Author’s Note: No warnings, this chapter. Unless you’re easily squicked by violence or blood, and if so… wtf are you doing reading Buffy fanfic?

Poem quoted in this chapter is e.e. cummings’ “gee I like to think of dead”… look it up because it’s fairly awesome.

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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Chapter 66

Blood and Iron


It feels weird to be back on Pooh and shambling through the forest after so many days stuck in the cave. Good weird, though. I almost don't even mind the fact that the air is cold enough to frost my scarf to my face again, or that my ears have once more gone numb. It just feels so good to be moving.

Not that there wasn't any movement in the cave. Cause there was. My thighs haven't been this sore since... uh... Riley and the frat party from hell. But I mean moving more in a, you know, geographical sense.

The forest around us echoes every now and then with the sound of breaking branches; the snow is that heavy. Whenever the noise sounds particularly near us, Spike flinches, looking upward. "Bloody hell dimension," he mutters at one point. "Rains sodding stakes." But Pooh just pads along, ignoring the sounds and following in the direction the light went.

I just huddle deeper into Spike's coat, pressing myself against him and trying to stay warm.

A few hours later, though, Spike raises his head and sniffs.

"Feel that?" he says softly, the words so low that I pretty much only hear them through his chest.

I lift my head, frowning.

"Yeah," I say, equally quietly. I do.

There's a weird feeling in the forest. Like eyes watching us. My demon sense is tingling, too, but I can't really get a lock on whatever is triggering it. It's everywhere, whatever it is, all around us.

And it's creeping me out.

"Think we should stop the bear?" I ask.

"No," Spike says. "Let's see if they decide to show themselves. Your little gem there ought to be hidin' us, yeah?"

I try to think... I can't remember when I lifted the spell, and I know I hadn't activated it today...

Crap.

"Uh," I say. "It would be if I'd remembered to turn it on."

Spike just looks at me.

"You distracted me!" I tell him, remembering how he'd talked me into one last quickie before we'd put out the fire in the cave. Well... actually there wasn't a lot of talking, but he did use his mouth.

"Bloody hell," he mutters, reaching down to loosen his knives in their sheaths. I take the opportunity to do the same with my sword and the dagger on my thigh. Then it's just a matter of waiting, pretending we can't sense whatever is watching us. After a while the feeling intensifies, and I realize that both Spike and Pooh have started a low, rumbling growl. Pooh's steps have slowed, and his big head swivels slightly side to side as he sniffs at the air.

Spike sees the first one, his head whipping to the right and tracking it as it moves. It's gone before I can see it. "What are they?" I ask.

"Goblins," Spike says.

"Goblins?" I ask.

"Of a sort," he says. "Saw some once when I was in northern Europe. Hiisi is what the natives called them. Little bastards, about knee high, good at camouflage. There's one, sitting on that fallen tree up to the left. That knobbly bit with the sticks pokin' out?"

I look, but it looks just like log, to me. Until its eyes swivel and the light catches them. They gleam, like a cat's. Then it moves, darting away behind another tree.

They're fast. Really fast.

And I'm cold.

Crap.

"How many?" I ask softly.

"Enough," Spike says. There's a soft crunch and when I look up he's in game face again, his yellow eyes gleaming just like the goblin's did. Pooh halts in what passes for a clearing here and crouches. "Bear's stopped. Want to go kill something?"

I slide off Pooh's back and land in the snow. Spike lands silently beside me. With Pooh at our backs, we turn to face the deadwood forest. I can feel all the eyes watching me, hear what sounds like soft little snickers. I bounce a little on the balls of my feet, trying to warm up my stiff muscles. Beside me, Spike growls, tracking things with his vamp vision that are too fast for me to see. Our eyes lock once, and he smirks, and then suddenly I'm almost with him; aware of how his body is going to move, of where his focus is.

He sees the first attack coming at the same time as I feel it, the tingles alerting me to the goblin's path before my eyes can catch up. "Batter up, Slayer," Spike says, and I swing my sword in a wide arc, catching it as it leaps at me and batting it away into Spike's reach. He catches it and snaps its neck, tossing it away so we don't trip on the body.

"Was that one mine or yours?" I ask.

"I killed it, so it's mine. We keeping score, Slayer?"

"Might as well," I say with a grin. The tingles along my neck alert me to the next attack and I spin, slicing the head off the next goblin before it reaches me. "Even now," I comment.

"What's the prize?" Spike asks, easily deflecting the next attack.

"Hadn't thought that far," I admit, kicking another goblin away. They seem to range in size from tiny to about the size of our evil elf friends. Their skin is the same knobbly black as the dead trees, and they have branchy bits that stick randomly out of their arms, back and head. Other than that, they don't seem to bear much physical resemblance to each other.

"Winner gets to tell Harris what we did in his sleeping bag," Spike says with a smirk, lashing out at two more goblins. "And I'm up to three now."

Oh god.

Xander is going to freak.

"But I don't want to tell Xander what we did!" I protest, backhanding another goblin into a tree, then running another through with my sword.

"So we're hidin' the fact that we're shagging?" Spike says, sulkily.

"No…" I say. "We're just... not advertising it. Or handing out gory details."

"Nothing gory at all about shagging you, Slayer," Spike says, taking the head off of a springing enemy with a single blow. "'Not unless you're kinkier than you've let on. Got a thing for blood play, luv?"

"No!" I say, spinning just in time to kick a goblin in the chest and send it stumbling back into another. It only takes a single swing to behead both of them.

"Not that I'd object," Spike adds, conversationally. "Heads up!" He tosses a goblin my way and I stab it as it turns in mid air to strike at me. I notice that somewhere along the way he's lost his knives.

"You just told me you wouldn't drink my blood!" I protest.

"Blood in bed is different than feeding, pet," Spike says. Without missing a beat, he slips around behind me and licks my earlobe, which is about as much skin as he can get to, between the scarf and the coat and the hat. One hand skims down my thigh, making me gasp. "I'd make it hurt so good, pet," he promises huskily. "On your left, Slayer."

I just catch the tingles that warn of the goblin approaching me from my bad side in time to bat it away with my sword. Spike spins around me in a whirl of black leather and platinum hair, somehow managing to press a kiss to my mouth before he takes his position to my left again, now holding the iron spike that he stole out of my thigh sheath.

"Cheat," I grumble.

"Evil, pet," he reminds me. Then he stabs a goblin with the spike.

It screams, a high-pitched and pain filled sound that makes everything pause for just a moment. The stabbed goblin falls off the spike, stumbling back and staring at the black hole in its chest. The hole widens, the black edges spreading across its skin until the entire goblin collapses, its scream dying to echoes in the sudden silence.

"Well, well," Spike says, grinning. "Iron allergy. This could be fun."

"Rauta," the goblins say, from all around us. "Rauta, rauta, rautarautarauta..." Suddenly they seem to emerge from wherever they were hiding, crowding around us in a mini but still massive army. There are dozens, I think, staring. No... more. There's a hundred, maybe two, and eventually they surround us in a solid wall of twitchy black twiggy creatures.

"Uh, Spike?" I say, looking around at all the goblins and feeling how tired and hungry and cold I am. As much as I like a good fight, this is looking like it might be just a little more than I can comfortably chew.

"Run?" he asks, and I can see the faintest of trembles in his limbs, too.

"Great minds, right?" I say.

"Bear?" he asks.

"Bear," I agree.

We both whirl and make a dash for Pooh, who has clearly been enjoying a slaughter of his own. He sees us coming and crouches in time for us to scramble up on his back. Maybe they realize we're trying to get away, because suddenly the goblins surge forward in a group. Pooh rises, swiping at the goblins in front of him with a massive paw. I lean out over his right side, slashing at the ones trying to swarm up his flank. Spike takes out the ones on the left and to the rear. For a moment I'm not sure if we'll be able to move, but Pooh is huge and it only takes a moment for him to leap forward, trampling the goblins in his way.

Then we're loping through the woods, with a howling army at our backs.

"Seek!" I cry out, managing to activate the necklace. Then I tell it to hide us. I'm not sure if it'll work, since they're so focused on us already, but maybe the ones who aren't looking directly at us will lose interest? It's all I've got.

My right arm feels like lead as I swing at the few goblins that are still clinging to Pooh's flank, and there's other pains that my body is shutting out right now. Behind me, Spike roars, and I feel him jerk backwards. When I turn to look, there's a goblin on his back, biting at his throat and digging its claws into his chest. Without looking, he stabs backward with the spike in his hand, getting it right in the face. It screams and falls off, and Spike slumps forward against me, blood oozing sluggishly from the wound at his throat and through the torn bits of his shirt. Thank god for the lack of vamp circulation, otherwise he'd be in real trouble.

"You okay?" I ask, my throat raw from inhaling the cold air.

"I'll make it, Slayer," he says, then straightens in time to stab another goblin as it leaps at him from the right. "Por favor, mantenga las manos y los brazos dentro del oso siempre,” he mutters.

"Huh?" I ask. Spike speaks Spanish?

"Ever been to Disneyworld, Slayer?" Spike asks, as I hack at a particularly tenacious goblin that's trying to bite through my snow boot.

"Not since I was six or seven," I say.

"Remind me to take you, someday, pet," he says, wrapping his right arm around my waist. He's shaking now, and I can feel the trembles against my back.

"Oh, yeah," I say. "It'll be tons of fun riding Big Thunder Mountain with a pile of dust. They don't really keep vamp hours, Spike."

He laughs, raggedly. "What? You think humans came up with It's A Small World? Disney's run by demons, pet."

"No, it's not," I insist, checking around us. We seem to have left most of the goblins behind now, but Pooh is still loping through the woods, following the light. Far behind us I can hear the shrieks and yells of Louhi's ugly little army.

"Someday, I'll show..." Spike says, then I feel him press against me a little harder. When I twist to look back, he's passed out.

"Spike!" I shout, and his eyelids flutter open. He shakes his head.

"Be fine," he mumbles. "Just... watch my back, Slayer." Then he slumps against me again, a literal dead weight across my shoulders. I sheathe my sword and wrap his arms around my waist, prying the spike out of his death grip and shoving it back under my thigh sheath.

He's just weak. He'll be fine once we're back and I can get some blood in him.

He'll be fine.

I'm not going to lose him now.

***

When the next attack comes, I can't say I wasn't expecting it.

It's only the thick layers of my coat, sweater and scarf that protect me when Spike's demon unconsciously goes looking for blood. Maybe it's the mouth full of wool, but it's enough to jerk him out of sleep and away from my neck.

"Buffy," he says, horrified.

"It's okay," I tell him, twisting a little to look in his eyes. Somewhere between biting me and me turning around, his vamp face has disappeared.

"Didn't mean to..." he says.

"It's okay, Spike," I tell him. "Right now you look good enough to take a bite out of, too."

Some of the fear goes out of his gaze, but there's so much remorse in his eyes that it's hard to remember that he's soulless. "I didn't..." he shakes his head.

"We're both hungry, you lost a lot of blood earlier, and you were unconscious," I tell him. "Hell, even the chip wouldn't have stopped you from trying to bite me under those circumstances. I know you would never deliberately hurt me, Spike. Really, it's okay."

He's quiet for a moment, his blue eyes an open window to every thought in his head. I can see his amazement there, and understanding. Finally he relaxes, wrapping his arms around my waist again and ducking his head a little, mumbling something under his breath. "What?" I ask.

"You've bloody tamed me, Slayer," he says. "Even my… even that part of me was horrified to think of hurting you."

"Spike, you're about as tame as Pooh, here," I tell him.

"Jaws," he corrects me.

"Pooh," I tell him. "You might be okay with going along with me and doing what I say, but you're still a predator. But as long as you're not hunting humans, I'm not going to try to keep you on a leash. Everything that the guides showed me... I need you to be a predator, a warrior, sometimes. Just as much as I need you to—"

"To what?" he says, curiously.

"Love me," I whisper.

"Always have that, luv," he promises. "Always. Nothing will make me stop loving you."



***

We stop for the night, if you can call it that when the sun and moon never move, in a sheltered clump of fallen trees. The cold is intense, and even though Spike clearly hates it, we both end up facing the fire with Pooh acting like a warm, furry, giant pillow against our backs.

We're both tired, cold, and aching from the fight earlier, and it's not until the fire is going and we're settling in that I have time to take stock of Spike's injuries. When I do finally get Spike peeled out of his coat, I'm more than a little horrified at the damage.

"Fuck."

"Such a dirty word out of such a pretty mouth," Spike says, tired but still smirking. "Am I corrupting you, Slayer?"

I ignore him and instead stare, mute, at the gaping bite that tore his throat half open. Dried blood crusts it, but I can still see muscles and tendons and things that really, really, really shouldn't be out for the viewing public. Blood soaks his shirt, gluing it to his chest in icy red patches. Five nasty gouge marks across his chest are deep enough that I can see bits of bone through them. He's not bleeding, though. In fact, his exposed muscles are an ugly sort of brownish gray, with bits of ice crusting the wounds, and his skin is dead white. He looks like a corpse.

"How are you even talking?" I manage to choke out.

He shrugs and lays his head back against Pooh, deep circles under his eyes and his face so thin I can watch all the tendons in his jaw flex when he speaks. Even his lips are white, cracked and dry looking. No wonder he tried to bite me. This is a vampire when his tank isn't just empty, it's dry as a bone.

He gives an awkward little one shoulder shrug, wincing. "Dunno," he says. "Not a lot of books on vamp physiology, pet. Though I bet those army wankers could have told you."

I vaguely remember the tour Dr. Walsh and Riley took me on, and a room full of demons lying on tables, being dissected. I remember that the vampires were awake, but restrained, and the disgust I felt at watching a bunch of humans poking around inside them while the vamps snarled in pain around the leather gags. "I don't think I really want to know that bad," I tell him. "Did they... did they... were you awake when..."

"No," he says. "Whatever they did to me, they did when I was knocked out, when they first brought me in. Wasn't there long enough for them to do more."

"I'm sorry," I tell him, hunting through my bag for the first aid kit I packed. I brought gauze, which won't stop the bleeding, since there isn't any, but it will at least cover most of the damage. Or... you know, hold things together.

"Sorry they didn't have time to go poking round in my guts, Slayer?" he asks. "Sadistic bitch."

"What?" I ask, glancing up. He's got his head back, his eyes closed, and the muscles in his face are twisting like he's trying not to vamp. "No, you idiot. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Sorry that... that I let the Initiative stay around so long. Sorry that I didn't see how... how sick and wrong some of the things they were doing were. I can't be sorry about the demon slaying, and—and I can't really be sorry about the chip, but the experiments... the... it was just wrong."

His eyes open, blue flickering with yellow sparks. "You've changed," he says after a minute of studying me.

"So have you," I say. I can see the demon in him now. He's so thin, and it's so near the surface. He's starving and in pain and it's making him extra cranky. He's chipless now. He could hurt me.

But he won't. I know it. I know it the same way I know that you can't put a box of donuts in front of Xander without him stealing one, and you can't say money around Anya without her eyes lighting up. The same way I know how Willow laughs when she's happy and how Giles will polish his glasses the minute something gets uncomfortable. I know it the way I know that, in my world, at least, the sun will rise in the morning.

Spike loves me. William loves me. Even his demon loves me.

It's... I don't know what the word for it is. You know how some things just... are? That's what this is.

And the weird thing is how that knowledge settles into me. It makes me feel stronger, safer. No matter what happens in the future, Spike loves me. I never have to doubt that.

And at the same time there's this thrill to it, because loving Spike, being loved by Spike... it's not safe. It's not simple. It's not tame or comfortable. Even if I somehow manage to live to be a hundred years old... I don't think this feeling will wear off. Because it's Spike.



***

He lets me bandage him as best as I can, though he says not to wrap the wound on his neck. Something about the gauze getting stuck when it starts to heal. His shirt is a loss, it's so blood soaked, and as cold as it is we can't even wash it to try to get the blood out. The duster isn't in great condition either, but it's better than nothing, even though he looks horribly thin under its weight.

As I'm putting things back in my bag, Spike stops me with one cold hand wrapped around my wrist. "What?" I ask, looking up.

"My journal," he says, staring at the book I was about to carefully put back in my bag. "Why... You said you'd read it." He takes it out of my hand and opens it up, flipping through the pages to the end. For a moment he stares at the last page, his finger trembling a little when it traces the wrinkled spot where my tears fell on the page. "You cried." He frowns, those little lines coming back between his brows.

"I...," I swallow, not sure what to tell him, not sure what he's confused about. "Yes."

"Why?" he looks up, his head tilted slightly as if he can see through me if he just adjusts his perspective a little.

"Because you were gone," I say. I can't lie to him anymore, I realize, and I can't deny him the truth. Not that that ever mattered. Spike always could read between my words anyway. "Because I'd just found out that the guy of my dreams was you, and that you loved me. And that I'd sent you to hell because... because I was stupid."

"Not stupid," he says. "Just... in the dark. I wanted to tell you. Tried so many times."

"I know," I say. "We found all the post-its and poster boards and things. I think Giles' eyes almost popped out when he got a good look at the Magic Box."

Spike smirks. "I got bored," he says.

"Yeah," I say, smiling. "Note to self: don't let Spike get bored. Badness ensues."

He flips through some of the pages, pausing on one that got a little tear smudged midway through. He glances up at me, and something that looks kind of like embarrassment flashes over his face. "Uh... you know this is just... rot, right?" he says. "Didn't mean to upset you with it."

It's the poem he wrote for me. The one he started to write, anyway, but didn't finish.

"Can burn it, if you want," he says, looking pained. "If you got the personal tour of William's history, you know I'm a bloody aw—"

"I love it," I tell him.

"—ful poe—what?" he looks at me, blinking.

"The poem," I tell him. "I loved it. I... maybe someday you'll finish it? Or... could I read some of your others? If you still have them, I mean."

He's staring at me like I've sprouted another head, his mouth slightly open. After a second he snaps it shut.

"I... You don't... It's mostly blood and sex and death, Slayer," he says. "Don't want to read that."

"I don't know," I say. "Most of the best poems I've read have been about that sort of thing. At least the ones we read in my poetry class."

He frowns. "Like what?"

I think, then remember. "There was this... this one poem we read, a few months ago. I didn't really like you, at the time, but, it reminded me of you and I kind of hated that it did but...I memorized this one part of it."

He's looking at me with the strangest expression, and I can't help but stare back as I recite the words that burned their way into my memory all that time ago.

"dead has a smile like the nicest man you've never met who maybe winks
at you in a streetcar and you pretend you don't but really you do
see and you are My how glad he winked and hope he'll do it again
or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it makes your neck
feel pleasant and stoopid and if dead says may i have this one and
was never introduced you say Yes because you know you want it to dance
with you and it wants to and it can dance and Whocares"

His mouth is open again.

"I thought...," I say, looking at my hands. "It just... reminded me of you."

When I glance back up there's a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Met him once," he says. "That Cummings, bloke. Was before he wrote that. Never ran into him again but I always wanted to ask."

"Full of yourself, aren't you?" I laugh, and he reaches for me, pulling me against his least injured side. He's so thin beside me, my smirking, egotistical vampire, but he's going to be okay.

"Always knew you wanted to dance with death, Slayer," he says softly. "And we're going to dance for a long, long time."

Death.

Death is my gift, the prophecy said.

It will love her beyond all others, it said.

Guess it came true after all.

Mine and mine alone.

***

Sleep happens, but doesn't last very long. And once we're awake neither of us really feel like staying put. It doesn't take that long to put out the fire and gather our stuff and get moving again. Spike's weak. Scary weak and shivery as a baby kitten, and I practically have to haul him up onto Pooh's back. He doesn't argue with me when I take the backpack and set it in front of me. I figure it was the only thing that kept his back undamaged yesterday when the goblin attacked him, but he's not strong enough at the moment to carry it. He wraps his arms around my waist and puts his head on my shoulder, breathing shallowly and shivering hard enough that he makes my body tremble along with him.

Maybe Pooh realizes that we've got to get out of here, because he picks up his pace again. It's not quite a run, but not really a walk either, and he follows the light from my necklace like he's on a hunt. He hasn't eaten in the entire time he's been with us, but it doesn't seem to bother him. Spike's too out of it to worry about it, either, which is definitely good. My last energy bar was our only breakfast, so I hope we make it home today. I'm not feeling so hot myself.

God, there's so much that could go wrong.

I can't help but start listing it all as we go, with Spike a cold, trembling weight against my back. We could get there and the portal could be gone. Or Louhi could catch up to us. Or Jack. Or the goblin army.

Or we could still have days to travel and we could starve or freeze to death by then. Well... I could. Spike could just turn into a vamp popsicle and Louhi could come get him whenever she wants.

Or we could get back, and find the portal and go home, and Louhi could take days here to prepare and then pop out five seconds behind us and freeze us all to death.

That's kinda the optimistic view.

I hate this place.

I used to like snow, used to think it was magical. Now I'd be happy if I never ever saw it again.

Spike keeps drifting in and out of consciousness. I can tell because every time he passes out, the demon takes over and I hear the shiftcrack sound of him vamping right beside my ear. It's only a little wiggy the first five times. Whenever he wakes up he sits up a little and shakes it off, murmuring apologies and swearing.

He doesn't try to bite me again, though.

Hours pass and I start to half doze myself.

It's the change in the tingles that wakes me up.

I know I put the Hide spell on, but I'm starting to get the feeling that there's something tailing us anyway. It's kind of like yesterday, when I started to feel the goblins. Like we're being watched or followed. Or maybe like we're just near something. It's not as intense, which I guess means whatever it is hasn't actually seen us, but it's bad enough that I shake Spike awake.

"Can you smell anything?" I ask.

"Thought that was disgusting," he mutters sleepily, lisping around his fangs.

"Was," I say. "Right now, not so much. Can you?"

He inhales, turning slightly away from me.

"Bloody goblins again," he says. "Not as many."

"How far?" I ask.

"Not...," he shivers, frowning, which only makes his vamp face look scarier. "Uh... behind us a ways, I think. Might be a search party, trying to track us."

Great.

Pooh sniffs then, and picks up his pace a little.

Time to go, I think.

I send out the Seek spell two more times, but we're still going the right direction. The tingles stay constant, tickling up and down my neck, warning me that we're running out of time. Pooh seems to sense the need to hurry because his pace gets slightly faster, until we're almost running again, slowed only by the fallen trees in our path.

An hour or two later, Spike growls softly, sniffing the air again.

"They're still following, but they're movin' faster," he says. "Think they know where we're goin?"

"I hope not," I say.

Time passes now in a blur of white snow and black dead trees, both of us staring ahead, trying to will the doorway home to just magically appear. The sense of being followed only increases, though, until I'm sure that if I turned my head and looked back I'd see them moving, way off in the distance now, like a tiny twiggy army.

We shouldn't have stopped to sleep, I think.

"Cave," Spike growls in my ear. "Up ahead."

I can't see that far, but I believe him. "Think they'll catch us?" I ask.

"Not if we can get through and shut the door," he says.

When the cave finally comes into sight I'm already swinging the bag onto my shoulders and getting into position to jump off Pooh's back.

"What are we going to do about the bear?" I worry.

"Sod the bloody bear, Slayer," Spike growls.

"We can't leave him!"

"I don't think we've got a choice," he says, eying the cave up ahead. The entrance is much smaller than the last one. Too small for Pooh.

"Look," Spike says, "the bear can take care of itself. You know that. Besides, it wasn't like it was being mistreated, and it'll probably just wander back home anyway."

He's right. I know he's right, but I don't like it.

Pooh comes to a halt in front of the cave. My footprints are gone from my trek out of it, buried under the recent snow from the storm, but I recognize it anyway. Behind us I can feel the increasing tingles from the things following us, urging us to hurry. Still, I can't help but pause, petting Pooh's soft fur one last time.

"I'll get you a soddin' dog, luv," Spike says, hanging onto me, panting. But he reaches out and pets the bear, too, patting it tentatively on the shoulder.

"Bye, Pooh," I say. "Thank you."

Pooh gives me a mournful look with his big black eyes. Then he snuffles at Spike and licks his face.

"Gah! Fuck! Knock it off!" he says, stumbling back. "Bloody bear."

Far off in the distance, I hear something that doesn't sound like tree branches breaking under snow. It sounds like snow breaking under feet. Lots of feet.

"Time to go," I say, wrapping an arm around Spike and hauling him into the cave.

The portal is still there, swirling like a swirly black thing.

"Ready?" I ask Spike.

"Let's go home," he says.

Together we step through.