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Home Is Where They Have to Let You In by slaymesoftly
 
Five
 
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Chapter Five

              By the time Buffy had fed the vampire the last of the blood, the sun was beginning to lighten the sky outside the windows and he was looking nervous.

             “Need to get out of here,” he said. “This room has too many windows for me, and no handy sheets of wood to hide behind.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked around the room. “Where are my boots?”

“Those disgusting things? They’re outside, where they belong. They aren’t even in one piece, anyway. You should just let me throw them away.”

“They’re all I have,” he said quietly, sending a bolt of shame through her for not having considered that.

“Well, you can’t go out to get them now,” she said, gesturing to the shaft of sunlight coming through the glass in the kitchen door.

“I can’t stay here, either,” he pointed out. “Just get them for me… please?”

“Why? So you can walk outside and go up in flames?  It looks like you already tried that once—“ Her voice broke off. “Is that what happened to you? Did you try to walk into the sun?”

He shook his head. “Got no bloody idea what happened to me. Told you, I can’t remember anything before a week or so ago.” He looked down at his torn clothes and the hole in his leg. “Prob’ly just as well,” he muttered. “Doesn’t look like I was having much fun.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Buffy moved back to his side, her voice more sympathetic than before.  “You can stay in the basement.  Just till you’re well,” she blurted when he gaped at her. “It’ll be more comfortable than the shed, and you can get your own blood if I’m not home.”

“You’re either daft, or so bloody cocky—”

“Don’t follow that thought,” she snapped. “If you weren’t so weak, and if I didn’t think I could sort of… maybe… trust you, I wouldn’t even consider it. But I can’t get you back to the shed now, and I can’t leave you on my kitchen table, so the basement it is.” She put her hands on her hips. “Can you get up by yourself?”

He nodded and slid to the end of the table, his pale bare feet looking incongruous with the jeans and coat.  He sat there for a moment, then dropped to the floor, swaying with the effort. Before he could fall, Buffy was beside him, her shoulder under his, her arm around his waist. “I’ve got you.  Come on, I’ll help you get downstairs.”

Moving very slowly, but with better balance with each step, they got to the door at the top of the basement stairs.  “Be careful, it’s gonna be dark until I find the light switch… Oh, yeah,” she said with an embarrassed laugh as she remembered what was leaning on her. “Guess that’s not as big a deal for you as it is for me.”

“It’s over there, Slayer,” he said, gesturing with one hand. “An’ yeah, I don’t need it, but don’t want you to go tumbling down, do I?”

“Not if you don’t want to go back to being hungry,” she said, reaching for the switch. When the stairs had been illuminated, they began the painful process of getting him down them without falling.  It took a while, and a few hissed intakes of breath that told Buffy she’d held on too hard, but in time they were safely at the bottom. She left him holding on to the bannister while she looked around for the best place to put him.

The cellar was not someplace she had been to very often; with her washer and dryer in a room off the kitchen, and Xander’s frequent visits to make sure everything was working as it should, she’d not had much reason to visit the dark, dank area under the house.  She prowled around until she found a stack of old furniture pushed up against one wall.  Along with some tables she’d been unwilling to discard, were the old mattresses that they’d taken off the upstairs beds. Deciding that a starving, injured vampire wasn’t in a position to complain if mold had already begun growing on them, Buffy pulled the first two away from the wall, dragged them out, and put them into the cavity under the stairs, one on top of the other.

Once you’ve had a house full of girls sleeping everywhere, you know better than to throw away mattresses. Although I probably should move them out of here one of these days. Maybe they can go upstairs somewhere on the third floor. It’s not like I’m using it for anything.

“I guess that’s about as comfy as I can make it,” she said, frowning at the lumpy and not terribly clean surface.  “I’ll be right back with some sheets and—”

“Slayer—Buffy… Not that I don’t appreciate this, luv, but I’ve been sleeping with a rat on the dirt floor of a garden shed.  I’ll be more than fine. You go do whatever it is you do during the day, and I’ll just catch some more kip here, yeah?”

“Kip? Oh yeah, sleep. Wish I could do that, but I think I have to go to work today – at least for a little while. I need to talk to Giles about those girls and whether or not we should graduate them.”  She stared at him again, taking in his barely average height, the painfully thin body, the exhaustion caused just from getting down a flight of stairs.  She shook her head. “I just really don’t know how you did what you did. You should have been dust within seconds.”

He shrugged. “Came at me in a bunch,” he said. “Got in each other’s way so much that I was able to keep them fighting each other more than me. Wasn’t until I started pushing them away that they had room to swing their stakes without hurting each other.”  He turned away as if ashamed. “I’m sorry about the one with the broken hand. I didn’t mean to do that to her, but she was trying to kill me.”

“It’s okay,” Buffy soothed. “You were defending yourself. I’m not mad at you – I’m mad at me. I should have taught them better.”  She paused and bit her lip. “So, if they’d come at you one at a time, or maybe two…?”

“You’d have a much cleaner kitchen table, and no bags under those pretty eyes.”

Ignoring the compliment and the uncomfortable feeling it gave her, Buffy focused on what she’d learned about the team’s ability to fight as a group. “That’s actually very helpful. Thank you, … “ She sighed. “I’ve got to call you something. I wish you knew what your name was.”

“Wouldn’t mind knowing a bit more about it myself,” he agreed. “But I don’t. Anytime I try to remember anything, jus’ gives me a headache and makes my burns start hurting more.”

“Well, I’m just going to name you then… something Englishy maybe? Nigel?” She giggled at the growl he forced out. “Percy? Rupert? No, Giles already has that one. Let’s see, Basil? Reginald?”  Her giggles increased along with the growls that accompanied each attempt to come up with something suitably annoying. When the last growl choked off into a coughing fit, she realized what she was doing and apologized.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… How about ‘Bob’?”

He staggered to the mattresses and sank down upon them, drawing shallow breaths that obviously pained him almost as much as the growling and coughing had.  Buffy bit her lip and reached a tentative hand toward him, dropping it when he glared at her.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I guess that was only funny to me… you know, the one without the burned lungs, who’s missing her common sense.”  She looked so genuinely distressed that he waved a forgiving hand at her.

“It’s alright, Slayer. As much as you’ve done for me, got a right to call me whatever you want. ‘Bob’ is fine.”

“Okay, Bob. I’m going to go get dressed and check in at the school. I’ll pick up some more blood on the way home.”

He didn’t reply, just lowered himself to the bed and closed his eyes, once again seeming to be nothing but the corpse of someone who’d died a very painful death.  Buffy watched him for a few seconds, but when there was no movement, she went back upstairs, turning off the light and shutting the door behind her.


She was just putting coffee into a travel mug to take into work with her when Dawn came down and snatched the pot away.  While she poured out her own cup, she looked around the empty kitchen.

“So, where is he?”

“Basement. Stay out of it, ‘k?”

“Sure. No problem. If he’s getting better, I plan to let the one with the super strength take care of the injured vampire.” She set her cup down and reached for the sugar bowl. “He is better, I take it?”

“Yeah. He’s stronger. He’ll be even better when I get some more blood into him. Still looks like somebody tried to barbeque him, but at least he can stand up and growl at me when I say something stupid.”

“Growl? We’re feeding him, and he’s growling?” She tossed her head. “Damned ungrateful, if you ask me.”

“He’s hurting, Dawn. He’s hurt, confused, and, I think, scared. I shouldn’t have been teasing him.”

“Note to self: Don’t provoke an injured vampire.  Maybe you should put that in that Slayer Handbook you and Giles are working on.”

Buffy snorted. “Maybe so.  On the plus side, he did tell me why he was able to get away from six slayers with only a gash across his ribs, so that’s good to know. I can work with those girls today and maybe get them ready to graduate after all.”

“Could be handy, having a pet vampire around,” Dawn said. “I remember how you and Spike used to work with the potentials…”

Buffy smiled. “Yeah. That was pretty awesome. They were so used to him being the quiet guy in the basement, they didn’t know what to do with themselves whenever he went into game face or beat something up in front of them… It was good training for them too – having to spar with Spike – even when he couldn’t hit them.”  She shook herself. “But, that was Spike and I knew I could trust him. ‘Bob’ is just a random vamp that for some reason won’t feed on people.”

“’Bob’?”

“What? It’s a perfectly good name. And easier than calling him ‘the vampire’.” Buffy walked to the door, preparing to leave. “Maybe I should ask Willow to take a look at him and see if he’s got a soul? That would go a long way to explaining why he’s so weird.”




              “So, what do you think?” Buffy stared at Giles expectantly.  Without going into great detail, she’d filled him in on the vampire in her shed and what he’d shared about his experience with the slayer squad.

He shook his head.  “I don’t know what to think. Certainly, we should have Willow or one of the other coven members take a look at him to see if he has somehow kept or acquired his soul. I don’t want you bringing him around the school, though. Not unless they can vouch for his souled state.  And I’m not very happy that you’ve kept him on your property…”

Buffy had not shared with Giles that the vampire in question was now residing in her basement and sharing the house with Dawn. She just said, “He’s so weak right now, you could beat him up, Giles.” She grinned at his glare and continued, “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to adopt him.  But he did save Dawn from a bad bite, and almost dusted himself doing it, so….”

Giles nodded. “Well, I do agree that the information he shared about how he managed to avoid becoming dust when he had a full squad of slayers after him, is something you can use in a training session.  Perhaps he can be of some use to us, if it turns out he is genuinely harmless.”

“You’ve come a long way, Giles,” Buffy said as she stood up. “Remember when the only good vampire was a dead one?”

“I don’t believe I said ‘good’, I said ‘useful’ and ‘harmless’. I am still of the opinion that the only way you can trust a vampire is if he has been ensouled somehow. Preferably permanently…”

“Or, if he wants to be good badly enough that he goes and earns his soul back,” Buffy said, her steady gaze telling him they were still poles apart when it came to how they chose to remember Spike.

“Quite so,” he said with a sigh. “But that was a very unique situation, and Spike was strongly influenced by his feelings for you. I sincerely doubt that it was a desire to be good that sent him seeking that soul.” As Buffy’s face clouded, he hastened to add, “But it was an admirable thing to do, never the less, and I will always believe so.”

Somewhat mollified, she stood up, saying, “I’m going to work with that squad today and see if I can get them to figure out what they did wrong the other night. If they can’t, then I’ll have to tell them what it was, and that means they’re going to need more training before we send them out on their own.”


“All right, ladies.” Buffy, hands on hips, stared at the girls grouped in front of her. “Who can tell me what went wrong the other night?”

There was a lot of shuffling of feet and exchanging of sidelong looks before Rose raised her bandaged hand.

“Yes?”

“It was dark. And he was really fast, and—”

“Un huh. Because it will never be dark when you’re fighting other vampires, will it? And God knows, they aren’t as fast as we are….”

Rose glared at a girl who dared to snicker at her, and dropped her hand. “Well, you try fighting one vamp when your friends keep getting in your way,” she muttered.

“Aha!”

Six pairs of eyes blinked at her beneath puzzled frowns. Buffy could see when the wheels began turning and things began to fall into place.  Gill gave a triumphant shout. “That’s it!  We got in each other’s way.  That’s why I missed his heart; I couldn’t get a good angle on it because there was always somebody too close by.”

There were murmurs of agreement as everyone realized that their eagerness to be the one to stake the vampire had resulted in his escape. 

“Who was supposed to be running the squad that night?” Buffy’s voice brought their attention back to her. There was some throat-clearing and eye-shifting, but no one volunteered a name.  “That, ladies, was a rhetorical question.” Buffy focused her gaze on a tall girl trying very hard to hide behind Gill.

“Ildeka, whose job was it to organize that attack?”

“Mine,” she mumbled, just a trace of her Hungarian accept still present. “I should have told them what to do.”

Buffy nodded.  “When you’re the squad leader, you have to let your team know who is expected to do what. That way, we don’t end up stabbing our own people, or missing a chance to take down the bad guys.  A vamp like that, alone, weak, and surrounded by slayers, should have been assigned to one girl. Two at the most, if backup was available. Everybody else should have stayed out of the way.”  She ran her eyes over the group. “Who knows why – aside from what we already know about what happens when you have too many cooks?”

Ildeka frowned, the old saying meaning nothing to her, but the other girls thought hard. Rose raised her hand, more timidly than she had the first time.

“Rose?”

“The ones who weren’t fighting could have been watching out for other vamps – in case he wasn’t alone.”

“Exactly. Not only did you all get in each other’s way, but no one was watching for trouble.  That kind of carelessness could get you all killed.”  Buffy sighed as she watched the girls’ expressions flicker from ashamed to angry and back to ashamed.  “Okay. Here’s the deal. We’re going to do another patrol in a few days. We’ll head for somewhere that we know has a vamp problem and hope we get the chance to solve it for them.  If I like the way it goes, you’ll all graduate on time.”

“And if you don’t?”

Buffy just stared at them until they had all dropped their eyes. She started to walk away, trying not to hear the muttering behind her.  When “bitch” drifted to her ears, she stopped and sighed before turning around.

“Look at this from my point of view, girls. If I send you out on your own without knowing for sure that you’ve been well-prepared, then anything bad that happens to you is on me.  I didn’t prepare you for something like what happened the other night. That’s my fault. From now on, every group of trainees will practice attacking in large groups. But since it didn’t end successfully, I’m giving us all another chance to show that we know what we’re doing—you, as students, and me as your instructor.”

Buffy was almost to the gate out of the compound when Gill approached her.  “Ms Summers… Buffy? Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Gill. What is it?”

“Why did you say the vampire was weak?”

Gill gazed at Buffy with genuine curiosity, becoming more curious by the second as Buffy stumbled for an answer, finally settling on, “I just know he was.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to explain how I know that eventually, but for right now, just trust me. He wasn’t even close to full-strength… and he wasn’t trying to kill you. Think about that the next time you’re feeling cocky about how good you are.”

Without continuing the conversation, Buffy left quickly. She was anxious to get home and make sure Dawn and ‘Bob’ hadn’t tried to kill each other; but she did remember to stop at a butcher shop and clean out the man’s supply of pig blood. After assuring him that she would be a steady customer for a while, she hurried home with a shopping bag full of chilled blood.

 
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