Chapter 4 - Soul Mate

With Spike’s “Yours,” a shock wave rolled through them. Suddenly their world was compressed into tiny points, then it exploded back out to normal size and shape, but felt denser somehow, as if they had greater mass. Throughout it all, images flashed through their minds.

“Whoa, what was that?!” Buffy yelled in alarm. She sprang into a crouch on the bed, her hands and arms spread, ready to attack, and glanced around wildly.

Realization of what had just happened swept over Spike and he cried out in exhilaration, “My God! We mated, we’re soul mates!” He grabbed her and gave her a quick hard buss before jumping up from the bed and pulling her with him. He flung her around in a circle a couple of times, then planted the astonished slayer back onto the middle of the tumbled sheets.

Bouncing around the room manically, he picked up large objects, whooping delightedly as he bounded back and forth. Grabbing a huge boulder in the corner, Spike lifted it like it a ball of Styrofoam, and threw it against the far wall. It smashed into gravel and he smirked. “It was so big I couldn’t get it through the door before.” Brushing his hands together as if considering a job well done, he chuckled. Next he lifted the bed by one leg with Buffy still in it, raised and lowered it a few times like a dumb bell, and chanted, “one and, two and, three and...”

“What the hell?” she cried. Buffy scrambled down and as soon as he dropped the bed, grabbed Spike and pushed him up against a wall, intending to hold him there long enough to settle him down and make him talk some sense. She meant to demand why he was suddenly so strong; why could she abruptly see so much better in the dim room; why had she just started hearing water dripping in the distance; and why she was catching a delectable whiff of “Spike” that she’d only smelt before when right up against him. Instead he crashed through the wall and stumbled back into the next chamber.

She gaped at him as he chuckled again, exclaiming, “New door! Good job, Pet. We can use the extra room.”

Buffy stared down at her hands, then back up at him in confusion, and could only repeat, “What the hell?”

Spike looked at Buffy’s bewildered face and his excitement faded. After a few seconds of studying her silently, he said flatly, “You have no clue what’s going on, do you?”

“No. Why did you crash through the wall? All I did was push you up against it! And not only are you suddenly all healthy again, why are you flinging stuff around like you’re Superman?”

“Do those watchers teach you slayers nothing, nowadays?” he demanded in exasperation.

Picking up her blouse and noting its shredded condition, she dropped it and demanded shakily, “Forget the Watchers. You tell me. Now. And find me something to wear.” She felt like her world was going to fly apart. Buffy wrapped her arms around her body as if to hold herself together. Something was very different, something basic and vital had changed. She shivered with budding alarm.

“Here,” Spike said, pulling a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt from a drawer. “These shouldn’t drown you too badly. Shrank in a hot wash.” She put them on and was relieved to see that they fit fairly well. The jeans clung to her hips as if meant for her, and by rolling the bottoms up a couple of times, the length would do. She knotted the T-shirt under her breasts to make it feel not quite so dowdy, and examined herself in the mirror above his antique armoire. Seeing a silver handled brush there, she picked it up and smoothed the wild tangles from her hair.

In the meantime, Spike had dressed in black jeans and t-shirt as well. Settling back on the bed, he watched as she pulled the brush through her long hair. The feminine movements triggered a heavy pooling in his lower body. Knowing that now was not the time to have her heels over head again, he settled for taunting her. Hopefully she’d get irritated enough that he’d have to protect his nose from her fist; and she wouldn’t be quite so tempting to him. “Finished with your haute couture yet, my little clothes horse? Ready for Vampire Relations 101?”

Buffy studiously ignored his ribbing about fussing over her outfit. She felt uneasy with the thought that ‘vampire relations’ had anything to do with her. Feeling the need to put it off for a few more seconds, she wondered, ‘Do I really want to know?’ Stalling for time, she asked, “Why do you have a mirror down here, when you don’t have a reflection and can’t see yourself in it?”

Spike studied her in the looking glass, considered her evasion, and wondered whether or not to tell her that he’d gotten the mirror when his first human darling had complained about the lack of one. Nope, best not, he decided.

Sidetracked, Spike considered his preferred word, ‘darling’, to the more common term ‘cow’, which referred to a living human used for blood. Cow had such an uncomplimentary connotation, and his little darlings had after all been just that: darling.

He shifted his attention back to the slayer, his magnificent new darling, and was interested to remember that even back when he’d first hung the mirror, he’d had a vision of Buffy in the back of his mind; of lying on the bed and watching as she brushed her golden locks. With great satisfaction, he smiled inwardly. ‘Today, that vision came true.’ Outwardly, Spike kept his face expressionless and gave a seemingly careless shrug. Finally he answered simply, “Women like to primp. I like to watch.”

Buffy frowned at herself in the mirror and turned towards him, forgetting there had been women before her in his crypt. “You got it for me, then? What made you think I’d ever be here to use it?”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” He didn’t disabuse her of the notion that the looking glass was there for her. He guessed it always had been.

That got her back up. He was so arrogant! He’d been sure enough of her being here, that he’d gotten her a mirror. Why did he have to be so knowing? It was infuriating. “Pretty ballsy of you,” she sneered.

He stared at her indulgently, a soft look stealing into his icy blue eyes. She was going to be difficult. Wouldn’t be his slayer if she wasn’t complex and thorny. “Life is what it is...and I am what I am.”

“And you always get what you want out of life, don’t you?” She remembered with a chill that when Spike first came to town, Angel had warned them that Spike never gave up. He might kill everything in his path to do it, but he always got what he wanted in the end.

Lips pursed, eyes lidded heavily, he contemplated her. “I do my best.” He lounged back on the bed, one hand trailing lazily over his chest and abdomen.

Her gaze was caught by his slow movement, lingering on his sculpted pecs and abs, then trailing lower. Abruptly Buffy jerked her eyes back to his, irritated with herself for letting him distract her. Intent on not cutting him any slack, she snapped, “And you wanted me. So now you’ve taken me, haven’t you?”

“You have things turned around there, Slayer. I may have claimed you, but YOU took me.” She might be the love of his life, but he wasn’t going to put up with her blaming him for what had happened. Her days of happy self-delusion were over.

Buffy got snagged on the claiming part. She vaguely remembered Giles warning her once about claims during early vampire lore lessons, but couldn’t recall the specifics. ‘Didn’t pay enough attention, as usual,’ she sighed to herself before asking incredulously, “You CLAIMED me? What an idiotic thing to do! Claiming a slayer?! What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking at all! Don’t be stupid, Buffy! I warned you beforehand not to give yourself to a vampire! You bit and drank me! And not only did you bite me while I was drinking you, but while we were shagging! If you did that to ANY other vampire, and if your well being wasn’t more important to me than my own is, you’d not only be dead right now, you’d be well on the way to rising again!”

They glared at each other. Buffy wasn’t about to admit that he was right, though she knew he was. Even with Angel, she had a feeling that could have happened.

Clenching his jaw in an effort to keep hold of his temper, Spike continued woodenly. “But even as a claim, that’s all it was. Claims can be broken. Hell, even Angel could have broken it, being my grandsire. But you accepted the claim, you said, “Yours”, making it immune to outside interference. And then you compounded that by claiming me back! You made it a double claim!”

Buffy dropped her eyes, bottom lip protruding stubbornly. Yes, she had. Why had she done that? All she knew was that she had wanted it, wanted him desperately, wanted to keep him, and wanted to be on an equal footing with him. From deep within her had burst the counter claim. It had felt right. Actually, it still did. That didn’t mean she could accept what she’d done. There were too many outside forces against it, ‘and never forget,’ she admonished herself; ‘he’s a soulless vampire.’

Spike took her by the upper arms and shook her gently. “Look at me, Slayer. You have to understand. A double claim is a marriage. Whether you knew it consciously or not, your Slayer did, or you wouldn’t have known the right words to say. You married me.”

Buffy stared at him wide eyed, mouth dropping open in shock as he continued.

“To top that off, when vamps are soul mates with someone, if they claim each other as they make love and drink each other’s blood, they ‘mate’. That’s the pressure wave that swamped us. There’s no divorce from a mating, love, no turning back; it is forever.”

Now Buffy looked at him bleakly, her life flashing before her eyes. “Nothing lasts forever, Spike. Everything falls apart eventually. Sooner or later, everyone leaves.” She had learned that the hard way.

Spike’s heart broke for her, and he pulled her into his arms. She stood rigidly, but let him hold her. “I’ll dust before I leave you.” When she would have protested, he put a finger to her lips and said, “Please, Slayer, for once, just shut up and listen. During a mating, souls mingle. Part of you lives inside of me now, and part of me lives inside of you.” She stirred, trying to interrupt, “Shh, I know, you think I don’t have a soul. You’re wrong about that. A vampire demon is a soul, it’s just different than a human soul. But we’ll talk about that later.

“For now you need to know that with the mingling of our souls, we gain each other’s power. We were both strong beforehand, so when we got each other’s strength, it doubled what we had before. Same thing goes for our speed, reflexes and healing. I can see, smell and hear better than a human; so now you can too, yeah?” He raised an eyebrow and peered at her shrewdly.

She nodded back mutely.

“The sun’ll be no problem for me now; and holy water’s just water, like it is for you; I won’t dust with a stake to the heart; stuff like that. Priorities shift, things that are important to you now matter to me. What’s important to me, matters to you.”

The idea of healing super fast, and being even stronger and speedier than before was intriguing to Buffy, but she rejected having his priorities. She stiffened further at his claim that part of his demon ‘soul’ was now inside of her. “Are you saying that I’m evil now? That I want to go around killing and eating people, destroying the world? You’re crazy! I so do not!”

Spike laughed. “When have I ever wanted to destroy the world? You know I like it the way it is. Evil for the sake of evil has never been a big deal to me. Angelus always called me a piss poor excuse for a vampire.” Chucking her under the chin, he continued, “most of my famous reign of terror was just to placate Dru and him.” Taking her by the shoulders, he looked into her eyes. “Killing people has always just been about eating.”

Noting her disbelieving look, Spike conceded, “OK, fine. Sometimes I kicked it up out of boredom, but it takes a whole mob of people to make it really fun. What I like is action, excitement, violence!

“Of course you already liked that stuff too…oh come on, admit it,” he coaxed when she shook her head emphatically. “You just pretty it up in the guise of ‘world save-age’, to coin a phrase from the Niblet. Now you’ll be able to accept that part of yourself. Just think, that you won’t be so stuck up anymore, you’ll be able to relax and have some fun!” He laughed as she glared at him.

“As for me,” he snorted and flashed her a snarky grin, “I already feel the need to channel all that lovely violence into taking out bad guys, and....whoa, talk about wussy,” he placed his right hand dramatically over his heart and intoned deeply, “I must save the world by your side!” He closed his eyes, brows raised and tilted his chin upwards in a mockingly pious expression; then opened them and gazed innocently at her, fluttering his eyelashes. A moment later he was waggling his eyebrows and grinning again, “from a vampire’s point of view you’ve ruined me, you know.”

Without thinking of anything but wiping that wise ass smirk off his face for mocking world save-age, she popped him on the nose, sending him flying.

He jumped up in full vamp face, eyes burning gold with a fanged grin, and bashed her back. She fell against the area near where she’d sent Spike through the wall earlier, breaking the opening into an arch size hole, and landing against the far wall of the adjacent chamber. Buffy stood up, brushing dust from her clothing and stared at him in astonishment and fear.

Spike was waiting for her on the other side of the arch with his blood-thirsty smirk in place. Bouncing on the balls of his feet and beckoning to her with his hands, there was no sign that he was feeling any pain from hitting her.

Buffy silently panicked. ‘Oh no. What have I done? The chip isn’t working...It’s gone! I don’t have one, so neither does he now! He hasn’t even realized it yet, he’s just jonesing for a good fight. Oh shit. I’ve done it again! This is “Buffy screws the soul out of her man, Version 2!” I can’t do it again; I can’t kill the man I love again! Oh no...Oh My God, No...I love him!’ Buffy shook and screamed in denial and grief, then dropped to her knees sobbing wildly. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth as she wept...

...Spike was more frightened than he had ever been before. He couldn’t get her calmed down, she kept sobbing and muttering, “I can’t do it again, I just can’t.” He rocked her in his arms, crooning to her, singing old lullabies from his human days, whispering that everything would be all right...she needn’t worry...she wouldn’t have to do it again, he’d take care of everything...”

Buffy laughed hysterically when he promised that before lapsing back into tears. Finally, exhausted, she fell asleep in his arms, and he spent the next few hours holding her and worrying about what could have happened.

As time passed and she didn’t wake up, Spike tried to awaken her. Unable to, he admitted to himself that she looked more unconscious than asleep, and he decided that he needed to take her to the Watcher. Maybe it was a slayer thing, and Giles could figure out what was wrong. He carried her through the late afternoon sunshine, barely registering the beauty of the slanting light through the trees. During his life, William had written odes to “The Golden Time of Day”. He was seeing it for the first time in well over a century, and he couldn’t admire it. Something was wrong with his mate. He had to make it right.

Tbc...