Author’s Note: I posted Chapter 50 a moment ago, make sure you’ve read that before you read this.

Welcome to Part III. If you’re still here, after all this time… thank you. Thank you for your encouragement and your patience, and your willingness to let me take you on this incredibly long journey.

But we’ve got a lot farther to go.

Fasten your seat belts, kiddies… it’s gonna be a bumpy flight.

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all recognizable characters, locations, and dialogue belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the various writers. Show writers and any other quoted authors have been credited in individual chapters. I'm making no money from this—it is purely in the name of fun.

Betaed by Phuriedae and Science

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Part III: On the Back of the North Wind



Chapter 51

Book of Revelations

Somewhere water is dripping, marking the time.

I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and breathe in the familiar scent of leather, smoke, and Spike. The journal lays across my lap, open to that last page, his last words.

Just below that the page is a little wet, and I dab at the tears before they can smudge the ink.

Reading his words... I've relived the past year. My mom's illness and death, Riley... all the stress over the last few months. It's devastating, going through all of it again. It never occurred to me that Spike was right there with me the whole time. Even when I didn't know it.

The first part... getting through it was hard. All of his anger and frustration is there, all his hatred—but seeing myself, seeing everyone else through his eyes, it's hard not to sympathize with some of it. Sometimes we were as much monsters as he was. Reading, especially, about how Riley treated him... I never thought Riley was capable of some of those things. And Giles and even Xander...and me.

He had reasons to hate me. Not always good ones, but I definitely gave him plenty of reasons.

Reading about him wanting me dead...it kinda made me sick, at first. All those nights I'd gone to sleep, discounting him because he didn't feel like a threat. All those nights when he fought his demon, leashed it, kept from killing me first to save his own skin and then...

He changed.

Not all at once. Gradually. A little here, a little there. He’s still a monster but... he kinda figured out how to be a man, too. All on his own.

Not a perfect one. No one would ever mistake Spike for a nice guy. But having read his journal... if even half of it is true (and I know most of it is)... even those guys who I thought were nice have their dark sides. But Spike doesn't hide from his, or shy away from it. It's part of him, but ... he's learned not to let it rule him.

It's a trick I sort of envy.

Maybe…maybe it's not the soul that matters. Maybe it's something else? Riley had a soul and…look how he treated people he thought weren't good enough. Look how he treated me. And Angel... god, I don't even know how to begin figuring out all the facets of Angel. Reading Spike's journal... I wonder if I ever really knew Angel.

Hard as it is to admit that I might have been wrong, I can't deny it any longer. Spike may be a demon, but he's also a man. One who loved me. Maybe selfishly, sometimes, but... I've been in love. I know what it feels like. Sometimes love is selfish. Sometimes it's twisted and sometimes it's weird. That doesn't make it less real.

There's no doubt in my mind that what Spike feels for me is real.

And okay, so maybe at the beginning it was all twisted and lusty, but not at the end. He was there for me, when things were darkest. He held me, and he cared about me, and he loved me enough to try, not just when he was Mr. Gordo, but when we were awake, too.

And I betrayed it by being too blind to see it for what it was. By refusing to even look. By not believing him capable of changing. Not until it was too late.

And now he's gone, just when I was starting to understand.

Know what?

That really pisses me off.

The men in my life, they’re always leaving me. Spike is the first one who didn't leave of his own volition. This hell bitch came and took him against his will, and it's all my fault. I'm so tired of losing people. Tired of having to sit back and accept that they're gone and never coming back.

That bitch said that Spike was meant for me.

Well.

I'm just going to have to get him back, aren't I?

You can't save everyone, Spike said to me, a lifetime ago, it seems.

No. I can't. But maybe I can save one. After all, I'm the Slayer, and stopping demons from destroying the world...

Yeah. I'm good at that.

***

It's morning when I emerge from Spike's Crypt. I know for a fact I don't read that fast, which means it's been a day or maybe more. I'm tired and my eyes are achy and swollen from crying and lack of sleep, but I'm not ready to face a night that doesn't include Mr. Gor—I mean, Spike, in it. Not yet.

There are lights on at my house when I get there, and Willow opens the door as I come up the walk.

"Buffy! Where have you been? What—what's wrong? What happened?" she says as she sees my face. "Oh, god. Something bad happened, d-didn't it?"

"Yeah," I say, tiredly. "Something bad happened. I'm going to go get a shower and... change. Um... can you..."

"Coffee," she says, looking at my face. I nod. "And Scooby meeting?"

"Yeah," I say. "At the Magic Box, in an hour. We... you're all going to need to hear this."

Her eyes go to the book I'm holding tightly in my hands, but she doesn't ask any questions. Not yet.

I have a feeling there's gonna be more than enough of those later, so I take the reprieve and head for the shower.

***

At the Magic Box, Giles actually closes the store early for the day. It doesn't seem to matter, though. The weather has gotten nastier all day, with storm clouds that blanket the sky and a bone chilling wind coming out of the north. The scent of coming snow makes the air smell strange and no one seems to want to be outdoors. Inside the shop the heater is going full blast, but I can't shake the goosebumps going up and down my spine.

The others wait, not even joking like usual. I guess my face my gives it away.

I'm not sure how to begin except... with proof.

I put the journal down on the table. Giles and Willow both glance at it, but the others all ignore it. I pick it up and slam it down; they jump. "Buffy, what are you doing?" Giles asks.

"Checking something," I say. I pick the journal back up and hold it straight out. "What am I holding, Xander?"

"A book? I don't know. What's going on, Buffy? Did the spell work?" he says.

"Willow?" I ask. "What's in my hand?"

"It's a book," she says, then shrugs. "Kinda seen a lot of them lately."

"Anya?" I ask.

"It's a stupid book. Why are we playing Twenty Questions?"

I put it down on the table again in front of me and take a deep breath. "Spike is gone," I say. Most of them react with surprise.

"You dusted him?" Xander says, looking a little shocked. "Not that I'm complaining, but what happened to him being harmless?"

"I didn't dust him. I think he's still alive somewhere. But... I'm starting this all wrong," I stand and start to pace a little, trying to figure out the best place to begin. I guess, at the beginning. "You guys remember the night we took down Adam?" Giles, Xander and Willow exchange glances. Tara and Anya shrug, neither of them were there. "The dreams we had, after we called on the power of the First Slayer... that's how she got here. The Cold One. Her name, I think, is Louhi."

Anya drops her cup of coffee, and for a moment the others scramble to clean it up. But not Anya. We stare at each other silently. Her face has gone very, very white.

"You know who she is," I say, when things get quiet again.

She nods, shakily. "Um... yes. She's... You're sure? That... that's who it is?" she asks.

"We can check," I say. "I saw her, the other night. We didn't exactly do the whole introduction thing, but, yeah... I'm pretty sure."

"Who is she?" Giles asks, curiously.

"The end," Anya says, sending a shiver down my spine. "She's... a lot of things. A-a demon, a witch and... um, a goddess, at least that's what they said. She was extremely powerful and very, very evil. She was... banished. Exiled from this world. A long time ago. Before I was a demon, but um... there's still stories. You're sure it's her?"

I nod. "That's what she said she was. The end. She's not powerful enough yet to break free from wherever she's been, but somehow the power we used that night it-it was strong enough to let her cross over. That's how she came here, and that's how she found Spike."

"Spike?" Xander says, sitting forward. "So it was him? He's been working with her all along! I knew it!"

"No!" I say, startling him enough that he shuts up. "It's not like that at all. She came here to take him back with her. Something about... him being made wrong. There's something about Spike that she wants. Something that makes him special. He refused to go with her, though. When she wouldn't take no for an answer, he challenged her—"

"He what?" Anya says, paling even further. "Is he really that stupid? You don't challenge a demon goddess. It's suicide."

"He didn't know," I tell her. "He didn't know who she was. He challenged her for his freedom. She accepted."

"What sort of challenge?" Giles asks, sitting at the table, frowning.

"Something she knew he couldn't win," Anya says. "That's what she does. She finds out what your greatest weakness is and uses it against you."

I nod.

"It was the room. The dream dimension. A year and a day. She told him that he had to spend every night in the dream dimension, sleeping next to me. If he killed me, he lost. And he wasn't allowed to speak. Not a single word. No matter what," I say.

"For Spike?" Giles says, dryly. "That would be a challenge. Especially if all this began the night after we defeated Adam. I'm surprised he lasted a week."

"He wasn't the only one involved in the challenge, though," I say. "There was a second part to it. Something he had no control over. Me."

"That's her, too," Anya says. "She... hedges her bets, you could say. Wouldn't want someone to actually win, you know."

"Yeah, well, Spike knew the rules. I didn't and he couldn't tell me. He tried... he did everything he could think of to keep me from ... but I failed. I screwed up," I say. I look down at the journal in my hands, feeling the worn leather. "I wasn't supposed to look. A year and a day, with him not allowed to speak, and me not allowed to see."

No one says a word. When I look up at them, they're all staring at the pendant that still hangs around my neck.

"I didn't trust him. Not like I could have. He did everything he could to let me know I could trust him, but... it was Spike, you know? Even though my instincts told me I should trust him, that there was a reason why I couldn't see... I looked. You wanted to know if the pendant worked? It did. It worked really, really well. Spike was Mr. Gordo. All these months, sleeping beside me, sparring with me, listening to me. It's been Spike. And now he's gone. Louhi came and took him. The minute I saw his face, I failed. Spike failed. And now Louhi has him and if what I saw is any indication, her plans for him don't exactly involve Happily Evil After. Not for him, anyway."

My friends’ faces all register varying levels of shock, surprise, and dismay. Better than disbelief, I guess.

"She said," I begin again, swallowing hard. "She said he was meant to be mine. That Spike was... I don't know, made for me. To be my partner. My equal. And because I couldn't trust my own heart, because I was blind and impatient, I failed him. And she said that something about Spike gives her the power to break free and destroy our world. I think...I think Spike is the artifact or weapon thing we've been looking for. I think he's the thing she had to acquire in order to enter our world. The way she talked, the things she said to Spike... I think she's planning on using him like some kind of demonic battery."

"Oh dear lord," Giles says.

"Yeah," I say. "Pretty much."

"No," Giles says. "Not night." A weird look crosses his face, then he stands and hurries over to the table where Lydia has her books. Impatiently he flips open the book and starts going through it. "You said the prophet was English?" he asks her.

"Yes," she says, frowning. "What are you thinking?"

"Night," he says. "There's little context. It's a-a mistake on the translator's part. Not night, nuit. It should be knight, chevalier. The Slayer's Knight. Like a ... knight in tarnished armor, I suppose."

"It shall come to her tarnished and black," Lydia quotes, looking up. "Sheathed, but still sharp and thirsty for the blood of its foes."

"Sheathed," I say, frowning. "Restrained. The chip?"

"Most likely," Giles says, still buried in the book. "And apparently he meant 'thirsty' quite literally."

"I don't understand," Willow says, twisting her hands in her sleeves nervously. "If-if Spike was trying to get out of this... why didn't he say anything? I mean, he came to us before, for help, right?"

"Yeah," Xander says. "You're sure he didn't go willingly? I mean, Spike's not really the sort of guy to turn down being evil's red right hand, you know. If she's a goddess, she could probably do something about that whole chip problem."

"He couldn't," I say. "There... I think it was a curse. It kept him from saying anything when he was awake. He said... it was like it choked him. And... he tried in other ways, to tell us. But... you remember that 'Don't Look Here' spell you and Tara did at Christmas?" Willow nods. "I think the curse worked sort of like that. He tried writing it down. But none of us could see it."

"What do you mean?" Giles asks, looking up. I glance over at Xander. There's a book by his elbow.

"Xan, that book there, open it up and flip to the first post-it note," I tell him.

He picks it up but looks at me, confused. "What post-it note?"

"I thought I told you all to stop putting post-its in my books," Giles says, taking the book from Xander and flipping it open to the first note. He pulls it out without even glancing at it.

"Wait! What's it say?" I ask.

"What does what say?" he says.

"The sticky note. What's written on it?" I can see the light shining through the paper, and the thick black marker scrawl that looks like Spike's writing, even from here. Giles frowns at it for half a second, then looks up.

"It's just scribblings," he says.

"No," I say. "There's words. Read it."

He looks again, harder this time, concentrating. Then his eyebrows go up in surprise. "It says, 'Rupert, you plonker, look on page 47.'" He looks up at me, then over at all the other books in the shop. Even from where I'm sitting I can see that Spike was a very busy, very bored, very frustrated vampire. There must be thousands of post-its all over the shop. And that's just the beginning of it. Bored, frustrated Spike equals much badness.

"Oh, good lord," Giles says faintly, taking in all the multicolored sticky notes all over the shop.

They're stuck everywhere, the books, the walls, the countertop. There's a mosaic of them on one wall in different colors spelling out "Spike was here" with things written all over them. There's even a stack of books in the middle of the counter with a big sign in front of it that says "Read These." I wonder how long they've been there. I wonder how Anya has managed to work around them every day, all day, without ever noticing them.

"There's big neon posterboards," I say. "All over the walls of his crypt. They look like they've been there for months. There's stuff written all over them. Drawings. I've been in there dozens of times... it wasn't till this morning, when I looked for them, that I saw them."

"It's like putting on your glasses," Giles says, his eyes still going over the room. They stop at a glass display with the word 'Louhi' written in shoe polish across the glass. "It's all coming into focus. To think, all this time... How is it you knew to look, Buffy? Did he tell you?"

"Before she took him he... he made me promise to find this," I say. I hold it up for them to see. "It's his journal. He's kept it since... since the night we defeated Adam. It was under the curse, too. I spent all day yesterday and most of last night reading it. It's all in here. Everything. Everything he'd been trying to tell me for the last year."

I watch as, slowly, their eyes focus on the journal. Then, one by one, I see them start to take in the room, finally seeing what's been right under our noses this entire time.

"You have the journal of William the Bloody," Lydia says, faintly. Her eyes have a weird light in them, sort of like Anya gets when she starts talking about orgasms. "An... actual journal written by one of the most infamous vampires of the last century? Do you have any idea what that would be—"

"It's mine, now," I tell her, cutting off the creepy book lust. What is it with Watchers and books? "There's... Spike wrote it... most of it, to me. For me. It's private, and sharing it without his permission would be wrong."

"Buffy, it's Spike," Xander says. "I think we all know what's in it: gory, detailed descriptions about how he wants to, you know, rip your guts out and wear them for a hat."

"Okay, ew," I tell him. "And you're wrong. I mean... yeah, there's parts at the beginning where he talks about killing me but... that stopped months ago. He changed, Xander. Look around you! Is this the work of someone who wasn't on our side?"

"He's a demon—," Xander argues.

"Did Spike bring flowers for my mother, Xander?" I ask. He freezes and suddenly has a hard time looking me in the eye. "Did he?"

"Yeah, but he was just doing it to earn brownie points with you," he says.

"He didn't tell me," I say. "I didn't know. Not till I read it in here. He came to her funeral, too. In the middle of the afternoon he found a way to be there. Did you know that he's been patrolling every night for me, since my mother died?"

Giles frowns.

"No," Xander says. "But Buffy, he could have just been claiming that—"

"He wasn't. I knew he was doing it. Every night when I went for a walk with one of you or on my own, Spike followed. Whenever there was a vamp nearby, he took care of it. He didn't know I knew. He followed you guys, too, on patrol. Didn't you ever wonder why there didn't seem to be very many vampires over the last few months? Spike was dusting them before you got a chance. He was looking out for all of us," I tell him.

"Why would he do that?" Giles says. "That's very out of character for him. For any vampire."

I look up at him. "I asked him about that, the other day," I tell him, knowing this is going to be the hardest part of this whole conversation. "He said he did it because he knew that if anything happened to Xander, or one of you guys... that it would destroy me. He told me... before Louhi came to take him...he said he loves me."

There's silence for a moment so thick I can hear the air pressing against my eardrums. "Well, duh," Anya says, shattering it. "I could have told you that. I mean, if it had been any more obvious he might as well have worn a sign on his head. Though I guess we probably wouldn't have seen it, even if he did."

"Anya, what are you talking about?" Xander says.

"Spike, being in love with Buffy," she says, then turns back to me. "I wondered when the two of you were going to jump past that whole Unresolved Sexual Tension thing and just get to, you know, resolving. Clearly he was crazy about you, and you totally had a thing for h—"

"Wait a minute," Willow says. "Okay... Okay, hold on. Spike being in love with Buffy... yeah, okay. Kinda twisty and weird, but, well, it's Spike and he's already kinda twisty and weird. But Buffy doesn’t have a thing for Spike. She doesn’t even like him. Do you? Buffy?"

There's a look on her face that says clearly 'please, not another vampire.'

Giles and Lydia both have on their versions of the Official Watcher Disapproving Face.

Xander looks shocked.

Only Anya is beaming at me, and the look on Tara's face is concerned but compassionate.

If only I knew how I felt about it myself.

"I don't know," I say, finally. "I... he's been different. And reading this... I don't know."

"Buffy—," Giles says.

I stand up, and start pacing.

"Look, I really don't know. I... It feels like the last day and a half my entire world has turned inside out. I don't know how I feel about him. What I do know is that Spike has changed. We've doubted him and we've accused him of working against us and all this time he's been on our side. He's more than proven that he's an ally, and a friend. And I don't abandon my friends. We have to get him back," I say.

"Get him back?" Giles says. "Buffy you don't even know where he's gone. If this Louhi has taken him—"

"It doesn't matter," I tell him. "Louhi took him because of me. Because I failed. I know we can find him, somehow. We'll do a spell. Research. Whatever it takes. There's got to be a way to locate him. If I have to walk to hell and back to find him, I will, Giles. I'm not losing anyone else."

"Boy, am I glad to hear you say that," says a new voice from the direction of the door. We all look up, surprised by the newcomer in our midst.

"Who are you?" Giles demands. "And how did you get in? I locked that door."

The little guy in the long overcoat with the red leather boots and funky hat just shrugs. "Sorry about that," he says. "Sort of an emergency situation, you know? How you holding up, kid?" He looks at me.

I cross my arms, narrow my eyes and sigh. "Whistler."

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