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We Will Remember Them by Lilachigh
 
Chp 34 Fading Fast
 
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We will remember them…
By Lilachigh


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon




Chapter Thirty-Three Fading Fast


“We missed the bed again!” Buffy murmured dreamily, wondering why Spike’s crypt was so hot this evening. The floor was hard under her body and her head was swimming muzzily round and round and round… “That was great, Spike, but I’ve got to go…Dawn - ”

“You’re not going anywhere, Slayer. And what bed? We’re in France – remember? You’re sick.”

“So not sick! Just tired. And so hot. Hey, Spike, I think perhaps the Hellmouth is right under your crypt! Wouldn’t that be great? Jeez – convenient much.”

“I haven’t got a crypt. We’re in a shed, in France. You’re babbling, Slayer.” His face loomed over hers and a trickle of icy water ran across her forehead.

Buffy gazed up at him and smiled. “What have you done to your hair? You’ve dyed it brown. It’s all curly!”

“It’s always been like this, Slayer. You’re remembering – thinking about – sod it, how can you remember something that hasn’t happened yet? Listen, just relax. You need to get better fast.”

Two arms that, for all her weakness, were still strong, reached up and twined round his neck, pulling him down to lie beside her. “I am better! Look, I’m all happy. You make me feel – I don’t want to go home yet. Want to feel – more happy!”

Buffy twisted her fingers into the brown curls she disliked so much and groaned as his kiss deepened and the roughness of his clothes rubbed against her naked flesh. Heat surged through her as the familiar feeling of homecoming invaded her body.

Greedily, Spike ran his hands over her breasts, re-learning every curve, every contour. Then as she began to moan, the full horror of what he was doing again – making love to a Slayer! - came crashing through the haze this girl created in his mind and he reached up and pulled her hands apart and away from him.

“You’re sick, Slayer. A bullet creased your back. You’ve got a fever. Stop it! Just – god, don’t look at me like that. Don’t look so bloody hurt! You know I’d – bloody hell - is this what we do in the future? We’re lovers? No – oh god, no!”

He scrabbled away across the shed floor and sat, gasping for the breath he did not need, his back against the wooden wall, his head in his hands, fingers following the trails she had made across his skull. He’d accepted that in some dim and distant future they knew each other – colleagues, wasn’t that what she’d told him? He hadn’t given it too much thought; magic was too complicated to worry about – it was too weird a concept to grasp, but he’d sort of thought he probably fought things, killed things for her. He’d been more intrigued by his having blond hair and that Dru was around; that they were both still alive sixty years hence. But not this – not that he and the Slayer were lovers! It was against everything that being a vampire was about – it was against nature itself.

But when he’d pushed her away just now, the look on her face had bewildered him. How could his actions possibly hurt her that much? She couldn’t have real feelings for him: that was impossible, so why had she looked as if his act of rejection had been worse than killing her?

A groan brought his head up with a jerk; the Slayer was tossing and turning again as the fever racked her body. Spike crawled across the floor and stared down at her. She was unconscious, thank god, but when would the rotten Slayer healing kick in? All vamps knew about that, but at the moment she was behaving as if her body had no defences at all against the poison in her blood.

The fever needed to be broken, but the ice he’d stolen from the Chateau kitchen had melted away. Spike glanced across the shed at the door: through the chinks in the wood, especially where he’d smashed the lock, sunlight was beaming in. He had to be careful to avoid those brilliant, deadly rays. Where was some sodding rain when you needed it or a nice heavy blanket….the only thing he could see that might be useful was a filthy sack, filled with rotting compost….

She was awake! Suddenly, eyes open, searching the dark, every nerve ending on Slayer alert, every instinct working overtime to check for danger. Buffy shivered; she was cold but in some odd way knew that was good. The dreadful fever she’d been vaguely aware of had gone – and as her eyes got used to the dim light in the shed, she realised so had Spike.

She pulled on her denim jacket that had been pushed under her head as some sort of pillow, wincing as it rubbed the wound across her back, wrinkling her nose at the smell; it reeked of sweat and dirt but being half naked was not an option. An indignant croak made her jump, then she realised Henry had been asleep on the sleeve. “How did you get here?” she muttered, scooping him up and putting him back in her pocket.

Henry, who’d spent a long, hot day hopping towards the shed from where he’d been ignominiously left behind in the woods, sighed. He hated this pocket with a deep hatred but he knew he had to stay with the Slayer.

Buffy stood up, wincing as her muscles protested; she swayed and braced herself against the shed wall, alarmed at how weak she felt. Jeez, this was stupid! Even when Willow had brought her back from heaven and she’d clawed her way out of her coffin, she hadn’t felt this pathetic.

Suddenly an even colder trickle of doubt inched its way down her spine and she began to think back over the past few days. And knew she was right. Day by day she’d felt weaker – oh, not in the way an ordinary person would feel, but she knew something had been happening to her Slayer strength. It was fading, vanishing…she felt if it was daylight, she would be able to hold her hand up to the sun – and it would be transparent, as if she was fading away.

“Perhaps that’s exactly what’s happening,” she muttered as she fumbled her way to the door and gingerly peered out. She reckoned she must have been out of things for a whole day because now evening dusk gave an eerie half-light to the Chateau grounds. The building itself on the far side of the lawns and formal gardens was blackly outlined against a lavender and rose sky, the turrets and towers making it a fairy tale place.

It was weird to think that inside its walls a vile organisation had begun to try and control demons and vampires. She shuddered: elsewhere in Europe, right now, experiments were being carried out on human beings – things were being done that she didn’t even want to think about. And she could do nothing about it. She swayed again.

“Concentrate, Buffy,” she muttered. “You weren’t sent back to save them. It’s the Walsh laboratory you have to destroy. And, apparently, on your own! Spike’s obviously long gone – what a surprise!”

She shuddered, forcing herself to banish vague memories of heat and ice and a cold body against her fevered skin. 1943 Spike was a man and men left her. It was a fact of life she had accepted years ago. If she ever got home – ‘her’ Spike would probably do the same. Well, she wouldn’t let him; she’d do the walking away this time, then she couldn’t get hurt.

But – suddenly she realised she was thinking thoughts out of habit, pandering to the balm of ‘poor-Buffy’. How easy it was to slide down that path of self-pity. Her father, Angel, Riley, okay they’d gone for their own reasons and maybe she’d been in part to blame. So now, automatically, without stopping to consider what she actually felt, she told herself that every man would do the same - but she was wrong! She knew with a certainty that astounded her that Spike – this one and the man he was to become – would not leave her unless they were forced to.

She pulled the black and purple charm out of her pocket, ignoring Henry’s irritated croak as he was woken yet again. In the twilight she stared at it. The instructions had been very clear: she and Spike needed to be together for it to work, for her to return to her own time and for his memories to be wiped. Buffy sighed and slipped it back into her jacket. She was so tired, so bone weary that she didn’t think she cared if she got home or just disappeared here in France, faded away to nothing. Whatever magic had been used to send her here, she knew in her blood that its power was rapidly vanishing.

She retied the scrap of ribbon holding back her hair, almost glad of the tug against the skin on her temples as she pulled it tight. Pain was good, pain kept her alive, kept her mind firmly on the mission in hand – find Spike, finish this part of the Initiative once and for all, then - home.

She made her way cautiously across the Chateau gardens, slipping from bush to bush, tree to tree, watching out for patrolling guards. There was some activity over by a row of sheds; motors revving, people talking – she could hear the German words and wished she could understand them. No one saw her as she slid by in the shadows; she didn’t want to fight; these soldiers were not her enemy at the moment; the Walsh family were.

Silently she crept through round the vast outer walls of the building, heading for the steps on the far side that she knew led down to the cellars. She had to check to see if the Initiative laboratory had been completely destroyed when Spike released the demons and vamps, or if any of it still remained. If it did, then perhaps she could do something to slow it down, even if she couldn’t get rid of it completely. Surely even a small delay was a plus in this nightmare.

And all the time, an insistent trickle of thought kept beating inside her head – “If there’s no Initiative in the future, Spike won’t get chipped. He’ll be evil, able to kill, you’ll never get close to him, you’ll never – ” She slammed her mind shut on the words “love him”. Of course she didn’t, couldn’t, would never love Spike, in any time. But….she cared for him: even in this so different age, when he was rude and aggravating, she’d sensed a connection, a liking for his bravery, for whatever it was that made him incapable of giving up a fight even when retreat was the most sensible course of action.

And knowing that he would never turn away from a fight, especially if there was a free meal involved, where the heck was he? She’d kick him all the way back to England if he’d got himself captured again. He’d had no reason to leave the safety of the shed – unless he’d been driven by hunger. But he’d had some of her blood – OK, not a lot, but surely enough to satisfy him for a few more hours.

Grimly listing exactly what she would say when she caught up with him again, Buffy skirted round a vast buttress supporting the outer chateau wall and froze. Slowly, inch by inch, glad that the evening shadows were so dark, she stepped backwards until she was hidden by the buttress stonework. She’d reached the cellar steps faster than she’d thought. On the gravel drive outside, a large lorry was being loaded, German soldiers busy carrying boxes and cases up from the basement, packing them on board.

Even as she watched, young Dr Walsh and his wife appeared, obviously dressed for a journey and an older man was escorted round from the front of the Chateau by the German commandant, Oberst Visser. Buffy stared – this must be Professor Walsh Snr. He didn’t look evil; he looked like an elderly American schoolteacher from back home, well-dressed, grey hair, glasses. So here was the man who’d started the Initiative. A traitor and a scientist who obviously saw nothing wrong in what he was unleashing on the world. She wondered bitterly if he was in contact with the other experimental laboratories all over Europe and realised she was shaking with a terrible mixture of futile rage and fatigue.

Obviously the lorry carrying the Walshes was about to leave. A soldier started the engine and just then a big black car swept round from the direction of the garages - and Buffy realised she was wrong - this was the Walshes’ transport.

“Have a safe journey, Professor,” Buffy heard Visser say, shaking the American’s hand. “Hopefully you will have no trouble in getting your cargo back to England and then on to America.”

The Professor replied; his voice was too quiet for Buffy to hear, but Visser nodded and continued, “Ah, yes. Private plane out of Paris. Hazardous, but I am sure you have contacts who will protect you all the way home.”

‘I bet he has,’ Buffy muttered under her breath. OK, now her mission was becoming clearer. The Walshes were all travelling in the one car. Some how she had to stop them from leaving Germany. She couldn’t kill them, but at least she could slow them down, destroy all those boxes of papers and experiments they were taking back to the States.

“And the vampire – you wish him to travel in the lorry?”

Buffy couldn’t believe what she had just heard. She felt her heart lurch and the trembling in her limbs increased. Two soldiers were dragging a familiar figure up the steps from the cells below. A bloodstained hood had been tied over his head, his hands and elbows were fastened behind his back and a length of chain linked his ankles.

As she watched, he was half lifted, half thrown into the back of the lorry and the guards clambered in after him. And even as Buffy stared, Oberst Visser was saluting, doors were slamming and the two vehicles began to drive away, down the drive.

She had learnt a long time ago that Slayer decisions are taken without conscious thought; a combination of instinct and training, Giles used to tell her, over and over again. All she knew was that if you stopped to think, you could die. You estimated your strength, your position, your enemy’s position, how your action would affect the mission – all in a split second.

She had a choice: her Slayer strength was fading fast and she knew she no longer had enough power to stop both vehicles. So she could delay the top people in the Initiative from reaching the States, destroy their papers and specimens - or save a stupid vamp who didn’t have the brains to keep out of the enemies’ clutches? Her mission was to stop the car, not the lorry.

She had sent Angel, whom she’d loved, to Hell to save the world. Spike’s life could not be more important.

Buffy started running…..


The final chapters – coming soon.









 
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