angel. If Angel’s back…he’s not the same person that…”

“Buffy, don’t -- okay?” Willow whispered, not looking at her. “Just -- don’t.”

“Willow…”

But at that moment, Giles opened the front door, and Buffy’s attention was torn away from Willow’s dilemma, as she turned hopeful, anxious eyes on her lost love, desperate to know if he had indeed been returned to her.

The dark vampire stood just outside the door, his hands in his pockets, his head lowered humbly, looking up at her through wide, soft brown eyes filled with regret. Buffy started toward him slowly, as if in a trance -- Willow, Spike, the spell, all forgotten for the moment. She stopped a few feet away from him, beside her rather guarded Watcher, her voice coming out as a barely audible whisper of hope and fear.

“*Angel*?”
 
<<     >>