Never Ever Tell

 

by  Lilachigh

 

 

 

Chapter:  No Hiding Place

 

 

 

The cellars deep beneath the new Sunnydale High School were dark and still, as far as Buffy Summers was concerned, smelt slightly of the roasting flesh from the demon who had once been the Mayor, Richard Wilkins III. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and hoped she wasn’t breathing in demon particles that were still floating in the undisturbed air.

Arms full, she picked her way cautiously through the clutter wondering why all this junk and garbage had gathered here. It was as if everything above ground had been thrust down below the surface; anything the workers wanted to get rid of had been consigned to these meandering corridors.  Grimly, she determined to tell Xander to get his builders to clean up after themselves in the future. 

She heard him before she saw him: he was singing quietly to himself, the same little tune over and over again - then he would stop and chide himself for not knowing the next verse, how forgetful he was, what a bad creature he was, why should anyone bother with him, and then the singing started once more.

She knew she didn’t love him: that was a given, because hey, no soul and evil and anyway, he’d attacked her when she’d been too weak to fight.  She pushed to the back of her mind the number of times in the past when she’d hit him, beaten him almost to a pulp and he’d never cried Unfair.  That was different.  Even when you were invisible and almost forced him to have sex? a pedantic little voice in her brain asked, or what about when you went back, throwing yourself into his arms just after you’d broken up with him?  With a little groan she smothered the voice, scared to investigate all that it implied. 

Buffy walked gingerly round a final corner and stopped. Spike was sitting on the floor, staring up at her, his eyes gleaming, lips still moving, but silently now.

“Hi Spike, it's me, Buffy - you OK?”

“OK - PDQ - SWALK - TTFN”

Buffy swallowed hard. “I take it that means no, although I didn’t understand a word you said.”

“The boy mustn’t talk - the boy’s using letters.  Carved in his mind. Could carve them on his skin if Buffy would like that. Would you, Buffy?  Big red letters, dripping blood letters, deep into the flesh, mark me forever letters.”

A wave of pity washed over her, mixed with a feeling that could have been guilt if she'd let it.. This was the Big Bad, the Scourge of all Europe, squatting in a filthy basement, his wits gone and she had no idea why.  “Look, Spike, I brought you this. Remember - it’s yours.”

She held out the bundle she’d been carrying and shook out the black leather duster. A wave of memories cascaded through her brain - he’d been wearing this the very first time she’d seen him outside the Bronze,  been wearing it when her mom had hit him over the head with an axe, and at practically every other important moment and meeting of their odd relationship, especially that night when the house collapsed around them and her life changed for ever.

She buried her face in the leather, the smell of tobacco, whisky and Spike searing her brain, making little channels of memory that she knew she could never eradicate.

Buffy had found the duster where he’d left it in Ravello Drive that dreadful evening. She’d taken it upstairs back into her room because she didn’t want Dawn or Xander to see it. And, if she was honest, at that time she hadn’t wanted to look at it herself. But she hadn’t destroyed it. She should have done - thrown it in the garbage or cut it into ribbons. But instead she’d packed it away at the back of a high shelf and then with all the tragedy of Tara’s death, Willow’s descent into black magic and everything that had happened since, there hadn’t been time to throw it out.   But as soon as she’d found Spike living under the High School, she’d known that wasn’t true, that she’d just found it impossible to destroy this last link with the vampire, no matter what he’d done.

Now she knelt in front of hin, held it out to him, desperately waiting for him to shrug it on, to change, to be her old Spike again.  But he looked at it with an expression that was a mixture of alarm and hate and despair.  

“Nooo!  Mustn’t touch!  Not mine!  Not the boy’s!”

 “Spike, listen to me. This belongs to you. Don't you remember? Try to remember!”  But he refused to look at her and scrabbled backwards, away from the leather, away from her pleading expression.

For a long minute Buffy remained kneeling, unaware that tears were falling from her face onto the ground. At last she stood up, aching with a weariness that seemed to be inside her - had nothing to do with her physical being.  : she had to get home; she’d wasted enough time down here.

Folding the coat she tucked it away, hidden out of sight. At least Spike would know where it was when he wanted it.  But as she walked away the singing started again and she found herself brushing more angry tears from her cheeks.  It was hard to think that this poor pathetic creature would ever stride through her world with black leather flying around him again.

Behind her, for one golden instance before the darkness descended once more, the vampire’s hand reached out and one finger-tip delicately touched one shining droplet on the floor in front of him, bringing it to his mouth where it fed him better than the blood he craved.

 

tbc