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18 No Hiding Place
Arms full, she picked her way cautiously through the clutter wondering why all this junk and garbage had gathered here. It was as if everything above ground had been thrust down below the surface; anything the workers wanted to get rid of had been consigned to these meandering corridors. Grimly, she determined to tell Xander to get his builders to clean up after themselves in the future. She heard him before she saw him: he was singing quietly to himself, the same little tune over and over again - then he would stop and chide himself for not knowing the next verse, how forgetful he was, what a bad creature he was, why should anyone bother with him, and then the singing started once more.
“OK - PDQ - SWALK - TTFN” Buffy swallowed hard. “I take it that means no, although I didn’t understand a word you said.” “The boy mustn’t talk - the boy’s using letters. Carved in his mind. Could carve them on his skin if Buffy would like that. Would you, Buffy? Big red letters, dripping blood letters, deep into the flesh, mark me forever letters.” A wave of pity washed over her, mixed with a feeling that could have been guilt if she'd let it.. This was the Big Bad, the Scourge of all Europe, squatting in a filthy basement, his wits gone and she had no idea why. “Look, Spike, I brought you this. Remember - it’s yours.”
She held out the bundle she’d been carrying and shook out the black leather duster. A wave of memories cascaded through her brain - he’d been wearing this the very first time she’d seen him outside the Bronze, been wearing it when her mom had hit him over the head with an axe, and at practically every other important moment and meeting of their odd relationship, especially that night when the house collapsed around them and her life changed for ever. Buffy had found the duster where he’d left it in Ravello Drive that dreadful evening. She’d taken it upstairs back into her room because she didn’t want Dawn or Xander to see it. And, if she was honest, at that time she hadn’t wanted to look at it herself. But she hadn’t destroyed it. She should have done - thrown it in the garbage or cut it into ribbons. But instead she’d packed it away at the back of a high shelf and then with all the tragedy of Tara’s death, Willow’s descent into black magic and everything that had happened since, there hadn’t been time to throw it out. But as soon as she’d found Spike living under the High School, she’d known that wasn’t true, that she’d just found it impossible to destroy this last link with the vampire, no matter what he’d done. Now she knelt in front of hin, held it out to him, desperately waiting for him to shrug it on, to change, to be her old Spike again. But he looked at it with an expression that was a mixture of alarm and hate and despair.
“Spike, listen to me. This belongs to you. Don't you remember? Try to remember!” But he refused to look at her and scrabbled backwards, away from the leather, away from her pleading expression. Behind her, for one golden instance before the darkness descended once more, the vampire’s hand reached out and one finger-tip delicately touched one shining droplet on the floor in front of him, bringing it to his mouth where it fed him better than the blood he craved.
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